 |
Abdullah, Shaila (Pakistan, USA) |
PS3601.B43 S24 |
|
Saffron Dreams |
Ann Arbor, MI: Modern History Press, 2009 |
| This moving short novel describes the difficulties faced by a Pakistani immigrant whose husband is killed in the World Trade Center bombing. She must adjust to a new hostile America, widowhood, and life with a severely handicapped child who was born after her husband's death. |
| |
 |
Alegria, Claribel (El Salvador, Nicaragua) |
PQ 7539 A47 P8413 |
| Family Album |
Willimantic: Curbstone Press, 1991 |
| These three novellas are about expatriate Latin American women living in exile, grappling with the past and with their families. |
| |
 |
Ali, Monica (England, Bangladesh) |
PR 6101 L45 B75 |
| Brick Lane |
New York: Scribner, 2003 |
| This novel is about a young Bangladeshi woman who lives a dutiful life in an arranged marriage in London until she discovers the possibilities of life in a less restrictive country. |
| |
 |
Alvarez, Julia (Dominican Republic) |
PS 3551 L845 H66 |
| How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents |
Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1991 |
| Four sisters from the Dominican Republic lose their culture in the process of becoming Americanized. |
| |
 |
Arkin, Frieda (USA Jewish) |
PS3551.R44 H43 |
| Hedwig and Berti |
New York: St. Martins, 2005 |
| This novel follows the fortunes of Hedwig and Berti Kessler; Jewish refugees from Germany, who arrive in London on the eve of World War II. They have a daughter who is a piano prodigy; they are forced to face the loss of their entire family in Germany; and eventually they end up in Kansas City. This is a quirky portrait of people for whom family status at first means more than anything, who must face the reality of people behaving monstrously. |
| |
 |
Aslan, Nadeem (Pakistan, Great Britain) |
PR9540.9.A83 M37 |
| Maps for Lost Lovers |
New York: Knopf, 2005 |
| The disappearance and probable murder of a Pakistani immigrant couple who lived together in London without being married sparks a conflict between an idealistic Pakistani social worker and his utterly devout wife as they look at the impact of blind religious zeal on their family. |
| |
 |
Aswany, Alaa Al (Egypt) |
PJ7814 .S93 |
| Chicago |
New York: HarperCollins, 2007 |
| This beautifully written novel looks at the lives of a group of Egyptian doctors doing advanced study at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. Some have left Egypt for better opportunities in the US; a few have left for political reasons; one is in the employ of the Egyptian government and is keeping track of the behavior of the others. In all, the novel looks at the difficulties of adjusting to a vastly different culture; the prejudices Muslims face and the ethical choices they are forced to make. |
| |
 |
Azzopardi, Trezza (Malta, Great Britain) |
PR 6051 Z96 H53 |
| The Hiding Place |
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000 |
| This novel describes the dysfunctional family of a Maltese immigrant to England who suffer poverty and abuse. It is a grim story about the difficulty of life told from the point of view of the youngest child. |
| |
 |
Barkhordar-Nahai, Gina (Iran) |
PS 3552 A6713 M66 |
| Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith |
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999 |
| This is a magic realism account of several generations of Jewish women in Iran and then in contemporary Los Angeles. Fated with misfortune, the women with names like Roxanna the Angel and Miriam the Moon overcome their fate through the power of love. |
| |
 |
Bernardi, Adria (Italy) |
PS 3552 E72725 I5 |
| In the Gathering Woods |
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2000 |
| A collection of short stories about one family from the sixteenth century in Italy to the present in Chicago. It illuminates the way immigration effects individuals, the strength of family ties, and demonstrates how impossible it is to entirely lose one's cultural heritage and simply become an American. |
| |
 |
Bezmozgis, David (Russia Latvia, Canada) |
PR 9199.4 B495 N38 |
| Natasha and Other Stories |
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2004 |
| This interlinking collection of short stories chronicles the life of an immigrant Jewish family from Latvia to Canada. The miscommunication, dislocation, and sadness of immigrant life are contrasted to the resiliency of the narrator, a young boy growing into manhood. |
