Building Brooklyn: Eighth Avenue

Episode Transcript

[Street sounds from Eighth Avenue]

Adwoa Adusei One hot September day, we took a walk down Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. It’s always a busy street, and especially this Sunday, when residents were out shopping and enjoying the warm day. Fresh fruit, vegetables and seafood were spilling onto the sidewalks in crates and buckets. Vendors were calling out to passers-by, advertising their squids and blue crab for sale, and their grapes, plums, lychees, and green veggies of every kind. Mothers with two or three kids in tow navigated the bustling streets. Older residents dragged rolling carts behind them, while others set up carts and tables on the sidewalk, offering watch repair services, homemade dumplings, and ladies’ undergarments in front of the restaurants, grocery stores, and pharmacies along Eighth Avenue.

[Steet sounds]

Adwoa Adusei All along the street, people called out to each other in Fujianese and Cantonese — and signs were written in Chinese characters above shop windows and scrawled onto cardboard. The bustle, the chatter and activity that we found on Eighth Avenue a few weeks ago … it’s a far cry from what this street used to look like, in the 1970s and 80s …

Tarry Hum I grew up in the neighborhood. My family moved to Sunset Park in 1974 and my dad is still there. 

Adwoa Adusei This is Professor Tarry Hum. She’s an urban planner and Chair of the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College CUNY. We talked to her about her memories of growing up near Eighth Avenue.

[Birds chirping]

Tarry Hum The neighborhood at that time were where my dad was, you know, it was still largely Scandinavian, Irish, Italian. And I don't think that those neighbors were particularly happy to see Chinese people moving in. Eighth Avenue was very sleepy. I think that my parents really liked that quietness. But, in terms of how we felt being welcomed into the neighborhood, I don't think that we really felt that welcomed. It was just very quiet and nothing like what it is now. Absolutely nothing.

Adwoa Adusei Tarry Hum went on to get her masters and PhD in urban planning at MIT and then UCLA — and she came back to Sunset Park because this neighborhood has an important and unique story to tell about how working class immigrants from all over the world live together and create community. She ended up writing a book about Sunset Park called Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood.

Tarry Hum Sunset Park, I think at the time that my family moved there was segregated. I mean, I think that the Latinx population was largely concentrated along the industrial waterfront. And then the more upland parts of Sunset Park, that's kind of comprised of these modest, you know, two family row houses were where a lot of the white homeowners were. Once the Chinese started to kind of move into the more home-owning part of Sunset Park that was, you know, more upland, a lot of the whites left.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras In the late 1970s, Sunset Park was predominantly Puerto Rican and white. In the 1980s, more Chinese people began to settle in the neighborhood — only a few thousand clustered around Eighth Avenue. By the end of the decade, the number of Chinese residents in Sunset Park had tripled.

Adwoa Adusei Today, Sunset Park is 48 percent Asian, and 35 percent Latinx. There’s a lot to say about Sunset Park, Brooklyn — and that’s why we’ve got two "Building Brooklyn" episodes about the neighborhood. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Between 1993 and 1994, the Center for Brooklyn History at BPL collaborated with the Museum of Chinese in America to collect oral histories from Sunset Park residents. They interviewed and cataloged 26 stories about the neighborhoods and its growth from the 1950s up until the early 1990s in both Cantonese and English. So, we’re going to start the history of this neighborhood in the middle of the 20th century, with a promise to you that our very next episode goes back even farther than that.

Adwoa Adusei For this episode, though, we’re going to focus our story on one street in the neighbrohood — Eighth Avenue, which many would call Brooklyn’s Chinatown.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras I’m Krissa Corbett Cavouras.

Adwoa Adusei And I’m Adwoa Adusei. You’re listening to Borrowed: a podcast from Brooklyn Public Library. This episode was produced and written in collaboration with the Museum of Chinese in America.

[Music and construction sound]

Adwoa Adusei Let’s start with the construction of the Gowanus Expressway. If you remember from the first episode of our series, Reaghan Tarbell’s uncle was a Mohawk ironworker, and he helped build the Gowanus Expressway. Tragically, he died while on that job. Like Reeghan, some of our listeners may have an emotional connection to this place, beyond its historical significance to Sunset Park and the city. 

