Ten Contemporary Novels on the Immigrant Experience in America.Like this list

10 items

• American Dervish

  Akhtar, Ayad

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  A young Pakistani boy, whose parents left the fundamentalists behind when they came to America, finds transformation and a path to happiness through a family friend, Mina, who shows him the beauty and power of the Quran.

• The Arrival

  Tan, Shaun

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  In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and his family.

• The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

  Mengestu, Dinaw, 1978-

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  Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers beat his father to the point of certain death, selling off his parents' jewelry to pay for passage to the United States. Now he finds himself running a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Behold the Dreamers

  Mbue, Imbolo

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  The novel tackles themes of family, race and the American Dream as it tells the tale of Jonga, a West African who finds a job as a chauffeur for a high level executive at Lehman Brothers. Jongas wife is hired by the execs wife and the family become…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Book of Unknown Americans

  A Novel

  Henr©Uquez, Cristina

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  Moving from Mexico to America when their daughter suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras confront cultural barriers, their daughter's difficult recovery and her developing relationship with a Panamanian boy.

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

  Díaz, Junot, 1968-

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  Oscar, an overweight Dominican from a New Jersey ghetto, dreams of becoming a writer and finding love, but a Fuku curse has haunted his family for generations, and may well prevent him from attaining his desires.

• Family Life

  Sharma, Akhil, 1971-

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  We meet the Mishra family in Delhi in 1978, where eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju play cricket in the streets, waiting for the day when their plane tickets will arrive and they and their mother can fly across the world and join their…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Free Life

  Jin, Ha, 1956-

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  We follow the Wu family - father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao - as they fully sever their ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and begin a new, free life in the United States.

• Girl in Translation

  Kwok, Jean

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  Caught between the pressure to succeed in America, her duty to their family, and her own personal desires, Kimberly Chang, an immigrant girl from Hong Kong, learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• We Need New Names

  a Novel

  Bulawayo, NoViolet

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  Follows ten-year-old Zimbabwe native, Darling, as she escapes the closed schools and paramilitary police control of her homeland in search of opportunity and freedom with an aunt in America.