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MIT Professor Vivek Bald has collaborated with Alaudin Ullah on a documentary film, “In Search of Bengali Harlem,” about early South Asian immigration to the U.S. and the New York neighborhood.
January 10, 2021
Bengali men with their Puerto Rican and African American wives, at a New York City banquet in 1952.
By Raymond Douglas Chong, AsAmNews Staff Writer
Aladdin Ullah is living a Bengali American journey, as a trailblazing comedian and a rising playwright on the American cultural mosaic. His new documentary In Search of Bengali Harlem is set to premiere on PBS during the 2021-2022 season. The film uncovers the story of South Asian Muslim men classified as “illegal” by Asian Exclusion laws, but who blended in with existing community of colors in Harlem and the Lower East Side.
Background
Ullah grew up in Spanish Harlem, aka EL Barrio, a Hispanic community on Manhattan Island during the 1970s. He rejected his Bangladeshi Muslim and South Asian heritages early in life. While living in the neighborhood’s George Washington Carver Houses, he wildly thrived in New York City through hip-hop and graffiti art. Ullah attended public school and graduated from Richman H