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The racial and ethnic composition of Philadelphia continues to diversify as a new wave of immigrants—largely from Asia and Latin America—reshape the city’s demographic landscape. Moreover, in a globalized economy, immigration is the key to a city’s survival and competitiveness. The contributors to Global Philadelphia examine how Philadelphia has affected its immigrants’ lives, and how these immigrants, in turn, have shaped Philadelphia.

Providing a detailed historical, ethnographic, and sociological look at Philadelphia’s immigrant communities, this volume examines the social and economic dynamics of various ethnic populations. Significantly, the contributors make comparisons to and connections between the traditional immigrant groups—Germans, Italians, the Irish, Jews, Puerto Ricans, and Chinese—and newer arrivals, such as Cambodians, Haitians, Indians, Mexicans, and African immigrants of various nationalities.

While their experiences vary, Global Philadelphia focuses on some of the critical features that face all immigrant groups—intra-group diversity, the role of institutions, and ties to the homeland. Taken together, these essays provide a richer understanding of the processes and implications of contemporary immigration to the area.

Harry Humes carved out a unique place in American literature by chronicling Appalachian working-class life, natural landscapes, and disappearing rural traditions in Appalachian Pennsylvania with rare lyricism, humility, and precision. He wrote unflinchingly about the austerity and horrors of extraction as well as his deep connection with family and the area mountains and valleys not gutted by the anthracite coal industry.

This volume of Humes’s new and selected poems not only preserves the work of a significant American poet, offering scholars, teachers, and general readers a generous overview of the clarity, beauty, craft, and emotional depth of his substantial body of work. It allows future generations to rediscover poetry that deepens our understanding of how our labor, our landscapes, and our love shape us and change the ways we live and what we care about.