Life UndergroundLife Underground

"Between 1991 and 1996, sociologist Terry Williams visited a stretch of underground tunnels beneath New York's Upper West Side, spanning 72nd through 96th Streets. He did this hundreds of times, and then revisited his contacts repeatedly in the years that followed. He interviewed and spent time with them to better understand a unique life on the margins and out of sight. From the anecdotal material, field observations, photographs, transcribed conversations with residents, and excerpts from personal journals that Williams collected, he constructed - At the Bottom of Life Underground. Considered together, they show neglect as a constant fact of life for poor people. At the same time, they evoke the theme that runs throughout all of Terry Williams work, which is that marginalized people will actively strive to make a place for themselves through personal resistance as they struggle for dignity and acceptance. The ethnographic nature of At the Bottom of Life Underground is emphasized by Williams' device of using his field notes as a way to structure the entire narrative"--