| |
 |
Bloom, Amy (USA, Russia) |
PS3552.L6378 A95 2007 |
| Away |
Random House, 2007 |
| In this novel a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York in the 1920's, gives up a comfortable life and heads west across the United States to Alaska in an attempt to get to Sibera and locate the daughter she thought was killed during a pogrom. Along the way her adventures and perseverance are astonishing. |
| |
 |
Chabon, Michael (USA) |
PS 3553 H15 A82 |
| The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay |
New York: Random House, 2000 |
| The story of the golden age of superhero comics is told through the life stories of two young Jewish men who drew them. This novel sets the story of the comics against the threat of Hitler and World War II. |
| |
 |
Chang, Lan Samantha (China) |
PS 3553 H2724 H86 |
| Hunger: A Novella and Stories |
New York: Norton, 1998 |
| Short stories about Chinese immigrants to the United States and the problems they face in adapting to their new world. |
| |
 |
Chang, Leonard (Korea) |
PS 3553 H27244 F78 |
| The Fruit n' Food |
Seattle: Black Heron Press, 1996 |
| A bright Korean-American college graduate is forced to take a job in a Korean owned grocery store in an African American neighborhood. Despite his initial contempt for his employers he eventually is caught up in the violence that surrounds them. |
| |
 |
Chin, Frank (China) |
PS 3553 H4897 D66 |
| Donald Duk |
Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1991 |
| A boy growing up in Chinatown looks for reality in the movies rather than accept his own heritage. |
| |
 |
Chin, Marilyn (China) |
PS3553.H48975 R37 |
| Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen |
New York: Norton, 2009 |
| Twin Chinese sisters growing up in Oregon deal with working in the family restaurant, high expectations from their grandmother, their sexuality, and ethnic prejudice in a zany mixture of reality and Chinese ghost stories. |
| |
 |
Choi, Susan (Korea) |
PS3553.H584 F6 |
| The Foreign Student |
New York: HarperFlamingo, 1998 |
| A young man fleeing the Korean War is accepted as a student at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee where he gradually develops a romance with a southern belle from New Orleans who also has a secret past. The book contains some graphic depictions of the horrors of the Korean War. |
| |
 |
Cleave, Chris (Nigeria, Great Britain) |
PR6103.L43 L58 2009 |
| Little Bee |
NY: Simon and Schuster, 2009 |
| This novel tells the story of a Nigerian girl who survives the massacre of her village and makes it to England as an illegal immigrant. Parts of the novel are brutal and none of it portrays governments in a good light. |
| |
 |
Cruz, Angie (Dominican Republic) |
PS 3603.R89 L47 |
| Let it Rain Coffee |
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005 |
| A family of Dominican immigrants to the United States tries to make a good life for themselves despite the perils of New York's mean streets where the best-intentioned young man might end up in the juvenile corrections system and a mother's unrealistic dream of having a life like the Dallas TV show is constantly thwarted. |
| |
 |
Dangor, Achmat (South Asia Muslim, South Africa) |
PR 9369.3 D26 K33 |
| Kafka's Curse |
New York: Pantheon Books, 1999 |
| A fair-skinned Indian in South Africa, changes his name and passes for Jewish which leads to disastrous consequences for those around him. |
| |
 |
Danticat, Edwidge (Haiti) |
PS 3554 A5815 O96 |
| The Dew Breaker |
New York: Knopf, 2004 |
| This series of interlinked stories tells about the life of a Haitian immigrant who was a torturer in his native land and how his activities affected those around him. |
| |
 |
Davidson, Catherine Temma (Greece) |
PS 3554 A9243 P74 |
| The Priest Fainted |
New York: Henry Holt, 1998 |
| A Greek American woman spends a year in a village in Greece. There she connects the lives of the women around her and those in America to the Greek myths. |
| |
 |
Desai, Anita (India, Germany) |
PR 9499.3 D465 B38 |
| Baumgartner's Bombay |
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000 |
| A German-Jewish refugee from the Holocaust ends up in India. There he is no more at home as a foreigner in India than he was as a Jew in Germany. |
| |
 |
Desai, Kiran (India, Nepal) |
PS3554.E82 I54 |
| The Inheritance of Loss |
New York: Atlantic, 2006 |
