Immigrants, Immigration and It's Issues.

What are some modern novels using immigrants, immigration and all of issues it brings with it, which you would recommend and why?

I would recommend Harbor by Lorraine Adams which tells the personal story of Aziz Arkoun, an illegal Algerian immigrant to the United States. She vividly creates Aziz and the reality in which he exists. If fiction serves to help us understand each other, this novel helped me to understand what drives someone to stowaway on a tanker to come to America illegally and what awaits him when he arrives - and this community that is nearly invisible to me. A bit of an oversimplification but there it is.

Brick Lane by Monica Ali covers a broad range of immigrant experience. The main character comes to England from Bangladesh at the age of 18 to marry. Besides the intriguing portrait of one woman's life, I thought it also it interesting for showing the push and pull of the homeland on the characters.

Chang Rae Lee's Native Speaker is about a Korean immigrant in New York.

Several books about immigrating after fleeing the Nazis: Lore Segal's Other People's Houses and Her First American and Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation, which is not a novel but is a wonderful book for language lovers.

I recently read The Belly of the Atlantic by Fatou Diome. She is Senegalese but resides in France. The book is interesting because it contrasts the life of a woman who has emigrated from Senegal to Europe, and is finding life difficult, and her young brother, who is still in Senegal but sees Europe as being the promised land. It kind of contrasts the hope and the reality that immigration can bring with it.

I am not a fan of Gary Shteyngart, but The Russian Debutante's Handbook does give some insight into a young recent Russian immigrant's life in New York (before the plot takes off in a too disorganized and uninteresting way).

Bharati Mukherjee has written some short stories as well as a novel about ex-pat Indians. A couple of years ago I read a clumsy but telling novel about a rural Indian hayseed being an exchange student in the U.S., but now I can't remember it. Anyone?

The Sound of One Hand Clapping by Richard Flanagan is a lovely ( and emotional) book about a European who migrates to Australia. Highly recommended.

#6: Could it be fasting, feasting by Anita Desai?

Good guess, bvs, but I finally recalled: The Inscrutable Americans. My copy has a little note on the cover, "Now a Major Film" but perhaps that was in India. The writing is uneven - Mathur seems to have difficulty shifting from an omniscient pov to that of his naive character - but some of the situations are funny.

Immigration is, I think, an important issue in many countries these days. I don't often think that much about how it is affecting other places, Europe, for example, unless something shows up on the news or I read a book like Brick Lane. But I read a little book a few years back and found it very enlightening, and recently the book sparked a longish conversation on borders, the sovereignty of nations, immigration, labor migration...etc.

The book was/is Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami and tells the back story of four (I think) Moroccan individuals who find themselves crammed into an inflatable boat together (with others) bound (illegally) for Spain. Deftly, through the short sketches of each individual, the story brings an understanding of the circumstances which motivate them to take this dangerous journey. It's a very powerful little book.

I enjoyed Small Island by Andrea Levy because it described an immigration experience that I had never thought about. One of its main characters is a RAF pilot from Jamaica who, after fighting WWII alongside white soldiers, believes that England will welcome him into its arms. His equally provincial wife is sure that she'll be exempt from the way the country normally treats blacks because her relatively light-colored skin afforded her a high status in Jamaican society. Although the plot is fueled partly by convenient coincidences, I think the novel does a great job imagining England on the brink of becoming the country we know today.

Two books that tell of very different immigrant experiences are Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami and Natasha by David Bezmozgis Both are set in Canada but Bezmozgis's short stories tell of the Russian Jewish life in Toronto and Badami's book tells the story of two generations of an East Indian Family in Calgary and India.

Two recent books I've read that deal with the idea of immigration are Tortilla Curtain, by T.C Boyle which looks at the immigration of Mexicans into America - a disturbing book which I enjoyed for the questions it raises; and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai which looks specifically at issues confronting India and the loss of its citizens on many levels, one being immigration.

Avaland, I've added Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits to my wishlist. It sounds like a little gem!

>12 torontoc: I've got the Badami but haven't read it yet; I read her earlier novel, A Hero's Walk.

>14 cestovatela: I've not read Small Island although I bought the UK edition when it first showed up on the Orange Prize longlist the year it won. I did start it but set it down and got distracted and didn't pick it up again.

