Urban Villages and Local Identities: Germans from Russia, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese in Lincoln, Nebraska by Kurt E. Kinbacher

Abstract

Reviewed by: Urban Villages and Local Identities: Germans from Russia, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese in Lincoln, Nebraska by Kurt E. Kinbacher Kevin Bower Urban Villages and Local Identities: Germans from Russia, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese in Lincoln, Nebraska. By Kurt E. Kinbacher. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2016. ix + 256 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, index. $39.95 paper. Lincoln, Nebraska, contains an ethnic diversity and cosmopolitanism that, as is the case with other small cities in the region, belies popular notions of the Great Plains as ethnically homogenous and, in a word, boring. Successive arrivals of migrants and immigrants give cities like Lincoln a dynamic character that shapes the lives of both members of these ethnic groups and the city's existing "mainstream." Kurt Kinbacher compares the experiences of three groups of "urban villagers" who arrived in Lincoln, established themselves as distinct communities, and self-consciously have maintained their identities over time. Germans from Russia, ethnic Germans welcomed into Russia in the eighteenth century only to suffer famine and other hardships by the late nineteenth century, made up roughly 25 percent of Lincoln's population by 1920. Significant numbers of Omaha Indians, whose territory once included the land where Lincoln now stands, left their northeastern Nebraska reservation in the years during and after World War II, with about one-third of the enrolled members of the Omaha Nation currently residing in Lincoln. Vietnamese immigrants who came to Lincoln did so in several distinct waves following the 1975 conquest of the Republic of Vietnam and the decades of turmoil that followed under communist rule. Today about 5,000 Vietnamese live in Lincoln. Drawing meaningful comparisons between such distinct communities is challenging, but Kinbacher succeeds in balancing the larger historical forces shaping his subjects, concepts like "cosmopolitanism," "transnationalism," and "performed culture" are handled with a sophisticated but accessible touch and provide a compelling framework for comparison, and a deep local knowledge of both his urban villagers and the city they inhabit. Personal stories about individuals inhabiting these communities give the narrative a human face. Telling details, such as references to the politics of popular music in the Vietnamese community, demonstrate a rich engagement with the lived experiences of Lincoln's urban villagers. These aspects ultimately make Urban Villagers and Local Identities a book that should please both "insiders" from the communities in question and "outsiders" in search of a theoretical framework for understanding other immigrant communities in other places. Kinbacher provides a much-needed book that impressively integrates the experience of urban villagers into our understanding of cities on the Great Plains. Kevin Bower History Department Nebraska Wesleyan University Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln