Ellen Weinstein

The Lo-Down Culture Cast

Host Traven Rice spoke with Author-Illustrator Ellen Weinstein for this week's episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. Ellen's vibrant picture book, Five Stories (for children and adults alike) is being released this month. The story features five children, from five different cultures (Russian, Italian, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Chinese) through five different decades, who grow up in the same tenement building on the Lower East Side of New York City.

Ellen is a third-generation resident of the LES, and the story begins with her grandmother and continues to the present. Her grandparents and great-grandparents came to the Lower East Side as part of the Great Wave of Immigration from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s.

She writes: "Research for this book was conducted over eighteen months, during which time I met with and interviewed historians, curators, and librarians at the Tenement Museum, Eldridge Street Synagogue, Henry Street Settlement, Seward Park Library, and the principals and students at Public School 1 and Public School 42. I asked my neighbors and friends about their stories of migration and the stories of their parents and grandparents. While listening to all these different stories, I found they had much in common."

The book is a love letter to the neighborhood and a poignant depiction of the diverse cultural heritage that continues to make the Lower East Side such a fascinating place.