Editorial Note

Abstract

The first three articles in this issue of Polish American Studies were initially presented as part of a panel organized by Anna Müller at the annual conference of the Polish American Historical Association in New York in January 2019. The fourth article, authored by Anna Müller, the Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, is based on research conducted by her in Hamtramck for the exhibit “The People in Hamtramck,” sponsored by the Museum of Emigration in Gdynia, Poland, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Poland, and the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Together, the four articles, which appear in the year when the City of Hamtramck celebrates its centennial, ponder the history and the present of one of the largest Polonia communities in the United States, now in the process of economic, political, social, and cultural change.In the first article Karen Majewski, an eminent historian of Polonia as well as a former long-time mayor of Hamtramck, reflects on the city's political history, charting the trajectory of a local political scene dominated by Poles from the 1920s to more recent political competition from members of new ethnic groups who settled in the city in more recent decades.Sally Howell explores Hamtramck's present as the first Muslim majority city in the United States by focusing on the connection between the economic entrepreneurial activity of immigrants from Yemen and Bangladesh and the influence of religious cultural centers in downtown Hamtramck. Sunanda Samaddar Corrado continues this theme by examining the increased cultural presence and visibility of the Bangladeshi community in Hamtramck, ranging from the call to prayer controversy, which reverberated in national media, to another controversial decision to approve marijuana businesses in the city.In the final article, Anna Müller reflects on what it means to be Polish American to different representatives of the Polish ethnic community in the city. Using the concept of “tangible belonging,” Müller argues that each generation and wave of immigrants understood differently their Polish and Polish American identity within the unique social and cultural context of the city. Her article is illustrated by evocative portraits of Hamtramck's Polish personalities by photographer Tomek Zerek.In the Reviews section of this issue, our readers will find reviews of books by George W. Bush, Anthony Bukoski, Aleksandra Ziółkowska-Boehm, Anna Mazurkiewicz, and Lenny A. Ureña Valerio.