| An orphaned young woman is sent to live with the grandfather she never met in a remote area of India bordering on Nepal. Together
they endure a nationalist uprising against India which costs each of them the individual they love the most. At the same time their cook's son tries
to make a success as an illegal immigrant in New York City. The novel won the Booker Prize. |
| |
 |
Diaz, Junot (Dominican Republic) |
PS3554.I259 B75 |
| The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao |
New York: Riverhead Books, 2007 |
| Using Oscar De Leon, a nerdy Dominican American engrossed in fantasy literature and games, as his protagonist, the author tells the story of Dominican immigration to the United States, the horrors of the Trujillo regime, and one family's determination to overcome the curse of destiny. This is a self-assured engrossing novel. |
| |
 |
Divakaruni, Chitra Bannerjee (India) |
PS 3554 I86 A89 |
| Arranged Marriage: stories |
New York: Anchor Books, 1995 |
| Short stories that explore the differences between women’s lives in India and in the United States. |
| |
 |
Divakaruni, Chitra Bannerjee (India) |
PS 3554 I86 M47 |
| The Mistress of Spices |
New York: Anchor Books, 1997 |
| A wonder-working Indian woman who runs a spice shop in Oakland discovers to keep her vows she must give up love and love matters more. |
| |
 |
Donoso, Jose (Chile, Spain) |
PQ 8097 D617 J3713 |
| The Garden Next Door |
New York: Grove Press, 1992 |
| A look at the lives of Latin American exiles living in Spain. |
| |
 |
Dubus, Andre (Iran, USA) |
PS 3554 U265 H68 |
| House of Sand and Fog |
New York: Norton, 1999 |
| When an Iranian refugee living in California buys a house at auction, he unwittingly becomes involved with its previous owner, a recovering addict, who feels the house was seized unfairly and wants it back. Her boyfriend escalates the violence in this tragic confrontation between cultures and values. |
| |
 |
Emecheta, Buchi (Great Britain) |
PR 9387.9 E36 F36 |
| The Family |
New York: Braziller, 1990 |
| A young Jamaican girl suffers sexual abuse from men who should be her protectors, but eventually makes a life for herself in London. |
| |
 |
Emecheta, Buchi (Great Britain) |
PR 9387.9 E36 K44 |
| Kehinde |
Oxford: Heinemann, 1994 |
| An African woman living in London must deal with her husband's second wife. |
| |
 |
Eugenides, Jeffrey (Greece, Turkey, USA) |
PS 3555 U4 M53 |
| Middlesex |
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2002 |
| The grandchild of Greek immigrants, who fled the massacre of Greeks in Turkey in the 1920's, has been raised female, only to discover when he hits puberty that he is actually male. This novel also chronicles the history of Detroit from the 20's to the 80's, from labor strikes to race riots and is an affectionate portrait of the Greek American community. |
| |
 |
Faqir, Fadia (Bedouin, Lebanon, Great Britain) |
PJ7862.A3 F36 |
| The Cry of the Dove |
New York: Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, 2007 |
| A young Bedouin woman, who having become pregnant before marriage, must flee her village to avoid being murdered by her brother as the tribal code of honor killings demands. She ends up in England where she creates a new life for herself, but cannot escape the past. |
| |
 |
Garcia, Cristina (Cuba) |
PS 3557 A66 A73 |
| The Aguero Sisters |
New York: Knopf, 1997 |
| Two sisters, one in New York and one in Havana, try to make sense of their past and the politics that divided them. |
| |
 |
Garcia, Christina (Cuba) |
PS 3557 A66 D74 |
| Dreaming in Cuban |
New York: Ballantine Books, 1993 |
| A family of Cubans that is bitterly divided by politics works out its destinies in Cuba and New York. |
| |
 |
Grant, Linda (Great Britain, Israel) |
PR 6057 R316 W47 |
| When I Lived in Modern Times |
New York: Dutton, 2000 |
| A young Jewish girl from England goes to Palestine after World War II. She becomes caught up in the terrorist activities surrounding the birth of the state of Israel. |
| |
 |
Guene, Faiza (Algeria, France) |
PQ3989.3.G84 K5413 |
| Kiffe, Kiffe Tomorrow |
Orlando: Harcourt, 2006 |
| Growing up in a housing project in the Paris suburbs, Doria is an Algerian immigrant whose father has deserted the family. She must confront, racism, gang violence and her burgeoning sexuality in this coming-of-age novel about Muslim immigrants in France. |
| |
 |