[Sounds of bridge construction]

Krissa Corbett Cavouras There were other casualties of the construction of that highway — it changed the residential boundary of Sunset Park. The Gowanus Expressway replaced an elevated train that used to run along Third Avenue. The parkway was widened in the 1960s, which decreased foot traffic in the neighborhood and contributed to the decline of the community. By the 1970s, many apartment buildings were abandoned. 

Adwoa Adusei Louis Castaldo, whose father owned a pizza parlor on Eighth Avenue at the time, recorded his oral history with the library in 1994, and talked about his father’s decision to buy the pizzeria in 1969.

Louis Castaldo He hesitated at that time to purchase the business because there was a bad element of drugs on Eighth Avenue, which frightened two previous owners away from the store. So many people, in discussing the past, seem to only remember the glory and the nice things, but I think it's important with history to remember the truth, and Eighth Avenue in 1969, 1970 had its share of problems.

Adwoa Adusei Here’s how Tarry Hum characterizes that time period for Sunset Park.

Tarry Hum There were a lot of different kind of structural factors that led into the disinvestment and the decline of certain neighborhoods. So, aboslutely, immigrants after the 1965 Immigration Act, which eliminated racist quotas and opened up the doors to new immigrants, they came, and they were able to purchase into neighborhoods that I think other folks wouldn't want to buy in, because Sunset Park was a disinvested area but it was seen as a declining neighborhood. And part of that had to do with the growing Latinx population. So, that was definitely problematic, but in terms of real estate, I think that that is very much aligned with some very racist real estate practices.

Edmundo Quinones There really were very few Latinos in Sunset Park as I grew up. The average was two families per block.

Adwoa Adusei That’s Edmundo Quinones. He was born to Puerto-Rican parents in Manhattan and moved with them to Sunset Park in the 1950s. Edmundo went to Puerto Rico for high school and college, and then returned to his old Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1980s, where he stayed to raise a family. He remembers stumbling upon Brooklyn’s new Chinatown along Eighth Avenue, around 1985.

Edmundo Quinones By the time I got up there, I was in total disbelief, because when I walked up, it was all Chinese. Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. You know -- I couldn't believe that an immigrant group had come into a neighborhood and be doing so well. You know, a first rate restaurant, you know?

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Sunset Park, almost overnight at the end of the 1980s became an extremely diverse neighborhood, largely thanks to increased migration from Manhattan’s Chinatown and increased immigration from China. And, in some of the oral histories, you can actually hear the emergence of Eighth Avenue as a shorthand for the center of Brooklyn’s Chinese community at the time. Here’s Fai Ling Lee, a woman from Mainland China who moved to New York City in the 1970s. She recorded her interview in Cantonese in 1993.

Fai Ling Lee 八大道應該是中國人在八大道發展到一定地步的時候（才產生的名字）。因為（對於）中國人，八大道比較容易叫，也比較直接。你說"Sunset Park"不知道在哪，你說“日落公園”不知道在哪，但是你說“八大道”那一定就是在說八大道這個地方了。

The term "8th Avenue" was not generated until the Chinese communities of the 8th Avenue developed to a certain point. Because for Chinese people, the 8th Avenue is easier to pronounce and more direct. When you say "Sunset Park," you don't know where it is; when you say "日落公園", you don't know where it is. But when you say "8th Avenue," you must be talking about 8th Avenue.

Adwoa Adusei Here’s 66-year-old Yu Rong Zhu, speaking in Cantonese, about his decision to move to Sunset Park, Brooklyn in 1990.

Yu Rong Zhu 唐人街當然生活最方便，但那邊的房租貴。（那你有沒有試過在那邊找房子住？）那裡我們租不起，有房底這樣那樣的，我們搞不定，經濟上不容許

Of course Manhattan’s Chinatown is the most convenient place to live in, but the rent there is high. (Have you tried to find a place to live over there?) We can't afford to rent there, we have to get enough Fang Di, we can't afford it financially. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras So, why did Brooklyn’s Chinatown emerge on Eighth Avenue? Well, there’s the local lore that it was because eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture, indicating prosperity.

Adwoa Adusei High school teacher Tony Giordano mentioned another popular story about Eighth Avenue’s founding when he recorded his oral history with the library in 1993.

Tony Giordano Some of our Chinese friends told us that they came here merely because the N train stopped here, and that they basically just got on in Chinatown and got off at every station until they found a neighborhood that they could afford.

