Reading Home Cultures Through Books 1st Edition by Kirsti Salmi Niklander 1000538982 9781000538984

Part I Histories

1 Immigrants being at home in libraries How the immigrants brought their home to the New York Public Library

Library services for immigrants during the Progressive era in American history

The library as a replacement home and “citizenship machine”

“Immigrants being at home in libraries”—their presence and silences in the record

Situating foreign-language collections and readers—Searches for “foreign” in NYPL reports

Collecting books in “foreign” languages

Teaching “foreign” populations

Reaching “foreign” language readers and communities

Making the library branches contact grounds in “foreign” neighborhoods

Situating libraries as institutional home—Searches for “home” in the NYPL reports

Situating immigrants as users of libraries—Searches for “-migrant-,” “alien-” in the NYPL reports

The physicality of libraries as homes and placemaking in libraries

The ideological staging of the library as home—NYPL institutional position

Domesticated immigrant readers domesticating the library: Friction between the library home and the tenement home

An inside-out perspective of the library in the city: An exposé of the reality of aspirations

Immigrants making a shadow home in the library

Conclusion

Acknowledgment

Notes

References

2 Literacy, ABC books, and primary readers in Finnish immigrant homes and communities in the US

Basic education in Finnish immigrant communities

ABC books as tools for cultural interaction

Ideals and images of home

Home and school in socialist primers

Images of class and race

Reasons for maintaining the Finnish language

Family collections of ABC books and primary readers

Conclusion

Notes

References

Primary sources

Secondary sources

3 “A parade of home” Representations of home in Greek American community albums

“A brilliant book”

The community celebrates

Greetings from both homes

Narrating small histories

Illustrating the American Dream

Family photographs

Conclusions

Notes

References

Primary sources

Secondary sources

Part II Transformations

4 Books and the creation of the middle-class home in American nineteenth-century domestic fiction1

Classifying books

Buying books

Owning books

Conclusion

Notes

References

5 Simulating domestic space in 1990s technoculture Timothy Leary’s virtual home library

Introduction

Historical precedents

Public and private reading

Shared and domestic computing

Case study

Leary’s print and digital archives

Conclusion

References

6 Bookshelves create a cozy atmosphere Affective and emotional materiality in bookreading practices

Research material and analysis

What is an atmosphere?

Enjoying the feel and scent of books

Uncomfortable atmospheres

Conclusions: Materiality of books can create a mood for reading

Archival Material

Notes

References

Part III L’envoi

7 Writing home cultures through books at the time of the pandemic

Patience and Fortitude, in the first person

Scene 1—Retrospection

Scene 2—Remembering

Scene 3—Re-turning

My library as a second home

Touching the books

My bookcase, my anchor, or some reflections on my (Zoom) background

References

What we lose when we work from home

Listening to books through lockdown

Index