I just finished When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. It was absolutely gorgeous, one of those books that makes you feel it would be profane to move on to another one so quickly.

The book opens without telling us anything about the main character. She runs errands, chats with shopkeepers, receives compliments about her new red dress. We picture her looking like us, so it's a revelation when she starts talking about wedding gifts sent from Kagoshima. As the point of view switches to her children, we see how little they thought of themselves as Japanese before the War started. Each of them has playmates, does well in school, speaks fluent English and no Japanese. With a comfortable home, a reasonable income and well-acclimated children, the family are the poster children of the American Dream.

The second part of the book is about fear and pressure to conform. We see so clearly the fears that forced the family into an internment camp during the war and the prejudice that dogs them after. Each family member thinks they're going back to the American Dream life they left behind. Instead, their neighbors leave them outcasts and their lives are dominated by directives not to associate too closely wtih other Japanese. They are endlessly apologetic. The final chapter, told from the father's point of view -- and really from the point of view of every unfairly incarcerated Japanese-American -- is a short, bitter indictment of a society that allows fear to over rule its humanity. Really, a beautiful book and relevant to today as well - I think about the treatment that many Arab or Muslim Americans may be receiving now and shudder.

The Sound of One Clapping by Richard Flanagan is a very good novel about European immigration to Australia in the c.1950s. Highy recommended.

I think Interpreter of Maladies is worth mentioning here. Living in New York, with mostly immigrant friends, I of course knew something about the issues that immigrants can face but Interpreter of Maladies is the book that really made me visualize the difficulty of starting life in a new place and the sense of permanent alienation that many immigrants feel. The Namesake deals with those themes as well, but I didn't like it as much.

This may be a slightly separate issue, but I would recommend White Teeth by Zadie Smith as an interesting portrayal of a multicultural city and how the different communities do - or don't - get along.

My wife suggests:
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan that deals with immigration from China to the U.S. and its conflicts.

I wanted to list a USA to Germany story here, but found it's a biography, and not available in English. But: What "unusual" immigration stories are out there? There's lots of books available about people coming to the USA, or the UK or any other European countries. But there must also be books from or about people that emigrated from these countries to China, Chile, Iraq, India,... and I don't necessarily mean the type of "Not without my daughter" books --because I think that this is not the typical experience. But I think the experiences of the few that went to these countries to live with family or simply to live there might be not so different from other immigrants' stories.
My sister just took in a short time lodger: A young student from Germany, that immigrated to Germany with her family 10 years ago or so, one of her grandmothers was a German that married a Chinese student and went to China with him. There might be an interesting story there...
#11 and #15: Now I've got to go and pull "Small island" from the lower regions of Mt. TBR ;-). And another one for the wish list: Julie Otsuka...

#1 Thanks for posting this topic. I teach a first-year writing intensive seminar for college freshmen, and I focus often on the topic of immigration. My students are reading Harbor again--it's a wonderful story, and they seem to enjoy it. But I've been looking for other titles to check out.

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is about people attempting to immigrate from Morocco to Spain.

The memoir I read this summer - Born in the Big Rains by Fadumo Korn is includes her immigration to from Somalia to Germany.

For a good read about the Mexican experience in the US read Highwire Moon by Susan Straight.

Akram Khater's Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 is a really great book about Lebanese migrants who came to the United States and then returned to Lebanon. It's really interesting to take a multi-directional look at immigration, seeing it as an exchange, rather than the usual uni-directional perspective, in which immigrants came to the U.S., "became American", and stayed here.

I think I posted a longer review on the book information page.

Edited to say: Shoot, I lied. This is one that I still need to review. Suffice it to say its great!

>16 cestovatela: & >17 amandameale: & >19 wandering_star: Agree with all three of these books. Each one representative of the immigrant experience in its own way.

Although not a novel, the (wordless) picture book The Arrival by Sean Tan, tells a beautiful story of life in a new land. Highly recommended!

This might interest you, too:
Milan Kundera's book Ignorance tells about a man who returns to his native country after twenty years. Here is a discussion about the book in Radio Praha's web pages: Milan Kundera's "Ignorance", a novel that offers insight into exile and memory

Ett nytt land utanför mitt fönster is a beautiful book by Theodor Kallifatides but unfortunately it is not translated in English.

