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Reviewed by:
  • Streetcar Parishes: Slovak Immigrants Build Their Nonlocal Communities 1890–1945
  • Linda Jencson
Streetcar Parishes: Slovak Immigrants Build Their Nonlocal Communities 1890–1945. By Robert M. Zecker. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2010. 329 pp. Hardbound, $65.00.

In Streetcar Parishes, Robert M. Zecker delves into questions challenging the nature of ethnicity. Building on prior research that questions whether geographic contiguity in the formation and maintenance of ethnic solidarity and identity is necessary, Zecker makes a thorough and convincing argument [End Page 391] that in the case of Slovak immigrants in the eastern U.S., the answer is a resounding “no”—people need not live side by side in the same neighborhood, village, or city in order to maintain social ties that foster distinct ethnicities. Zecker goes even further, demonstrating significantly that commuter communities of Slovaks who settled in America’s industrial cities were following patterns long-established as survival strategies in their Eastern European homelands.

Two formative factors held true for both continents. In the Old Country, Slovaks’ home villages were often shared with Hungarians, Czechs, Jews, Germans, and a variety of other ethnicities—often the same ethnic others with whom they later shared working-class neighborhoods in the New World. The other half of the pattern was a long-term Old Country subsistence practice of travel from home into regions of even greater ethnic diversity, in order to find the best paying employment. Rather than mingling with neighbors, distinct ethnic enclaves were maintained, the church being a primary focus of ethnic solidarity with “self” and divergence from local “others.” Local churches were normally shunned in favor of Slovak-specific churches in villages often many hours distant. The same pattern continued in America, with Slovak-specific mutual-aid societies, arts and social clubs, and sports associations adding to the socially cohesive functions of the church.

While Zecker’s work is theoretically significant in the advancement of ethnic studies, it is somewhat weaker as a work of oral history; it reads too much like a standard, document-dependent history. Although Zecker lists sixty-six individuals as interviewees, throughout the text he reduces them to statistical type cases. Most quotes are anonymous, attributed to a Mr. Z or a Mrs. M, and no individual personalities or unique clusters of experiences emerge. The narrative is peppered with depersonalizing phrases such as, “often I was told” and “one informant said.” This serious lack of individual perspective or human emotion makes the reading experience flat and dull, despite the exciting ideas about the nature of ethnicity Zecker expounds.

Zecker draws several of the oral histories on which he bases his analyses from major archives, including Ellis Island and the University of Pittsburgh. Most are originals he conducted, and they remain in his own possession. While it is commendable that he informs the reader of this, hopefully he plans to make them available to an archive. As with any oral history project that properly uses accompanying social science and historical analysis, these narratives could reveal (in Zecker’s hands or others) how individual stories allow for the individual personalities to shine, provided they are kept in the context of unique individual lives experienced as coherent wholes and assembled for the reading public in a narrative form. [End Page 392]

I was interested in this volume due to my own Slovak-American background and thinking that I would perhaps discover stories from oral histories to which I could relate. I can confirm from personal experience and family history that Zecker’s generalizations about Slovak-Americans based on his New Jersey–centered research population do in fact tell and elucidate a familiar story that could as easily be about the nonlocal Slovak communities in and around Cleveland, Ohio, where I grew up. Zecker also makes an excellent case that his nonlocal community concepts apply as well to a wide variety of Old Country and New World immigrant ethnicities. Although the cold and impersonal tone of Streetcar Parishes put me off, I nevertheless found the work worthy of wide attention.

Linda Jencson
Appalachian State University
19 07 2011
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