Gurnah, Abdulrazak (Zanzibar) |
PR 9399.9 G87 B95 |
| By the Sea |
New York: New Press, 2001 |
| This novel is about a political refugee from Zanzibar who is seeking to make a new life in England. There he encounters a distant relative who, in his memory, was involved in the downfall of his family. This is a beautiful novel about political betrayal and the inaccuracy of memory. |
| |
 |
Hemon, Aleksandar |
PS3608.E48 L68 |
| Love And Obstacles |
New York: Riverhead Books, 2009 |
| This collection of short stories describes a young man coming of age in Sarajevo. The hero eventually goes to the United States just before the war that destroyed his city and his homeland. He recalls his childhood, difficult experiences as an immigrant, and his uneven development as an author. |
| |
 |
Hijuelos, Oscar (Cuba) |
PS 3558 I376 M36 |
| The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love |
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989 |
| Two Cuban refugee brothers gain and lose success with a mambo band in New York. |
| |
 |
Hirahara, Naomi (Japan) |
Johnson County Library (MYSTERY Hirahara Naomi) |
| Summer of the Big Bachi |
New York: Bantam Dell, 2004 |
| What happened fifty years ago during the destruction of Hiroshima by the atomic bomb in World War II becomes crucial to a Japanese family’s inheritance. The key to the knowledge is held by an aging Japanese American gardener in Los Angeles. Despite his wish to remain uninvolved, he finds himself the reluctant detective as old scores are paid back and old wrongs righted. |
| |
 |
Hosseini, Khaled (Afghanistan) |
PS 3608 O525 K58 |
| The Kite Runner |
New York: Riverhead Books, 2003 |
| A successful American writer of Afghani descent returns to Kabul to rescue the son of a childhood friend whose parents have been executed by the Taliban. In the course of his journey he must make amends for the betrayals of his youth. |
| |
 |
Hwang, Caroline (Korea, American) |
PS 3608.W36 I5 |
| In Full Bloom |
New York: Dutton, 2003 |
| A Korean-American woman in search of a career in the New York fashion industry is actively trying to thwart her mother's attempts to
find her a husband in a hilarious novel about immigrant culture in the United States. |
| |
 |
Isler, Alan (Germany, Jewish-American) |
PS 3559 S52 |
| The Prince of West End Avenue |
Bridgehampton: Bridge Works Pub, 1994 |
| A man in a New York old age home comes to terms with his past during the Holocaust as he and his neighbors work on a production of Macbeth. |
| |
 |
Japin, Arthur (Ghana, The Netherlands) |
PT 5881.2 A59 Z9313 |
| The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi |
New York: Knopf, 2000 |
| Two West African princes are brought from their Ashanti homeland to the Netherlands where they are educated. While one dreams of returning to Africa, the other takes a post with the Dutch government. For neither man do things turn out as they had hoped. The novel is based on a true story. |
| |
|
Jen, Gish (China) |
PS 3560 E474 T9 |
| Typical American |
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991 |
| A young Chinese refugee tries to capture the American dream. |
| |
 |
Keller, Nora Okja (Korea) |
PS 3561 E38574 C66 |
| Comfort Woman |
New York: Viking, 1997 |
| A Korean American teenager growing up in Hawaii is embarrassed by her mother, unaware that her mother was forced to be a "comfort woman" during World War II. |
| |
 |
Kim, Patti (Korea) |
PS 3561 I4146 C33 |
| A Cab Called Reliable |
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997 |
| A young Korean immigrant is forced to take over care of her household and her unambitious father when her mother deserts them. |
| |
 |
Kingston, Maxine Hong (China) |
CT 275 K5764 A33 |
| The Woman Warrior: memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts |
New York: Knopf, 1976 |
| The author relates the history of her female ancestors to her own life. |
| |
 |
Kundera, Milan (Czechoslovakia, France) |
PG 5039.21 U6 I3613 |
| Ignorance |
New York: HarperCollins, 2002 |
| Two Czech exiles return to Prague, having fled twenty years before. The country they find is both very similar and incredibly different from the one they deserted. This exploration of exile and return is an artistic meditation on the truism that you can't go home again. |
| |
 |
Lahiri, Jhumpa (India) |
PS 3562 A316 I58 |
| Interpreter of Maladies |
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999 |