I just ordered exam copies of two books on the immigrant experience that I may use for a course. Has anybody read them?

Becoming Americana by Lara Rios. Focus is a Mexican-American college student discussing immigration issues and what it means to be an American.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. Young Ethipian whose father is killed in a revolution tries to adjust to life in Washington, DC.

Neither is a novel, however.

I read this years ago, but only just thought of this now. Dakhmeh by Naveed Noori is a really interesting spin on an immigrant experience that doesn't work out. The main character is a first generation Canadian who always felt out of place in his Iranian parents' adopted country. When Iran finally opened up after the Iran-Iraq war, he decides to return there and build a life. He finds that life in Canada didn't prepare him for the social system of a different culture. Worse, the people, who have just suffered through a war and are now struggling with a crumbling economy, don't view him as authentically Iranian. It's a pretty short book and not a perfect one, but it is unique and interesting.

For reading Globally's June group theme read,
I'll be reading My Baltimore Landsmen by Herman Taube. It's described as "a documentary novel". I'm imaging the story to be very familiar to me as I grew up in Baltimore as a child of immigrant parents. I'm very much looking forwrd to reading this book.

I'm trying to read out of my tbr pile and so I'll be off on a bit of a tangent. (Nonfiction, not-so-modern and poetry).

I'm going to read the nonfiction 1860's journal of immigrating to Canada (I believe from Scotland?), Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie, followed by Margaret Atwood's book of poetry about the experience, The Journals of Susanna Moodie.

I'm guessing I'll find a lot in common with more modern day immigrants as well as differences--and I'm truly looking forward to Margaret Atwood's poetry.

Two nonfiction titles that I've read in the last year that I found extremely illuminating were The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman about the culture clash between Hmong immigrants and the US culture and also the memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness by esteemed Israeli author Amos Oz about his boyhood in Palestine while immigrants from the Holocaust were flooding into Palestine and before Israel became a nation.

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I've heard nothing but great reviews of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.

I *loved* Amoz Oz's memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness and will second your recommendation of that book.

I picked up The Devil's Highway a month or so ago at Half Price Books and hadn't gotten to it yet, so I think I'll be reading that, but I may try to pick up something else as well to get a story about immigration somewhere other than to the U.S. I have a few on my "want" list that I'll have to really look for at HPB.

For those who haven't made up their minds, I thought of several books I've read over the years which would fit this theme. All are recommended:

Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck (which I'll be reading in addition to Enrique's Journey because it's the Classics book club pick for June and covers immigration (or displacement) within one's own country)
Digging to America by Anne Tyler

and in non-fiction:

The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan

I just finished reading a collection of short stories by Roddy Doyle, The Deportees and Other Stories. They all deal with the new immigrants who have arrived in Ireland in the past decade or so and with the natives' responses to them. At times very touching and sad, at other times laugh-out-loud funny. Reading them was a great experience, and I highly recommend the book.

Put recommendations for the June 'immigration' theme read here. Remember, as much as possible, we are trying to restrict the topic to those who chose to immigrate for one reason or another.

Apologies for contaminating the other thread! :) I just felt it was necessary to mention the book that gave rise to the particular question I wanted to address in any discussion of immigration. :)

#36 Despite the title, The Deportees is not about people who have been deported to Ireland. In the title story, Jimmy Rabittt (from The Commitments) forms a new band consisting of new immigrants to Ireland from South America, the US, Africa, Roumania, etc. The band is called The Deportees--but the characters in the book are there either as legal immigrants or are seeking asylum. If they are deportees in any sense, it is because, if they don't make a go of it in Ireland, they might be sent back to their homelands.

Chang Rae Lee (and others noted above) are very good and worth reading but sometimes I get the impression that readers are overly influenced by publishing industry hype about what is "new".

For instance, Willa Cather's My Antonia was addressing immigration and multiculturalism long before these became academic cash cows or marketing buzzwords.

Check this one out, too.

Boston Globe review of Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth is here:

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/04/06/out_of_place/

Probably the best current New England writer I can think of focused on the subject. The reviewer makes several good points: that thinking on displacement and immigration ties all her work together, that much of what she is exploring is not the experience of the immigrant but of the second generation (though note: she is technically an immigrant from England; yet it is the experience of her parents having emigrated from India to the US (via England) that dominates much of her writing).

