You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Jane Aberson's newspaper articles document the everyday life of a Dutch immigrant family farming on the prairies six miles from Dauphin, Manitoba, during the Depression. They were published in Dutch from 1929 to 1966. The articles contain a continuous record, except for the war years, of the settlement experience of an immigrant family for thirty years. At the age of eighty, the author translated into English a particular set of articles covering the years 1929-36. This document contains her letters from this period.
From around 1650 until well into the nineteenth century, Frederik Ruysch enjoyed international fame as an anatomist. He owed his renown to a preparation method that greatly aided early-modern scientists in their exploration of the human body and transformed dissection from a messy business into a widely admired art. Ruysch’s anatomical collection was one of Amsterdam’s tourist attractions, for his embalmed bodies were astonishingly lifelike in appearance. The visitors who gazed with amazement at his preparations included the Russian tsar Peter the Great, who was so moved by the sight of an embalmed boy that he kneeled down to kiss him. The tsar later bought Ruysch’s entire collection and had all the specimens shipped to St Petersburg, where they still attract visitors from all over the world.
Until now, information about Dutch immigration to Canada has been scarce as much was lost during the German occupation of Holland during World War II. However, Herman Ganzevoort was able to unearth and translate rare letters and articles written by Dutch immigrants during the 1920s, which offer new insight into the struggles the Dutch faced to fit into their new country. The letters opened up the inner dimensions of the immigrants: the reasons for their emigration, their hopes, their fears, and, best of all, their experiences in Canada. These images are not reminiscences screened and filtered by the passage of time but are immediate and compelling. The writers of The Last Illusion: Letters from Dutch Immigrants in the "Land of Opportunity" 1924-1930 shared their feelings and showed an openness that was uncommon in their culture and time. Their words describe the pain caused by separation and loss, and the sense of shared joy and exhilaration when goals were reached.
Brother I cannot tell you what is best for you—staying there or coming here. If it only concerned yourself! would say, stay. But if you are concerned about your descendents I would say, come." Writing from his Michigan farm to relatives back in Overijssel, Jacob Dunnink voiced a perspective at once uniquely his own and typical of his immigrant community in 1856. Dutch American Voices brings together a full spectrum of such perspectives, as expressed in immigrants' letters to their families and friends in the Netherlands. From the terse notes of first-time writers to the polished chronicles of skilled correspondents, the letters are presented in engaging English translations that capture th...
The letters Dutch immigrant Ulbe Eringa wrote home from the United States are rich with information on farming, the family, the household economy, church activities, and school involvement as he related them to his relatives back in the Netherlands. His memoirs, written in 1942 and 1943, supplement the letters and provide details about his life before emigrating. Brian Beltman's introduction and chapter-by-chapter commentary place Eringa's story within its historical context, complementing findings that there has been more continuity than discontinuity between the European past and the American ethnic experience.
An in-depth study of European immigrants to Canada during the Cold War, Gatekeepers explores the interactions among these immigrants and the “gatekeepers”–mostly middle-class individuals and institutions whose definitions of citizenship significantly shaped the immigrant experience. Iacovetta’s deft discussion examines how dominant bourgeois gender and Cold War ideologies of the day shaped attitudes towards new Canadians. She shows how the newcomers themselves were significant actors who influenced Canadian culture and society, even as their own behaviour was being modified. Generously illustrated, Gatekeepers explores a side of Cold War history that has been left largely untapped. It offers a long overdue Canadian perspective on one of the defining eras of the last century.
This book describes how Dutch immigrants became commercial farmers in the Canadian province of Ontario. It addresses the broader question of why the Dutch have an international reputation as successful farmers, and the critical implications of such positive stereotyping.
"A rare combination of scholarship and wit. Delightful for anyone seeking insight on the Dutch in modern America." - George Marsden In this scholarly yet entertaining book, James D. Bratt takes a look at the Dutch in America from the late 19th century to the present. A comprehensive study of an ethnic subculture, the book is in large part a study of the groups religious history as well, since, as Bratt points out, the contours of the Dutch presence in America have been overwhelmingly shaped by the church and its subsidiary organizations. Although the book is extensively and scrupulously documented, Bratt has infused his scholarship with a considerable amount of anecdote that is by turns poig...
This new volume of original essays focuses on the presence of European ethnic culture in American society since 1830. Among the topics explored in Immigrant America are the alienation and assimilation of immigrants; the immigrant home and family as a haven of ethnicity; religion, education and employment as agents of acculturation; and the contours of ethnic community in American society.
Schryer’s central argument is that ethnic groups are as much modern “myths” as they are integral components of a socially constructed reality. Focusing on the large cohort of immigrants from the Netherlands and the former Dutch East Indies who arrived in Canada between 1947 and 1960, Schryer shows how the Dutch, despite a loss of ethnic identity and a high level of linguistic assimilation, replicated many aspects of their homeland. While illustrating and illuminating the diversity among immigrants sharing a common national origin, Schryer keeps sight of what is common among them. In doing so, he shows how deeply ingrained habits were modified in a Canadian context, resulting in both continuities and discontinuities. The result is a variegated image reflecting a multidimensional reality.