Urban Underworlds
Book description
Urban Underworlds is an exploration of city spaces, pathologized identities, lurid fears, and American literature. Surveying the 1890s to the 1990s, Thomas Heise chronicles how and why marginalized populations immigrant Americans in the Lower East Side, gays and lesbians in Greenwich Village and downtown Los Angeles, the black underclass in…
- Coming soon!
Why read it?
1 author picked Urban Underworlds as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The subterranean worlds of cities have long been represented as a literal ‘underworld’ – a hidden and shadowy realm inhabited by all sorts of marginalised and spectral figures and communities.
Very often, such communities – real, imagined, and mythical – have been deemed by elites to be morally, socially, and biologically threatening the above-surface city. As someone who does not generally read a huge amount of fiction, Heise’s wonderful book was a huge inspiration for me.
It explores and reveals like no other book how American urban underworlds have been represented across a range of American literature.
From New York…
From Stephen's list on the subterranean of cities.
Want books like Urban Underworlds?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 76 books like Urban Underworlds.
Share your top 3 reads of 2024!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,187
readers submitted
so far, will you?
