Summary Of How The Other Half Lives By Jacob Riis

How the Other Half Lives a novel written by an immigrant from Denmark, Jacob Riis. In this novel Riis tells about the living conditions of multiple ethnic groups, known as the Jewish, Chinese and Italians. Each group had their own way to living life in the late 18th century, even though they were all living in New York. All of the groups came to America to pursue their vision of finding what in their minds was the “American Dream” but yet it was a different experience for everyone. Without a doubt life in the 1800’s was nothing but complicated.
Jewtown is the most festive area by far. There are a number of hebrew holidays that weren’t ignored. Riis explains, “when the great jewish holidays come around every year, the public schools in the
“Chinatown as a spectacle is disappointing.The houses are chiefly of the conventional tenement house-type, with nothing to rescue them from the everyday dismal dreariness of their kind save here and there a splash of dull red or yellow, a sign, hung endways and streamers of red flannel tacked on,” (Riis 72) The people in china town did not like to affiliate with anybody outside of Chinatown. The Chinese often chose to be isolated. Isolation was very important to the Chinese because they did not like, or trust any other ethnic groups and only believed in talking within their ethnicity. “Trust not him who trusts no one, is as safe a rule in Chinatown as out of it.”(Riis 94) Riis explains in this quote, that the people in Chinatown only trust the people that lived in Chinatown. In order to fit in, Chinese men would adopt Chinese women to be there wives. But the chinese men would not just have chinese wives many of the chinese men had wives that were in fact, white women. You would think just by looking at the relationship that the women would have the power, but they have little to no power. Women would often be beaten by their husbands if they stepped out of place, or had done something they should not have