Polish American History Before 1939

Download or read book Polish American History Before 1939 written by Adam Walaszek and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The history of private lives of first and second generations of Polish immigrants in the U.S., viewed from the perspective of migrants themselves. What did the migrants do? How did they behave? How protagonists (men, women, children) with their own words presented their experience? Their experience is compared with the one of the other groups. The book discusses migration processes, neighborhoods' formation, experiences at work, daily and family lives, functioning of parishes and tensions related to it, construction of people's identities and their constant reformulations. Migrants created mutual aid societies, which played economic, but also ideological and political role. Experiences of immigrants' children at home and at school are presented, mostly in their own words and from their own perspective. Cultural activities reflect constant changes of groups self-identity. The book also depicts the relations between the Polish migrants and members of other ethnic groups - in the streets, public spaces, in politics, and within the Catholic church. People lived in pluri-cultural, culturally diverse contexts, thus relations with "the others" were complex. The panorama ends in the year 1939, when after the Great Depression the group entered into the new period of transformation during the war"--