[Music]

Krissa Corbett Cavouras By the early 1990s, when the library and MOCA began to collect oral histories in Sunset Park, residents were learning how to live next to neighbors who might not share the same language or cultural heritage. Assumptions and prejudices arose between groups of people, and that comes through in the oral histories. We’ve excerpted moments in some of the interviews that illustrate that tension, and it’s interesting to hear how familiar those sentiments might sound to our ears, nearly 30 years later. Here’s Edmundo Quinones again.

Edmundo Quinones There are feelings in the community of envy of the Chinese, because in the last five years is when I've become aware of it. The Chinese are the only people buying in the neighborhood. Buying houses. The Latinos, even though we're so family oriented, have not, most of us, been able to pool our resources together the way the Chinese have. They buy the houses, but there are three generations in that house. There's a feeling, gee, these people just got here, and they're doing very well that they're buying up houses. Coupled with a reputation in the schools that the Chinese children are so hard working. So when we go to open school night, and you look at the honor roll, the Chinese names. So that exists. 

Adwoa Adusei Brooklyn Chinese American Association founder and Sunset Park resident Paul Mak, who was at the time of his 1993 interview, the only Asian community board member in Sunset Park, spoke about the damaging stereotype that Edmundo just mentioned, that Chinese-Americans and Asian-Americans are the “model minority.”

Paul Mak The Chinese students for example in the Brooklyn area actually have a high school dropout rate of over 20 percent. However, a lot of people still consider the Chinese student are the best student of all. By keeping the image that the Chinese people are the best workers or the best students, actually we create more pressure and negative impact, so these are the things that I believe we should address.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras In the mid-1980s, when Brooklyn’s Chinatown was just emerging, Yan Chen was in middle school in Sunset Park. When she recorded her interview in 1993, she remembered non-Chinese kids bullying her.

Yan Chen At that time, there weren't very many Chinese and some kids were very mean. Like when you go out they look at you differently and they say things to you because you’re Chinese.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Chen described an incident where she went to the grocery store with her sisters and a group of girls pushed in front of them in line, as if they weren’t there. The interview asked what Chen did about that.

Yan Chen We didn't do anything, because we felt like they could do that to us. (Why did you feel that?) I don't know. Because I guess because there weren't that many Chinese there. We felt like it was their place. Now I think differently, and I know better. At that time, you can't do anything. We were young. I was very young. Both of my sisters were very young.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Mak Shui Ka, a seamstress and a community organizer, spoke about the anti-Chinese discrimination she encountered in 1987 in Sunset Park. She recorded her interview in Cantonese.

Mak Shui Ka 義大利鬼跟我們的華人鬥，就是有反華的勢頭。我為什麼說它有反華的勢頭呢，它印了七萬份的傳單，花了五萬元的勞動費，又叫那些放學的學童去派傳單，每一沓傳單給他五元一小時去派，直到派完七萬份的傳單。（你是說在哪個區派？）我們八大道，以及我們所有的地鐵口，還有我們所有的華人家庭都派到了，八、七大道所有的店舖、住宅，所有的公共場所，甚至有的信寄到華人的家裡、工作單位。它的信就說：“你們東方人，收拾好你們的包袱，回到你的老家去。”就是這樣很嚴重的一個問題。

The Italians were fighting with us Chinese, and there was an anti-Chinese sentiment. Why did I say there was an anti-Chinese sentiment? They printed 70,000 leaflets, spent 50,000 dollars in labor expenses, and asked the schoolchildren to hand out leaflets after school. They paid the children five dollars an hour for each stack of leaflets until they finished delivering 70,000 leaflets. (In what district do you mean?) Our 8th avenue – all of our subway stations, and all of our Chinese residences; all the shops, houses and public places on the 8th and 7th avenue, and even some letters were sent to Chinese families and work units. The leaflets said: "You Oriental People, pack up your bundles and go back to your places." So that's a very serious problem.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei Sunset Park is always changing. The stories we just heard from the oral history collections took place in the 1980s and 90s. Sunset Park today — even just Eighth Avenue — is different than it was at the time of the recordings. Here’s Tarry Hum again, reflecting on those changes

Tarry Hum We were talking even about how the demography of the Chinese immigrant population has changed. It is largely Fujianese now. And so my father, you know, who is Taishanese and so he would understand Cantonese. He oftentimes tells me that he feels like a stranger in his own neighborhood when in fact all of his neighbors are Chinese, but they speak Fujianese and he doesn't know how to communicate with them. That, plus the fact that there’s so much development going on, he doesn’t recognize his neighborhood. This is what he always tells me.

