Between Cultures: Children of Immigrants in America - Hardcover

Grillo, Gina J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1930066163 ISBN 13: 9781930066168

Publisher: Center for American Places, 2004

Synopsis

As the grandchild of Italian immigrants, photographer Gina J. Grillo has a personal impetus in her photographic studies of ethnic and immigrant life in the United States. In Between Cultures, Grillo explores the struggles immigrant children face as they develop their cultural identity in an environment completely new and foreign to them.

Following the tradition of the pioneering photographers Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, Grillo portrays the immigrant experience through children's eyes, unearthing a complex and poignant world. She begins with images of newly arrived immigrant families at O'Hare International Airport during their first few hours in the United States, and then follows them through the gates and into Chicago's urban life: through her chronicle of citizenship ceremonies, cultural celebrations, weddings and dances, and other everyday scenes of immigrant life, Grillo captures the crucial elements that shape not only the characters of the children, but also the neighborhoods in which they reside.

For adults, emigration to America is filled with both hope and fear, yet it is tempered by a mature understanding. For children, however, this same journey unfolds in the unrelenting present as they must constantly negotiate their individual identities and allegiances to culture, country, and kin. With moving quotations and drawings by immigrant children woven into Grillo's visual sequence, Between Cultures is a unique meditation on the development of individual identity through the reconciliation of multiple cultural heritages.

About this title

About the Author

Gina J. Grillo teaches in the photography department at Columbia College, Chicago. Her work has been published in the Chicago Tribune, among other periodicals, and is represented in the collections of the University of Chicago, the Fanie Mae Foundation, and Albert and Tipper Gore, among others.
Leo Schelbert is professor of history, emeritus, at the University if Illinois at Chicago.

Review

"Gina J. Grillo's book captures the devotion that immigrant children feel toward their native lands as well as their new homes." (Chicago Tribune 2004-04-11)

"Gina J. Grillo's photographs capture the idealism and contradiction of the immigrant experience. Her portraits reveal her subjects' displacement and hope, their mingled joy and regret, their bravery and doubts. Ms. Grillo's book is a sensitive presentation of the diverse ages, geographies, and socioeconomic conditions of the immigrants, documenting through art their challenges and opportunities." (Spertus Museum, Chicago Susan Schaalman Youdvin 2003-09-01)

"This book provides a compelling immigrant journey by the various people who make an American city a microcosm of the world's cultural diversity. These images by Ms. Grillo portray the pain, perseverance, and triumph that accompany the immigration experience, including the process of adjustment to U.S. society and cultural survival." (Center for Cultural Understanding and Change, The Field Museum Rosa Cabrera 2003-09-01)

"In Gina J. Grillo's telling photographs, one discovers faces filled with joy and radiant expectation, others show stoic calmness, still others reveal questioning wariness and, it seems at times, sadness. Great longing for what they had to leave behind coupled with unease about their new surroundings, with their different tongue, lifestyle, and occasional disdain and hostility, seem to fill their souls. Grillo's masterful look at children of immigrants in contemporary America provides a unique perspective on the newcomers' enduring challenges." (Leo Schelbert, professor of history emeritus, University of Illinois at Chicago 2003-09-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: Center for American Places
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1930066163
• ISBN 13: 9781930066168
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 136