BronxRoots-L Archives

From: Mike <>
Subject: Queens Today...
Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 20:48:45 -0600

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Lives at a crossroad
By RUTH BASHINSKY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, November 9th, 2003

They call the borough of Queens a modern-day Ellis Island.

The 117-square-mile land mass is filled with 2.2 million people of more
than 117 nationalities, who
speak more than 138 languages. Within its bounds are 68 neighborhoods,
two major airports - and it
is the subject of a new book, "Crossing the BLVD: Strangers, Neighbors,
Aliens in a New America"
(Norton, $35).

Husband-and-wife writing team Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan named the
book after the borough's
major thoroughfare, Queens Blvd.

The street also is considered one of the most dangerous in New York
City because of the number of
pedestrians killed each year trying to cross its 12, heavily trafficked
lanes.

Queens Blvd. "was a metaphor for the many things people have crossed in
their lifetime - particularly
immigrants - like wars, environmental catastrophes, borders, oceans,
cultural and language divides,"
said Lehrer.

The couple spent four years researching, interviewing and photographing
more than 100 immigrants
and refugees from Asia, Africa, South America and Eastern Europe. The
400-page book (with a CD
including interview excerpts) is filled with first-person accounts of
the journeys the people underwent to
get to America, and what their lives are like in their new homeland,
Queens.

We meet Amy Li, a 36-year-old mother who escaped from her native China
three years ago, looking
for religious freedom. She was jailed, beaten, tortured, brainwashed,
taken from her family and forced
to divorce her husband because she was a practitioner of Falun Gong (a
practice of exercises and
meditation forbidden by the Chinese government). Li sent copies of the
book with her story to the U.S.
Consulate in China and was finally reunited with her daughter, Doudou,
now 8, yesterday.

"I am so excited to see her," said Li, who last saw her only child when
she was 5. "Being in the book
helped me so much."

Bovic Antosi's story is another harrowing tale. Antosi, 39, an
environmental engineer and married
father of one, escaped the Democratic Republic of Congo in the cargo
hold of a Russian airplane
heading to Kennedy Airport. Once here, he was detained for two years in
an INS detention center in
Springfield Gardens because he had two different sets of identification
papers. With the help of an
attorney, he was finally released in 1999.

"I miss my country, but if I did stay, I don't think I would be here
today telling you my story. I think I
would have been in jail or murdered," said Antosi, now seeking an
engineering job.

Sloan, an academic and performance artist, and Lehrer, an award-winning
typographer, author and
teacher, hope their book puts a human face on many of today's issues
and conflicts.

"I hope people talk more to other people they don't know," said Sloan.
"There is hope in having these
kinds of dialogues with people rather than just making assumptions
about other cultures.

"I learned a lot about many different countries, and about the people I
am living with on a daily basis
who are on the subway. I recognize that no matter who you are, you are
a minority on the 7 train."

Both authors said spending time with the people in the book was one of
the best parts of the project.
And Sloan says one of her fantasies is to have a "Crossing the BLVD"
event on the No. 7 train.

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