Take the A Train to Little Guyana

When Ansar A. Lovlu immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 1995, he settled near the intersection of Church and McDonald Avenues, where a fledgling community of Bangladeshi immigrants had taken root.

At the time there were only a few Bangladeshi-owned businesses in the area. Now, there are more than 80, supporting what has become the city’s most dynamic, and perhaps biggest, Bengali enclave.

“I feel like I’m living in my own country,” said Mr. Lovlu, executive editor of Thikana, one of several Bengali newspapers published in the city. “You don’t have to learn English to live here. That’s a great thing!”

More than 74,000 Bangladeshi immigrants live in New York City, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau, a 20 percent increase since 2009, making them the 11th-largest foreign-born population in the city. In addition to the Kensington enclave, there are significant concentrations of Bangladeshis in Queens, as well as in the Bronx, in Parkchester.

On Church and McDonald Avenues, grocery stores like the Bangla Nagar Supermarket (87 Church Avenue; 718-633-0114) sell Bangladeshi staples like radhumi spice and atta flour, while places like Ghoroa Sweets & Restaurant (478 McDonald Avenue; 718-438-6002) and Sugandha Restaurant (483 McDonald Avenue; 718-438-8773) serve biryani and pulao. There are Bangladeshi law, accounting, medical and insurance offices; Bangladeshi tailors, travel agencies and architects; and four mosques within a few blocks.

Bangladeshi activists have for years tried, unsuccessfully, to attach a sobriquet to the area, from renaming a stretch of McDonald Avenue after Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh, to anointing the intersection Bangla Town.

On a recent Sunday, thousands of Bangladeshis packed McDonald Avenue for a block party to celebrate the Bangladeshi New Year. A band played Bengali pop music, and merchants tended scores of food and clothing stalls.

Mr. Lovlu was there, too, taking photos of the event for his newspaper — mostly shots of women in colorful saris and shalwar kameezes. “People need to see in the newspaper beautiful women,” he announced cheerfully.

The primacy of fufu in the Ghanaian diet is evident in the stock at Anokyekrom African and Caribbean Market (1152 Sheridan Avenue; 718-618-0717) in the Concourse Village section of the Bronx. There, a dizzying array of fufu powder mixes, made by companies in the Bronx, Newark, California and Ghana, fill an entire set of shelves. Along with the fufu, which is made from starchy vegetables, the store feeds other Ghanaian hungers. There are foodstuffs like kenkey — fermented cornmeal — and Star beer to drink with it, as well as natural black soap and CDs of Ghanaian high life, hip life and gospel music. Leaflets covering a wall advertise nightclub events, concerts, jobs and funerals.

A television broadcast of a European soccer match and the accompanying whoops of several men were audible through a closed door in the back. The business card of the proprietor, Kwame Danso, reveals an even broader range of needs that can be satisfied: “Phone cards, money transfer, fax, photocopy, travel tickets, etc. D.J. services available.”

The number of immigrants from Africa living in New York has soared over the past few decades. There are now more than 27,000 Ghanaians, the largest African immigrant group in the city, with most spread across several Bronx neighborhoods, and in pockets in Queens and Brooklyn. Amid this sprawl, the cluster of Ghanaian businesses near the intersection of Sheridan Avenue and McClellan Street, including Anokyekrom, may be the most visible commercial manifestation of the Ghanaian population. It functions for some not simply as a place for commerce, but also as a place to share ideas, cut deals, swap gossip and hang out.

There’s Papaye Restaurant (196 McClellan Street; 718-681-3240), which serves specialties like fermented corn balls in a fish stew and, of course, fufu in a peanut-flavored soup with goat; a second Ghanaian grocery store; a small CD shop; and two barber shops, one of which also advertises tax preparation services.

On a Friday afternoon in early spring, his work done for the day, Kawal P. Totaram leaned back in his desk chair in his Richmond Hill law office on Liberty Avenue and dreamed of summer.

