NEW YORK TIMES, CITY ROOM BLOG, March 25, 2009
The graveyard shift. The lobster shift. Burning the midnight oil. 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,” a scholarly but readable book recently published by the University of California Press... The book is illustrated with a series of haunting black-and-white images by the photographer Corey Hayes, whose work evokes the melancholic mood of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” ...They describe the night shift of the book’s title as “a social space that is highly structured and inherently subversive, as transnational as it is transgressive, and shot through with inequalities of power.” Yet they take pains to avoid describing the workers of the night as merely oppressed or exploited, instead sketching a remarkably diverse panorama of characters with different backgrounds, beliefs and aspirations. - Sewell Chan (Read the whole review: NYTimes.com)
CITY LIMITS WEEKLY, December 1, 2008
This nonfiction tour bypasses generalizations with thorough research and sharp reporting to illuminate a complex and insular world foreign to most New Yorkers. Over 18 chapters, each concerning a different theme in which the detail-oriented authors allow the story behind the rhythm of the night to unfold through the eyes of those who know it best, we learn that in the dark, New York actually has much in common with the rest of the country... With superbly non-intrusive storytelling, the Sharmans examine conditions faced by a labor pool of lower and working-class people of color – mostly immigrants from countries in South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean – as they toil away on the city’s late shift in the age of globalization... Not surprisingly, an ample array of colorful characters materialize, but the strength of the book ultimately lies in its ability to connect those lives to the broader fault lines of society... From Penn Station to the Staten Island Ferry to the Fulton Fish Market (in its recent South Bronx incarnation) and beyond, the city provides fertile ground for compelling scenes to unfold in “Nightshift NYC,” complete with iconic black-and-white images by photographer Corey Hayes... At a time when the overall economic marketplace faces a level of gloom not seen in decades, this volume arrives with timely insight from those familiar with navigating through hours of darkness. – Curtis Stephen (Read the whole review: citylimits.org)
***STARRED REVIEW***
LIBRARY JOURNAL, September 1, 2008
Through conversations over the course of a year with hospital workers, cab drivers, restaurant employees, deckhands, bodega owners, transit workers, homeless outreach service providers, and others who, by choice or necessity, are awake while the rest of us sleep, the authors examine the "social space" of the night. The personal stories capture the peculiar mood of the night shift, from the dangers of working behind a deli counter or the wheel of a taxi when the customers are often drunk and ornery, to the camaraderie of diner and hospital workers who bond together during the dark hours. Almost universally, the night shift workers claim to lack sufficient sleep and suffer health effects from their schedules. Russell Leigh Sharman (anthropology, Brooklyn Coll.; The Tenants of East Harlem) and Cheryl Harris Sharman, a writer and researcher, 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. This well-researched volume is illustrated by atmospheric black-and-white photographs. Recommended for public and academic libraries. -Donna L. Davey, NYU Lib.
KIRKUS REVIEWS
"In the night, nothing is what it seems," write the Sharmans (Russell: Anthropology/ Brooklyn Coll.; The Tenants of East Harlem, 2006; Cheryl is a freelance writer/researcher). "A taxi turns out to be a police car...A homeless man turns out to be an outreach worker, and the dapper man in the suit turns out to be homeless." Transplanted to New York City, the couple was fascinated by the second life its streets seemed to take on after normal working hours were over. Becoming "sluggish and soft" from eating in the middle of the night, forsaking many of their daylight-loving friends, the pair spent a year interviewing denizens of the night in order to chronicle their lives. The authors encountered some noteworthy people, from Yemeni immigrants working in delis to South Indian nurses on the night shift in outer-borough hospitals... 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.
NEIGHBORBEEBLOG
The result of husband and wife Russell Leigh Sharman and Cheryl Harris Sharman’s year-long ride-along-with nighttime workers like deckhands, taco vendors, and MTA employees, Nightshift NYC brings readers to a side of the city that’s made a bit more beautiful by its American-dreamin’ nightcrawlers. The collection pays homage to the obvious—the greasy, diner fry cook, the worker-bee cabbie, the godly “garbologists”—but explores the various levels of chosen invisibility in city dwellers’ working lives as well... Nestled within the accounts of their subjects are statistics on healthcare, immigration, economics, and homelessness that show our present in New York City’s history—and in a way that’s quite easy to consume. (Read the whole review: neighborbeeblog.com)
Ketchikan Public Library
The spruce mill and the pulp mill may be long gone, but Ketchikan is still a night-shift town: nurses, cab drivers, police officers, cannery workers, grocery clerks, bartenders and deckhands all toil away while we're snuggled down under our blankets. I've dabbled with the edges of night shifts - 5 am baker, midnight grocery clerk - but to be a true nighthawk is to live in another world. Nightshift NYC provides a glimpse into this world in the most 24-hour city in America. Russell and Cheryl Sharman listen to the stories of transit workers deep in the subway, waitresses at all-night diners, cab drivers and ferry workers delivering intoxicated revelers home from Manhattan, and the guys down at the Fulton Fish Market. Oddly enough, most of the people they talked to choose to work the night shift. The traffic's lighter, the tips are better, and it frees up their day to spend with their kids. Sprinkled with striking black-and-white photos from Corey Hayes, this book is a really interesting look at a lifestyle many of us don't ordinarily think about until we happen to be out at 4 am. 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.
