The Bronx

===Literature===
{{See also|List of books set in New York City}}

====Books====
The Bronx has been featured significantly in fiction literature. All of the characters in [[Herman Wouk]]'s [[City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder]] (1948) live in the Bronx, and about half of the action is set there. [[Kate Simon]]'s ''Bronx Primitive: Portraits of a Childhood'' (1982) is directly autobiographical, a warm account of a Polish-Jewish girl in an immigrant family growing up before World War II, and living near [[Arthur Avenue]] and [[Tremont Avenue]].<ref>Kate Simon, ''Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood.'' New York: Harper Colophon, 1983.</ref> In Jacob M. Appel's short story, "The Grand Concourse" (2007),<ref>''[[The Threepenny Review]]'', [http://www.threepennyreview.com/tocs/109_sp07.html Volume 109, Spring 2007]</ref> a woman who grew up in the iconic [[Lewis Morris]] Building returns to the [[Morrisania]] neighborhood with her adult daughter. Similarly, in [[Avery Corman]]'s book ''The Old Neighborhood'' (1980),<ref>[[Avery Corman]], ''The Old Neighborhood'', [[Simon & Schuster]], 1980; {{ISBN|0-671-41475-5}}</ref> an upper-middle class white protagonist returns to his birth neighborhood ([[Fordham Road]] and the [[Grand Concourse (Bronx)|Grand Concourse]]), and learns that even though the folks are poor, Hispanic and African-American, they are good people.

By contrast, [[Tom Wolfe]]'s ''[[The Bonfire of the Vanities|Bonfire of the Vanities]]'' (1987)<ref>Tom Wolfe, ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'', [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]] 1987 (hardback) {{ISBN|978-0-374-11535-7}}, Picador Books 2008 (paperback) {{ISBN|978-0-312-42757-3}}</ref> portrays a wealthy, white protagonist, Sherman McCoy, getting lost off the [[Bruckner Expressway]] in the [[South Bronx]] and having an altercation with locals. A substantial piece of the last part of the book is set in the resulting riotous trial at the Bronx County Courthouse. However, times change, and in 2007, ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported that "the Bronx neighborhoods near the site of Sherman's accident are now dotted with townhouses and apartments." In the same article, the Reverend [[Al Sharpton]] (whose fictional analogue in the novel is "Reverend Bacon") asserts that "twenty years later, the cynicism of ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'' is as out of style as [[Tom Wolfe]]'s wardrobe."<ref>Anne Barnard, [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/nyregion/10bonfire.html Twenty Years After 'Bonfire,' A City No Longer in Flames], ''[[The New York Times]]'', December 10, 2007, retrieved on July 1, 2008</ref>

[[Don DeLillo]]'s ''[[Underworld (DeLillo novel)|Underworld]]'' (1997) is also set in the Bronx and offers a perspective on the area from the 1950s onward.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Kakutani|first=Michiko|date=September 16, 1997|title='Underworld': Of America as a Splendid Junk Heap|work=The New York Times|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/14/daily/underworld-book-review.html}}</ref>

====Poetry====
In poetry, the Bronx has been immortalized by one of the world's shortest [[couplet]]s:
<poem style="margin-left: 2em;">The Bronx?
No Thonx
: [[Ogden Nash]], ''[[The New Yorker]]'', 1931</poem>

Nash repented 33 years after his [[calumny]], penning the following poem to the dean of faculty at [[Bronx Community College]] in 1964:<ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]]
 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/27/archives/contrite-poet-gives-a-cheer-for-bronx-on-golden-jubilee.html
 |title=Contrite Poet Gives A Cheer for Bronx On Golden Jubilee
 |date=May 27, 1964}}</ref>
<poem style="margin-left: 2em;">
I wrote those lines, "The Bronx? No thonx";
I shudder to confess them.

