Five Stories

Yoto Says: One building, five families, and decades of delicious meals, music, and memories. This is the story of how so many cultures made one neighborhood—and one country—home.

From the real-life granddaughter of the first child depicted in the story, whose family came over in a steamship from Russia in 1913, comes a celebration of the longstanding and varied immigrant experience in America. This clever presentation of the vibrant cultures that make up the Lower East Side of New York City—Russian, Italian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chinese—is told through the experiences of five different families who live in the same building over the course of five decades.