Adwoa Adusei Aside from the language change, there’s the development that has been going on in Industry City on Sunset Park’s waterfront, which used to be called Bush Terminal. Many members of the Chinese community in Sunset Park worked in textile factories there. And, working-class Latinx residents found work in factories and docks there, too.

Tarry Hum Industry City was at one point, you know, it anchored Brooklyn's port economy, provided a lot of working class jobs for the earlier immigrant groups that were in the community. And up until early 2000s, there was still industry that was happening in Industry City. But, you know, the new owners, the new investors, their vision of the future, their vision of the growth sectors is more driven by finance, tech, biotech, et cetera, entertainment. And that rezoning was all about how to grow the innovation hub in Industry City. And the promise was supposed to is always jobs. But the question is really, is it really going to provide the kinds of jobs with livable wages for the immigrant working class that still remains and lives in Sunset Park?

Adwoa Adusei That’s a big question for Sunset Parkers these days — the neighborhood is changing. But, who is it changing for? For now, Eighth Avenue still stands out to many New Yorkers as Brooklyn’s Chinatown. It looks and feels unique, when you walk down it. 

[Sound from Eighth Avenue]

Adwoa Adusei So, we wanted to end this episode by bringing our story to the present-day, when the visibility of being a Chinatown in America has become a dangerous thing again. It’s not a coincidence that there has been a rise in Anti-Asian violence in the past two years, since the beginning of the pandemic and the racist idea, promoted by the former president, that COVID-19 is a “Chinese virus.” To tell this part of the story, we’re going to share excerpts from a new oral history collection started by the Museum of Chinese in America. It’s called “OneWorld,” and the archive is meant to document the experiences of Asian-Americans during COVID-19.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Brooklyn College student Yu Jenny Wang shared her story with MOCA. Jenny was born in Sunset Park and grew up partially in China, where she was raised by her grandmother, and then in seven different states across the US, as her parents worked at restaurant after restaurant.

Adwoa Adusei When she recorded her oral history in 2020, she recollected hearing about Coronavirus from family in China, before many Americans new about the virus. Starting in January, her family told her to start wearing a mask. 

Yu Jenny Wang At that time, school was still in session, so I would wear a face mask to school. And I remember all the people looking around me. They were like, "why is she wearing a face mask?" You could hear mutters under their breath. Because at that time, the government said, "Oh, masks are not mandated." Like, you don't have to wear a mask. And I remember low-key being judged for it, and I was kind of scared because there was so many attacks against Asians. I lived in Sunset Park, and at that time, there were people coming off of the bus screaming racial slurs at Asians, like "Oh, this is your fault." You know, like,  "This wouldn't happen if you didn't come to America." So, in a way, even though I knew that I had to wear a mask because of my family, my grandparents are really old, so I knew that even though it wasn't mandated, I wanted to wear it -- I felt scared for myself in a sense because I was scared of retaliation. Because I did have to take public transportation to school, like the subway and the bus. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras In March 2020 when then-president Trump called COVID-19 “the Chinese virus,” it only got worse here in New York.

Yu Jenny Wang I feel like the one good thing that came from this, you know, racially-targeted claim, was the union of Asian-Americans, because they were like, "Hey, this isn’t right, and as Asians we have to stand up for our community."

Adwoa Adusei Yin Chang and Moonlyn Tsai were also living in New York City, and went through something similar when it came to experiencing extreme racism during the start of the pandemic. They also were part of the creation of a new community of Chinese-Americans, a community based around a love of food. 

Moonlyn Tsai When COVID hit, we were talking about food can do for the community. And then Yin, you want to jump in?