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From Soup's On, a newsletter for writers, by Andrea Campbell:
Interview with Cheryl Harris Sharman
This month we have an interview with my new friend and colleague, (and my most recent ASJA Hospitality committee member), Cheryl Harris Sharman.
Q. : I see this is your first book, what was the inspiration for Nightshift NYC?
A. : Nightshift NYC is my first published book but, as many writers have experienced, it isn't my first book-length manuscript. I spent 5 years shadowing women in an impoverished community and writing about their experiences. Two of those women worked nights. And in that community, many businesses operated 24 hours. When Russell (my coauthor and husband) and I began to think about a joint project, we decided that staying up all night to explore this world would be a great adventure.
Q. : Do you see the irony in that this book was published by the University of California Press? What can you tell us about your publisher?
A. : It does seem ironic, I know, but we already had relationships with our editor there and he loved the idea. He grew up in NYC and his father had worked nights, so I'm sure that played a part in his excitement. But it's also not just a book about NYC. While almost 250,000 people in NYC work nights, there are 15 million people in the U.S. who work "alternative shifts," and millions more abroad. University of California Press is obviously an academic publisher, but like many nonprofit publishers they recognize the need to compete with trade publishers in today's tight book market. That's why they're releasing it as a trade book, in a beautiful hardcover with 24 photos on gorgeous paper. They've done a tremendous job with distribution, especially in foreign markets. And I love that they saw right away that there would be broad appeal. We've found that an academic press can function much like a trade press: they can pay competitive advances, they can produce a nice product, and they can market and distribute it effectively.
Q. : This is a collaboration with your husband, can you share what that was like?
A. : We shared every aspect of the research and writing. I'm a nightowl, borderline insomniac, so staying up all night was easy for me but more difficult for Russell. He's the more gregarious one, so talking to stranger after stranger after stranger came easy to him despite the late hour. But like any good team, when one faltered the other picked up the slack. For the writing, close friends pretend they can tell who penned a particular chapter, but we didn't divide it up by chapters. We traded draft after draft until even we couldn't tell who wrote which line. And truth be told, after almost 15 years of marriage and looking over each other's shoulder at the keyboard, our writing styles were already so frighteningly similar that it was long past time to collaborate officially.
Q. : How did you arrange the book (e.g., Table of Contents); and interviews? How many folks did you actually interview?
A. : As we wrote in the prologue, we arranged the book to evoke the year we spent staying up on the nightshift. This means that some chapters follow each other logically while others are jarringly juxtaposed. For example, a chapter on a deli worker is logically followed by a chapter on a deli owner and then a chapter on a street vendor. But the street vendor spends all night selling hotdogs to drunk nightclub patrons, which leads into a chapter on "the drunk train," what many young New Yorkers call any Long Island-bound train leaving Penn Station after 3 a.m. Or, the chapter on homelessness is juxtaposed with doormen in Upper West Side luxury apartment buildings. To achieve all this, we interviewed over 100 people, though only a little more than 30 made it into the book. The interviews themselves often took place at night, since they're asleep by day and the night is full of lulls and easy conversation. But we would also arrange interviews in the mornings after their shifts or the early evenings before they went to work, whatever worked best for their punishing schedules.
Q. : Do you have a story about NYC at night that is your favorite?
A. : One night in Penn Station we fell into a conversation with a homeless outreach worker. He was outgoing, talkative, and obviously a great source, but he had to focus on his job and we parted before we got his contact information. About six months later, we were in a subway station in the far reaches of Brooklyn and we passed him on the platform as he led a team counting the street homeless population. With more time to talk, we got his card, set up an interview, and profiled him in chapter 12. Moments like that are not supposed to happen in New York City, but there's something about the city at night that functions more like a small town. Things slow down, people get friendlier, and you just might run into someone you know, because there aren't that many awake at that hour.
Q. : Tell us a little about your background and your future aspirations.
A. : What interests me most is writing narrative nonfiction about people you may otherwise never meet but would love to know more about. For example, I reported on a psychiatrist in rural Costa Rica and on homelessness in New York City, both for the Lancet; and of course the new book on nightshift workers. In keeping with that, my next project is about airplane pilots ... who happen to be women. I'm going up with them in their planes, learning what it's like to work in a male-dominated profession, and right now I'm working on an article for Scientific American Online about a new satellite-based technology meant to replace radar. For that piece, I interviewed someone at UPS Worldport in Louisville, KY, where they have about 8,000 people working the nightshift to make sure all those packages get out within hours. So now I'm all keyed up to write an article on the intersection where the nightshift meets aviation.
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