Hunger in New York City (Historical Context)

Historical Context

The year Simon Ortiz published “Hunger in New York City,” 1976, marked almost the transition point between the end of the idealist 1960s and the beginning of the conservative 1980s. It was during this year author Tom Wolfe coined the term The “Me” Generation, an expression describing the decade’s slide toward selfishness and self-absorption. “Hunger in New York City” expressed one man’s feelings of emptiness and need to reconnect with the natural world.

Some historians describe the 1970s as the “non-decade” due to its lack of distinctive symbols or trends. Unlike the environmental, peace, and civil rights movements of the 1960s, or the conservative, evangelical “Reagan years” of the decade to follow, the 1970s seem bland. In 1976, the most popular icon was the smiley face; the yellow sun with blank eyes and glazed smile stared out from bumper stickers, jacket patches, billboards, and toilet seats, yet no one really knew what it meant. Looking back, some critics call it the perfect symbol of a nation without meaning, an expression of the era. It is this national sense of unfulfillment, of a spiritual absence, which perhaps Ortiz felt as a hunger creeping into the city.

Americans of the time thought that progress was synonymous with development; in other words, the better you are at conquering the elements, the more advanced a people you were. One of the goals of the Vietnam War, which ended only a few years before 1976, was to build a capitalist nation in the face of a communist threat. America declared itself the model of government and stated that other “underdeveloped” nations should shape themselves after its democracy.

This attitude is evident from our country’s earliest years, when settlers thought of the Native-American peoples as “savages” and cut down forests to build houses for shelter against the elements. By 1976, millions of Americans lived in cities of concrete and glass, while the Native Americans who survived the European colonization mostly lived on remote reservations. Those younger Indians who chose to move to the city, like Ortiz, often felt a profound sense of spiritual loss, disconnected from the land and their history.

The trend toward industrialism has covered the natural world with concrete, poured toxins in the water, and littered the sky with office buildings. It was in 1976 that the National Academy of Science first reported that gasses from spray cans can cause damage to the atmosphere’s ozone layer, a fact generations to come will have to deal with in terms of global warming and an increase in environmental disasters. While scientists continued to discover evidence of how man’s drive to conquer the elements in the name of progress was in fact harming our children, more and more Native-American people expressed a deeper, spiritual connection to the earth as their generations of tradition had taught them. Their tradition stresses a balance between man and nature which respects the cycles of growth and destruction which we are a part of, not apart from.

Compare & Contrast

• 1976: A United Nations Security Council resolution calls for a total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Arab lands occupied since a retaliatory offensive in 1967. The United States veto blocks the pullout and denies the formation of an independent Palestinian State.

  1993: After decades of fighting, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat meet in Washington, D.C. to sign an agreement to end Israeli settlement of the West Bank and other occupied territories.

  1998: The PLO continues its series of terrorist attacks, and Israeli withdrawal from the territories remains incomplete. Many fear the chance for peace in the region may be replaced by more fighting.

• 1976: Advancements in technology allow a new generation of fax machines to cut transmission time from six minutes per page down to three.

  1998: Most computers come supplied from the factory with virtual fax programs which allow users to transmit the document on their screen to another person’s fax machine in less than a minute. E-Mail provides an almost instantaneous transmission to anywhere in the world and increasingly replaces fax machines in both home and the workplace.

• 1976: Soft drink sales in the United States, namely Coke and Pepsi products, edge past milk after millions of dollars are poured into their advertising.

  1998: Unable to persuade Americans to buy milk on the merits of health and well-balanced nutrition, the National Dairy Council sponsors its own multi-million dollar magazine and billboard ad campaign to gain back its share of the market. The advertisements, which feature celebrities holding a glass of milk and wearing a distinctive milk “mustache,” ask the simple and catchy question “Got Milk?”