Yin Chang Okay, so jumping in, this is Yin here. That's when we were experiencing racism on the near day to day here on the Lower East Side and also making our way through the city due to essential work. People would have the audacity and the boldness to say very, very direct, very nasty things to us directly related to our race, how we present, and tying it to COVID-19. And at the same time, experiencing this first-hand, we were hearing news -- there was news every single hour, updates that schools were closing down and there was going to be no access to food. And, a lot of the parents here in the area that we live in and also close by could not afford the extra two meals of breakfast and lunch that the parents usually count on, that their kids can have in school. At the same time, there was news about videos being released, news reports about elderly being violently attacked from here in New York's Chinatown all the way to San Francisco's Chinatown. So all of that really angered us and brought back a lot of memories about our own grandparents. It could have been one of them, who were on the streets and making their way, you know, walking through Chinatown, minding their own business, and suddenly getting violently attacked from COVID-19-related racism, to experiencing also food insecurity.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Yin and Moonlyn sprang into action. They called around to see which organizations serving seniors had clients that needed help with food access. They worked with restaurants and local farms to donate meals, and coordinated with volunteers to make food deliveries to the elderly in Flushing, Manhattan, and Sunset Park’s Chinatowns.

Adwoa Adusei And, importantly, all the food they were delivering was culturally thoughtful. The meals that the government gave out had canned tuna and milk — things that many elderly Asians don’t know how to cook, or cannot eat, given that so many are lactose intolerant. And it wasn’t enough food, either. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Yin and Moonlyn filled their packages with bok choi and kobocha squash, porridge with tofu and fish, and boxes of soy milk purchased from local shops, all things that they knew elders in the community would actually enjoy and eat.

Moonlyn Tsai You know, you just make meals that you would be proud to serve your grandparents, that your grandparents would make for you.

Adwoa Adusei You know, it’s really important to hear these stories — not only the ongoing need for cultural awareness, but also the triumphs of the Chinese-American community in Brooklyn and across the country. It’s important to know this story, and to listen to the present as well as our history, so that we can build communities where we all can thrive.

[Music]

Krissa Corbett Cavouras "Building Brooklyn" is a mini-series from Brooklyn Public library’s Borrowed podcast. It’s produced by Virginia Marshall, with help from Fritzi Bodenheimer, Jennifer Proffitt, Meryl Friedman, and Robin Lester Kenton. This episode was a collaboration with the Museum of Chinese in America, and it was written by Virginia Marshall. Our music composer is Billy Libby.  

Adwoa Adusei Borrowed is brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library and is hosted by me and Krissa Corbett Cavouras. You can find a transcript of this episode at our website: BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts. Our beta listeners on this episode were Kat Savage and LaCresha Neal.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And, you can listen to other interviews in the OneWorld COVID-19 Special Collection at the Museum of Chinese in America’s website: M O C A N Y C [dot] org. Their collection seeks to document and share the stories of Chinese Americans and the Chinese diaspora resisting Coronavirus-fueled hate with acts of compassion and generosity. 

Adwoa Adusei Music on this episode came from Blue Dot Sessions and the BBC Sound Effects Library. Oral histories came from "New Neighbors: Sunset Park’s Chinese Community," and interviews were collected between 1993 and 1994 by BPL’s Center for Brooklyn History and the Museum of Chinese in America. Special thanks to BPL reference archivist Sarah Quick for helping us pull tape for this episode, to Yue Ma, Elaine Huang, and Evian Pan for their translation work, and to Professor Tarry Hum, and her incredible book about Sunset Park called Making A Global Immigrant Neighborhood.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Next time on Borrowed, we’ll learn a bit more about the community that came before Sunset Park’s Chinatown. Immigrants from Finland came to the neighborhood in the early 20th century and established the country’s first non-profit cooperative apartment buildings.

Robert Saasto I was born in 1947 in that co-op. And in those days, you could hear Finnish on the street. There was the Finnish Hall, there was the newspaper which was actually delivered and there was a tailor. It was everything that you could imagine because they gravitated towards that neighborhood because they didn't have to learn English.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s next time on “Building Brooklyn.”

What does Sunset Park's Eighth Avenue look like today? We sent out a call for Brooklyn teen photographers to go out and take pictures of the four neighborhoods in our "Building Brooklyn" mini-series. Lianhao Zheng's photo won the category for Sunset Park's Eighth Avenue.

About the photo, from Lianhao Zheng, 16: I came to Sunset Park when I was around eight. I am currently a member of the BPL's Teen Tech Center at Kings Highway Library and I take pictures as a hobby. This picture is the view of Eighth Avenue from my window. My brother drew on it with his white crayons, and it really symoblizes the story of my neighborhood, where different people come in, grab their crayons and paint their own picture.