Brownsville, Brooklyn: A general view across the Brownsville
section of Brooklyn. About 1920. Eugene L. Armbruster
Collection, NYPL. Of special interest to us are his ruminations
on how education was tied to success and Americanization. The
son of immigrants, Kazin felt, even as a child, the pressure to
represent his parents in this strange new world. Here's an
excerpt from A Walker in the City: When I passed the school, I
went sick with all my old fear of it. ...I felt as if I had been
mustered back into the service of those Friday morning "tests"
that were the terror of my childhood. It was never learning I
associated with that school: only the necessity to succeed, to
get ahead of the others in the daily struggle to "make a good
impression" on our teachers, who grimly, wearily, and often with
ill-concealed distaste watched against our relapsing into the
natural savagery they expected of Brownsville boys... It was not
just our quickness and memory that were always being tested.
Above all, ...it was our char