NIGHTSHIFT NYC

ISBN: 0520252713

New York is the city that never sleeps. But this renowned insomnia would not be possible without the more than 200,000 men and women who work the nightshift – the fry cooks and coffee jockeys, train conductors and cab hacks, cops, docs, and fishmongers selling cod by the crate. Inverting the natural rhythm of life, they keep the city running as it slows but never stops.

In NIGHTSHIFT NYC, Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman tell the stories of New York City nightshift workers. This ethnography of the night investigates familiar sites, such as diners, delis and taxis, as well as some unexpected corners of the night, such as a walking tour of homelessness in Manhattan and a fishing boat out of Brooklyn. The Sharmans show how the nightshift is more than simply out of phase, it is another social space altogether, highly structured, inherently subversive, and shot through with inequalities of power. NIGHTSHIFT presents the narratives of those who sleep too little and work too much, revealing the soul of a city hidden in the graveyard shift of 24-hour commerce when the sun goes down and the lights come up.

2009 Indie Book Awards, Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year

2009 Outstanding Book Awards, American Society of Journalists and Authors

"In the city that never sleeps, ways to describe the 24-hour life of New York City abound. But probably no book has ever examined the nature of nighttime work in the city — and of the often forgotten, faceless people who do it — in as great depth and descriptive power as Nightshift NYC."
New York Times

"If you're looking to meander through late-night, big-city life without actually being on the NYC subway in the middle of the night, you can't go wrong with this book."
Ketchikan Public Library

"This nonfiction tour bypasses generalizations with thorough research and sharp reporting to illuminate a complex and insular world foreign to most New Yorkers."
City Limits Weekly

"Poetically written, sympathetic, and engaging, Nightshift NYC opens up an unexplored world of the experiences of those who work at night in New York. An excellent read."
Kirin Narayan, author of My Family and Other Saints

"Nightshift NYC introduces readers to the shadowy nighttime world of work and social life in contemporary urban America. It's a breath of fresh air."
Paul Stoller, author of Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City

"[The authors] contextualize the personal anecdotes of their subjects by seamlessly weaving into the narrative pertinent data on the economy, transportation, health, industry, crime, labor, homelessness, immigration, and New York City history."
Library Journal

"The Sharmans' earnest infatuation with the project is endearing, and they're to be commended for exploring the class and racial factors that come into play on the night shift."
Kirkus Reviews

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Photos by Obayemi Onafuwa

About the Authors

Russell Leigh Sharman, PhD, is a writer and cultural anthropologist. His first book, The Tenants of East Harlem, was published by the University of California Press in 2006. An associate professor of anthropology at Brooklyn College, his academic research on urban life, culture and aesthetics has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Whiting Foundation and others. He also writes plays, movies, and television shows and has worked as a waiter, line cook and production assistant on a civil war zombie vampire movie. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and co-author, Cheryl Harris Sharman.
www.russellsharman.com

Cheryl Harris Sharman, MA, is a writer and researcher whose ethnographic and investigative writing on social inequalities – health, housing, homelessness, poverty, race/ethnicity, gender, and labor – has been published in the US, UK, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Lancet, The Pan- American Health Organization (PAHO) magazine, Perspectives in Health, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, Central America’s the Tico Times, policy briefs, anthologies, and textbooks. She has also worked as an editor, senior interviewer for a federally-funded research study, nonprofit president and treasurer, temp, receptionist, bookstore manager, babysitter/housecleaner, aerobics instructor, and waitress.
www.cherylharrissharman.com

Corey Hayes is a photographer specializing in editorial, music and celebrity portraiture. His work has appeared on MTV, FUSE, and in Paper magazine, the Austin Chronicle and the New York Times. He is a Texan who lives in New York, a dog person who has a cat, and he rarely refers to himself in the third person. Also, despite how the saying goes, he feels that seeing is not really believing.
www.coreyhayesphoto.com