| Short stories concerning the adjustments that are made to the United States by Indian immigrants. |
| |
 |
Lakhous, Amara (Italy) |
PQ4912.A34 C53 |
| The Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio |
New York: Europa, 2008 |
| A bully is killed in the elevator of his apartment in Rome. Most of the apartment residents are immigrants. They hate the young man who deliberately urinated in the elevator, regularly raped a Peruvian maid, and was in general cruel to everyone in his building. Suspicion falls on the most popular resident because he is missing. This is a great psychological mystery that looks at the results of immigration on life in Italy's capitol. |
| |
 |
Lamazares, Ivonne (Cuba) |
PS 3562 A42175 S84 |
| The Sugar Island |
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000 |
| A young woman describes her life in Castro's Cuba with an irresponsible mother whose deceits create chaos in her life both in Cuba and in the United States after they escape. |
| |
 |
Lee, Chang-Rae (Korean-American) |
PS 3562 E3347 G4 |
| A Gesture Life |
New York: Riverhead Books, 1999 |
| A Japanese man of Korean descent, living in a comfortable New England town, muses about the failures in his life, his estrangement from his adopted daughter, a failed romance, and his experiences in the Japanese army during the war. |
| |
|
Lee, Gus (China) |
PS 3562 E3524 C47 |
| China Boy |
New York: Dutton, 1991 |
| A Chinese-American boy learns to fight his stepmother to retain his Chinese heritage and fight the bullies in his slum neighborhood to maintain self-respect. |
| |
 |
Lee, Wendy (China) |
PS3612.E347 H37 |
| Happy Family |
New York: Black Cat, 2008 |
| A young Chinese nanny bonds with the little girl in her care. The girl's parents are white Americans, but the child is a Chinese adoptee. |
| |
 |
Lewycka, Marina (Great Britain, Ukraine) |
PR 6112.E895 S47 |
| A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian |
New York: Penguin, 2005 |
| When an elderly Ukrainian widower in England decides to marry a Ukrainian woman younger than his daughters, the daughters try to intervene
to prevent the marriage and save their father's pension from the money-hungry young woman. The novel is a hilarious comedy of manners where a woman from
the former Soviet Union is looking for a way to get a few creature comforts like a new gas stove. |
| |
 |
Louie, David Wong (China) |
PS 3562 O818 B37 |
| The Barbarians Are Coming |
New York: Putnam's Sons, 2000 |
| This novel is about a Chinese-American son who disappoints his parents by becoming a chef rather than a doctor and marrying his pregnant American sweetheart instead of his Hong Kong picture bride. Then he learns to cook Chinese food and parodies himself on a TV cooking show in an interesting look at assimilation and father-son relationships. |
| |
 |
Manseau, Peter |
PS3613.A574 S66 2008 |
| Songs for the Butcher's Daughter |
New York: Free Press, 2008 |
| In this novel a young man who is working for Yiddish book center meets a very old Yiddish poet and agrees to translate the poets' memoirs. The memoirs are moving and at times humorous. They record the horrors of the Kishinev pogrom in Russia, life in Odessa, and later the vibrant New York Jewish community in the early part of the twentieth century in America. |
| |
 |
Marshall, Paule (Caribbean Islands) |
PS 3563 A7223 B7 |
| Brown Girl, Brownstones |
Old Westbury: Feminist Press, 1981 |
| This novel narrates the coming-of-age of a young girl from a Caribbean family growing up in New York with a strong mother and a weak father. |
| |
 |
Matalon, Ronit (Israel) |
PJ5054.M3274 Z3413 |
| The One Facing Us |
New York: Henry Holt, 1999 |
| A rebellious young Israeli girl is sent to live with her uncle in Africa. It is her family’s plan that she will settle down and get married. This novel describes the life of a little chronicled Jewish immigrant group, the very cosmopolitan Jews of Egypt. |
| |
 |
Mo, Timothy (China, Great Britain) |
PR 6063 O17 S6 |
| Sour Sweet |
New York: Vintage Books, 1985 |
| An earnest law-abiding Chinese immigrant to London is trapped between the demands of his ambitious wife and a criminal triad who demand his loyalty. |
| |
 |
Mukherjee, Bharati (India) |
PR 9499.3 M77 J3 |
| Jasmine |
New York: Grove Press, 1989 |
| An illegal immigrant from India makes her way in the United States. |
| |
 |
Mukherjee, Bharati (India) |