“You will be inundated by the different whiffs of curry and roti,” he began. “Your ears will be jarred by chutney music and Indian music. You’ll see women wearing short skirts and saris, men without a shirt, people with their cups, vendors yelling, the guys cursing. You’ll have the bars packed with young men drinking rum.” He smiled. This, he said, was Guyanese Richmond Hill at its fullest.

There are about 140,000 Guyanese immigrants living in New York City, according to the latest American Community Survey figures, making them the fifth-largest foreign-born population in the city. While many Afro-Guyanese immigrants have settled among other Afro-Caribbean immigrants in places like Canarsie and Flatbush in Brooklyn, Guyanese of East Asian descent are concentrated in large numbers in Richmond Hill and neighboring Ozone Park.

The lively Liberty Avenue and its tributaries are lined with roti shops, restaurants and bakeries like Sybil’s Bakery & Restaurant (132-17 Liberty Avenue; 718-835-9235), two branches of Little Guyana Bake Shop (116-04 Liberty Avenue, 718-843-6530, and 124-11 Liberty Avenue, 718-843-4200), and The Hibiscus Restaurant & Bar (124-18 101st Avenue; 718- 849-4225); shops selling all manner of goods, from spices to saris, like Dave West Indian Imports (98-07 97th Avenue; 718-323-1200); dancing schools and political clubs; “rum shops”; and community associations. The neighborhood is peppered with mosques, temples and churches to accommodate the population’s Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Describing life in the diaspora, Mr. Totaram said, “As I put it, you go to bed in America, you sleep in Guyana and you wake up back in America.” Still, for Guyanese immigrants, Richmond Hill, when viewed from the right angle, can be a pretty good approximation of home.

Mexicans may be the most subtle immigrant group in New York City. For such a large population that has grown so fast — there are now more than 186,000 Mexican immigrants in the city, making them the third-largest foreign-born population — it has remained astonishingly low-profile, politically, economically and otherwise.

The reasons for this are complex and varied, but among them is the fact that Mexicans, geographically speaking, are remarkably dispersed. As a result, no neighborhood has been able to stake a claim to being the most Mexican. At some point, East Harlem acquired the moniker Little Mexico, though mostly among Manhattan-centric outsiders. And with the flight of Mexicans out of that neighborhood in recent years amid fast-rising rents, that name seems outdated at best.

Declaring any neighborhood as the definitive Little Mexico is a fool’s errand: The general population is still unsettled and shifting, particularly amid the pressures of gentrification. That said, Sunset Park’s Mexican community is relatively large and well-established, with a bustling commercial corridor along Fourth and Fifth Avenues.

“I think there are bigger roots here than in other communities,” said Leticia Alanis, executive director of La Union, a longstanding social services group based in the neighborhood. “People here are not, in the majority, newcomers. Most of the families I know have been here at least 10 years.” The densest population of Mexicans is in an area bounded by Second and Fifth Avenues to the northwest and southeast, stretching from about 35th Street to about 63rd Street.

Along Fourth and Fifth Avenues, Mexican entrepreneurship lends a powerful flavor to the mix. Grocery stores like Guadalupita II (3901 Fifth Avenue; 718-438-1080) are stocked with goods imported from Mexico, and restaurants and bakeries abound, including Casa Vieja Restaurant (6007 Fifth Avenue; 718-439-3502), Taqueria El Maguey (3910 Fourth Avenue; 718-768-2846) and Las Conchitas Bakery (4811 Fifth Avenue; 718-437-5513). Mexico’s tricolor flag is everywhere.

In the evenings and on weekends, Sunset Park proper teems with Mexican families. And Mexican Catholicism is on display at the neighborhood’s main church, the soaring Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The parish was once almost entirely Irish-American. Nowadays, about two-thirds of the 3,000 or so parishioners who attend weekend services are Latino, the majority of them Mexican.