Now I'm an older, wiser man
I cry, "The Bronx? God bless them!"<ref name="thonx" /></poem>

In 2016, W. R. Rodriguez published ''Bronx Trilogy''—consisting of ''the shoe shine parlor poems et al.'', ''concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx'', and ''from the banks of brook avenue''. The trilogy celebrates Bronx people, places, and events. [[DeWitt Clinton High School]], [[St. Mary's Park (Bronx)|St. Mary's Park]], and Brook Avenue are a few of the schools, parks, and streets Rodriguez uses as subjects for his poems.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/wr-rodriguez/banks-brook-avenue/|title=From the Banks of Brook Avenue by W.R. Rodriguez |website=Kirkusreviews.com|access-date=August 26, 2017}}</ref>

Nash's couplet "The Bronx? No Thonx" and his subsequent blessing are mentioned in ''Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough'', edited by Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger and published in 2000. The book, which includes the work of Yiddish poets, offers a selection from [[Allen Ginsberg]]'s ''[[Kaddish (poem)|Kaddish]]'', as his Aunt Elanor and his mother, Naomi, lived near Woodlawn Cemetery. Also featured is Ruth Lisa Schecther's poem, "Bronx", which is described as a celebration of the borough's landmarks. There is a selection of works from poets such as [[Sandra María Esteves]], [[Milton Kessler]], Joan Murray, W. R. Rodriguez, Myra Shapiro, Gayl Teller, and [[Terence Winch|Terence Wynch]].<ref>{{cite book | last1=Ultan | first1=Lloyd | author1-link=Lloyd Ultan (historian) | last2=Unger | first2=Barbara | title=Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough | publisher=Rutgers University Press | series=Rivergate Regionals Collection | year=2006 | isbn=978-0-8135-3862-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M2i8HAAACAAJ | access-date=August 2, 2017 }}</ref>

"Bronx Migrations" by Michelle M. Tokarczyk is a collection that spans five decades of Tokarczyk's life in the Bronx, from her exodus in 1962 to her return in search of her childhood tenement.<ref>{{cite book | last=Tokarczyk | first=M.M. | author-link=Michelle Tokarczyk | title=Bronx Migrations | publisher=Cherry Castle Publishing | year=2016 | isbn=978-0-692-73765-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KPO7DAEACAAJ | access-date=January 11, 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Daniels|first=Jim|url=https://workingclassstudiesjournal.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/jwcs-vol-1-issue-1-december-2016-daniels.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://workingclassstudiesjournal.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/jwcs-vol-1-issue-1-december-2016-daniels.pdf |archive-date=October 9, 2022 |url-status=live |title=Tokarczyk, Michelle M. (2016) Bronx Migrations, Cherry Castle Publishing, Columbia, Md.|journal=Journal of Working-Class Studies|volume=1|issue=1|date=December 2016}}</ref>

====Bronx Memoir Project====

''[[Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 1]]'' is a published [[anthology]] by the Bronx Council on the Arts and brought forth through a series of workshops meant to empower Bronx residents and shed the stigma on the Bronx's burning past.<ref name="NYDNI">{{cite web|title = A trio of Bronx tomes tell the tales of the borough|url = http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/trio-bronx-tomes-tales-borough-article-1.2057670|website = NY Daily News| date=December 28, 2014 |access-date = January 24, 2016}}</ref> The Bronx Memoir Project was created as an ongoing collaboration between the [[Bronx Council on the Arts]] and other [[cultural institution]]s, including the Bronx [[Documentary film|Documentary]] Center, the [[Bronx Library Center]], the (Edgar Allan) [[Poe Park Visitor Center]], Mindbuilders, and other institutions and funded through a grant from the [[National Endowment for the Arts]].<ref name="HP">{{cite web|title = Writing to Heal in the Bronx|url = https://huffingtonpost.com/charlie-vazquez/writing-to-heal-in-the-br_b_7485218.html|website = The Huffington Post|date = June 2, 2015|access-date = January 24, 2016}}</ref><ref name="AT">{{cite web|title = Bronx Council on the Arts Receives National Endowment for the Arts Grant for The Bronx Memoir Project – Bronx, NY|url = http://www.americantowns.com/ny/bronx/news/bronx-council-on-the-arts-receives-national-endowment-for-the-arts-grant-for-the-bronx-memoir-project-15548834|website = www.americantowns.com|access-date = January 24, 2016}}</ref> The goal was to develop and refine memoir fragments written by people of all walks of life that share a common bond residing within the Bronx.<ref name="HP" />