PR 9499.3 M77 M5 |
| The Middleman and other stories |
New York: Grove Press, 1988 |
| Short stories about immigrants in the United States. |
| |
|
Naipaul, V.S. (India, Africa) |
PR 9272.9 N32 B4 |
| A Bend in the River |
New York: Knopf, 1979 |
| An East Indian merchant living in Africa attempts to survive as his country goes from one revolution to another. |
| |
 |
Naipaul, V.S. (India, Trinidad) |
PR 9272.9 N32 H6 |
| A House for Mr. Biswas |
New York: Vintage International, 2001 |
| An Indian living in Trinidad seeks true happiness by owning a house of his own. |
| |
 |
Ng, Fae Myenne (Chinese American) |
PS 3564 G25 B6 |
| Bone |
New York: Hyperion, 1993 |
| The suicide of the middle daughter of a San Francisco Chinese family exposes all the miseries they have kept secret and the cracks in their relationships. |
| |
 |
Ng, Mei (Chinese American) |
PS 3564 G27 E28 |
| Eating Chinese Food Naked |
New York: Scribner, 1998 |
| A young Chinese American woman who has just graduated from Columbia University returns to the Queens to live with her Old World family for the summer. |
| |
 |
Nguyen, Bich Minh (Vietnam) |
PS3554.E4425 W48 |
| Short Girls |
New York: Viking, 2009 |
| Vietnamese American sisters Van and Linny fall into the roles of smart sister and pretty popular sister. Eventually when dealing with a family crisis, they come to discover that they share personality traits; and as short women, both are striving to reach up to the American standard. |
| |
 |
Obejas, Achy (Cuba) |
PS 3565 B34 D39 |
| Days of Awe |
New York: Ballantine Books, 2001 |
| This is the story of the daughter of Cuban exiles who, as an adult, discovers while she pieces together her parents' life in Cuba that she is descended from Crypto-Jews who converted to avoid the inquisition and for hundreds of years practiced Judaism secretly. |
| |
 |
O'Neill, Joseph |
PR6065.N435 N48 2008 |
| Netherland |
New York: Pantheon Books, 2008 |
| In a New York City made very strange after the events of 9/11, Hans -- a banker originally from the Netherlands -- finds himself marooned among the occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans discovers the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. |
| |
 |
Ong, Han (Philippines) |
PS 3565 N58 F5 |
| Fixer Chao |
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001 |
| A Chinese-Filipino hustler, teaming up with an angry writer, passes himself off as a feng shui master, giving nonsensical advise to New York's wealthy. The whole scheme is an attempt to get even by ruining the peace of individuals who have been selfish and unkind to others. |
| |
 |
Otsuka, Julie (Japanese American) |
PS 3615 T88 W48 |
| When the Emperor Was Divine |
New York: Knopf, 2002 |
| This novel describes the life of a Japanese-American family of four who are uprooted from their California home and send to a relocation camp during World War II. |
| |
 |
Ozick, Cynthia (Germany, Jewish-American) |
PS 3565 Z5 S5 |
| The Shawl |
New York: Knopf, 1989 |
| To a survivor living in the United States, a shawl symbolizes all that was lost in the Holocaust. |
| |
 |
Said, Kurban (Turkey, Germany) |
PT 2637 A433 M313 |
| The Girl from the Golden Horn |
Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2001 |
| After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a daughter of the royal family is in exile with her father in Germany. She attempts to reconcile life in the west with her Islamic upbringing with varying degrees of success. |
| |
 |
Satyal, Rakesh |
PS3619.A8935 B58 2009 |
| Blue Boy |
New York: Kensington, 2009 |
| An 11 year-old Indian American boy who prefers ballet, his mother's makeup and playing with dolls to sports and other masculine pursuits, decides he is the tenth reincarnation of Krishna in an attempt to make sense of his life. |
| |
 |
Shafak, Elif (Turkey, Morocco, Spain) |
PS 3619 H328 S25 |
| The Saint of Incipient Insanities |
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2004 |
| This novel follows the downward spiral of three foreign graduate students living in Boston. Filled with bittersweet humor, the men struggle to make sense of their world and the women to whom they are attracted. At times they are aloof from the temptations, at others they dive into all the allures of their new home, usually with disastrous results. |
| |
|
Shaham, Nathan (Israel) |
PJ 5054 S3 R4813 |
| The Rosendorf Quartet |
New York: Grove Weidenfield, 1991 |
