Riis's How the Other Half Lives is best described as a work that:

Riis's How the Other Half Lives is best described as a work that:

• A. He forced middle-class Americans to acknowledge the degraded reality of the poor.
• B. He empowered the occupants of New York City's Lower East Side tenements.
• C. He produced the first internationally recognized American novel.
• D. He convinced established immigrant groups that new immigrants deserved respect.

Answer: (A)

Riis’s work uses photography and vivid description to lay bare the harsh, crowded, unsanitary conditions of New York City’s tenements. The point is to shock middle-class readers into acknowledging the degraded reality of urban poverty and to spur reform—building codes, sanitation efforts, and housing improvements. It’s not about empowering the residents themselves, nor about producing fiction or persuading established immigrant groups to respect newcomers. The aim is to reveal the problem to those in a position to fix it and to mobilize public support for change.

Riis’s work uses photography and vivid description to lay bare the harsh, crowded, unsanitary conditions of New York City’s tenements. The point is to shock middle-class readers into acknowledging the degraded reality of urban poverty and to spur reform—building codes, sanitation efforts, and housing improvements. It’s not about empowering the residents themselves, nor about producing fiction or persuading established immigrant groups to respect newcomers. The aim is to reveal the problem to those in a position to fix it and to mobilize public support for change.