The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City

by Jennifer Toth

Overview

This book is about the thousands of people who live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels of New York City.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781569764527
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/01/1995
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	207,319
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

Table of Contents

	Author's Note	ix
	Introduction	1
1	Finding a Home	7
2	Seville's Story	11
3	Mac's War	29
4	The Underground Population	35
5	Underground Spaces	43
6	The Bowery	49
7	Living with the Law	59
8	Hell's Kitchen	73
9	Children	77
10	Roots	87
11	Bernard's Tunnel	97
12	Tunnel Art	119
13	Graffiti	129
14	Runaways	135
15	Tunnel Outreach	151
16	Dark Angel	165
17	The Underground in History, Literature, and Culture	169
18	Wanderers	181
19	Harlem Gang	183
20	J.C.'s Community	191
21	"City of Friends"	203
22	Women	213
23	Jamall's Story	229
24	Blade's Piece	237
	Epilogue	249
	Acknowledgments	255
	Bibliography	257
	Index	261

Editorial Reviews

Toth's firsthand account of the sad, bizarre subculture of people who live in New York's abandoned subway tunnels and sewage lines. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

``Mole people'' are the thousands of homeless people who live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels of New York City. Drawing on her interviews with these tunnel dwellers, who speak candidly and demonstrate their humanness, journalist Toth pulls the reader into this nether world, revealing lives of addiction and abuse. She also portrays people who try to help, including a woman who teaches the children and a kind man known as the mayor who does all he can to help others survive. In providing a historical backround, Toth informs the reader that living underground was not always considered ``inhuman.'' Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-- Kevin Whalen, Montville Township P.L., N.J.

Library Journal

Toth did not want to call the residents of the tunnels underneath New York City "mole people". But as she continued her investigation, she learned it was what they wanted to be called. Her book about them amounts to a study of the houseless (they don't want to be known as the "homeless", either), who live essentially in the subways. While she always remained an outsider, the mole people gradually told her about themselves. Besides the overwhelming presence of AIDS, crack, death, and violence among them, they also have a sense of family and community. They frequently elect "mayors" and "spokesmen" to address their concerns, and their encounters with police and philanthropic organizations are often surprising. The statements Toth extracted from them are reason enough to recommend the book; for startling example, the credo of a guy named Bob: "Do what you have to do today. Tomorrow will come. And if it doesn't, you won't have to deal with it."

Aaron Cohen