| Four Jewish musicians, who are fleeing from persecution in Nazi Germany, form a brilliant string quartet in Israel during the late 30's. The book is written in the form of a quartet with each member relating his or her story. |
| |
 |
Shalev, Meir (Israel) |
PJ 5054 S384 K413 |
| The Loves of Judith |
Hopewell: Ecco Press, 1999 |
| Set in Palestine in the 1930's and 40's, it is the story of a village woman who is loved by three very different men. The novel is filled with Yiddish, folk tales, and memories of Europe before the Holocaust as well as the settlement of Israel. |
| |
 |
Shteyngart, Gary (Russia) |
PS 3619 H79 R87 |
| The Russian Debutante's Handbook |
New York: Riverhead Books, 2002 |
| This novel follows the adventures of the unambitious son of a Russian Jewish immigrant family. The young man becomes involved with the Russian mafia and has a series of misadventures in Prague. The novel is a very funny send-up of materialist values. |
| |
 |
Smith, Zadie (Great Britain, Jamaica, Bangladesh) |
PR 6069 M59 W47 |
| White Teeth |
New York: Random House, 2000 |
| This multigenerational novel tells of the unlikely friendship between a dim working-class British man and a frustrated Bangladeshi immigrant, their children, their obsessions - all of it clever and right on target as it explores history, immigration and multiculturalism. |
| |
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Tan, Amy (China) |
PS 3570 A48 J6 |
| The Joy Luck Club |
New York: Putnam, 1989 |
| This novel explores the relationships between four immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. |
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Tan, Amy (China) |
PS 3570 A48 K58 |
| The Kitchen God's Wife |
New York: Putnam, 1991 |
| A woman reveals her difficult history in China to her daughter. |
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Ugresic, Dubravka (Croatia, The Netherlands) |
PG 1619.31 .G7 M5613 |
| The Ministry of Pain |
New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2006 |
| A Croatian exile to The Netherlands is teaching Yugoslavian literature at a university in Amsterdam. Her class serves as a kind of group therapy for other exiles and way for the author to express her loss of her homeland. |
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Ulitskaya, Ludmilla (Russia) |
PG 3489.2 L58 V4713 |
| The Funeral Party |
New York: Schocken Books, 2001 |
| A Russian émigré painter lies dying in an unairconditioned loft in New York during the summer of 1989 while the Soviet Union is collapsing. He is surrounded by his friends and lovers who celebrate his life and mourn his incipient loss as he has been the glue to hold them together. |
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Vapnyar, Lara (Russian American) |
PS3622.A68 M46 |
| Memoirs of a Muse |
New York: Pantheon, 2006 |
| Tanya, a young Russian emigre tries to emulate the woman who inspired the great Russian novelist Dostoevsky. Tanya moves in with a semi-famous American writer and tries to inspire him to greatness. Although she does not succeed, she later discovers that she inspired an altogether different artist. |
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Vapnyar, Lara (Russia, American) |
PS 3622 A68 T47 |
| There are Jews in my House |
New York: Pantheon Books, 2003 |
| These short stories are small gems describing the lives of Russians in Moscow and also in New York after they immigrated to the USA in the 1980's. |
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Yang, Gene Luen (Chinese American) |
PN6727.Y36 A54 |
|
American Born Chinese |
New York: First Second, 2006 |
| In this graphic novel, a combination of three stories that come together in the end, the Monkey King wants to become a god; a young boy Jin Wang, the only Chinese American boy in his class, is bullied by the other boys; and a teenager named Danny is periodically visited by an embarrassing Chinese cousin Chin Kee who embodies all the crudest Asian stereotypes. Yang's graphic look at the difficulties of assimilation is both moving and masterful. |
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Yezierska, Anzia (Poland) |
PS 3547 E95 B7 |
| The Bread Givers |
New York: Persea Books, 1975 |
| A young woman defies her family, particularly her autocratic old world father, to make a life for herself. |
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