"To Fight for the Poor With My Pen: Zoe Anderson Norris's Gilded-Age Battles for Immigrants"

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The Society is delighted to welcome back independent scholar and New York Times contributor Eve M. Kahn to give a talk on her new book Queen of Bohemia Predicts Own Death: Gilded-Age Journalist Zoe Anderson Norris (Fordham U. Press). Zoe (as everyone called her) was a Kentucky belle turned restless Kansas housewife turned lauded writer/reformer/publisher on the Lower East Side. In the 1910s, she documented desperate immigrant poverty in her bimonthly magazine, The East Side. Defying her era’s ingrained xenophobia, and sometimes reporting undercover dressed as a pauper, Zoe raged against predatory landlords, corrupt charity executives, and garbagemen ignoring trashcans spreading pestilence, among other pernicious forces. Her motto: “To fight for the poor with my pen.” She took breaks from activism to admire Manhattan skyscrapers “flashing back the fire of the sun” and to dine at restaurants with her friends in an intentionally disorganized group that she organized, the Ragged Edge Klub, dedicated to “the Killing of Kare.” This lecture will focus on Zoe's interest in Irish immigrants: she documented their sufferings at Ellis Island, and she befriended fellow immigrant-rights activists including American Irish Historical Society member David Healy. 

Eve Kahn is a regular contributor to The New York Times among other publications. Her 2019 book, Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857-1907 (Wesleyan U. Press), won awards from groups including the Connecticut League of History Organizations.

Join us at 991 5th Ave. on Wednesday, November 5 at 6:00pm for an evening with Eve.