On the other hand, I remember a number of her stories in the Interpreter of Maladies focused on India that had little to do with immigration or displacement. I'm not sure I remember any of the U.S. focused ones not having something to do with immigration, displacement, skin color, etc. Something to think about. Is the reviewer really right on all his points?

I might re-read Interpreter of Maladies for the group read so it's something I'll keep in mind. I think I would have agreed with you that there were stories not about immigration/displacement but maybe it's just subtler in some? I'll have to find out!

For something a little different I have really enjoyed the following three books which focus on the immigrant experience in Africa.

A Bend in the River - which follows the life of an shop keeper of Indian descent as his unnamed country gains independence and falls into violence. For that matter almost every V.S. Naipaul is wonderful in dealing in immigrant issues.

The Darling - the story of an American in a Weatherman-like group who moves to Liberia.

Vikram Lall - another great book on the experience on Indian immigrants in Africa and later Canada.

Finally, the well titled and incredibly well written The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald is compromised of four deeply moving stories of German Jews living exile.

>37 fannyprice: you didn't! I was just trying to steer lists of recommendations to this thread. . .

One of my favorite contemporary novels fits the category perfectly: Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam. His writing style is exquisite. The story centers on a Pakistani community in Britain and the disappearance of a young couple. It's very much about the clash of two cultures, and of different groups within the immigrant community who want either to maintain tradition or to adapt the ways of their new country.

A sure sign of a group you should be in is if you know most of the Touchstone works. Well, I do, so here I am. I am an immigrant (to Canada) myself, and have been reading about the immigrant experience all my life. I will have to come up with a list; there are so many other wonderful books that can be added here. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III is wonderful. Most of M. G. Vassanji deals with the immigrant experience. A particular favorite of mine is No New Land. Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee I heartily recommend. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson I am just rereading and loving anew. Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Typical American by Gish Jen. Obasan by Joy Kogawa. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. Just a few off the top of my head. I will try to give it more thought later.

I have just come across a Young Adult title dealing with immigration from Bangladesh to the US. I have not read it yet, but it looks promising, with good blurbs from Booklist and Kirkus Reviews, and nominations for multiple awards in 2007. It is called Ask Me No Questions and is by Marina Budhos.

The novel I'm reading, Family Matters isn't actually about immigrants, but one of the main characters badly wants to immigrate from India to Canada (like the author, Rohinton Mistry did himself). I was very amused by this passage:

"His dream for an end to this apeman commute had led him to apply for immigration to Canada. He wanted clean cities, clean air, plenty of water, trains with seats for everyone, where people stood in line at bus stops and said please, after you, thank you. Not just the land of milk and honey, also the land of deodorant and toiletry."

Toilet issues are very big for this character, and I could swear there is another reference to deodorant and Canada (but I can't find it). As a Canadian, I find this very amusing. Who knew we were the land of "deodorant and toiletry"? Now that I think of it, they are both excellent things.

I had to laugh at # 47 because it reminded that once while visiting Lucknow in India, I met a 12-year-old girl who had spent six months in Australia and I asked her how she liked it. She said "I loved it, it was so clean," with such longing in her voice. There may be "Clean India" underground.

>47 Nickelini: -- Anyone who has ever travelled both the Toronto and New York subways knows that Canadians are a very clean people. I think the key differences between Canadians and Americans are the greater command of grammar and superior personal hygene of the denizens of the Great White North.

#49 - I think the key differences between Canadians and Americans are the greater command of grammar and superior personal hygene of the denizens of the Great White North.

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I had no idea. I guess I just take good hygiene for granted. :-)

Of course, Montreal's Metro is a beautiful system, and in many stations certainly architecturally more significant.

New York's subway attracts a greater percentage of users than Toronto and Montreal, but these latter two have higher public transport usage than any other city in the United States. New York has an old system (1904?), and in the mid-20th century let its maintenance go to pot, and consequently its patrons responded with the same disrespect. However, in the last 20 years, there has been a conisderable upgrade in its quality.

Mexico City has a beautiful system also.

The other old subways in this hemisphere are in Boston (the original one in the Americas opening before New York's in 1897), Philadelphia (1907?), and Buenos Aires (1912?). Chicago had elevated railways only until the 1940's (the famous Loop is an elevated railway).

er...is this the world mass transit thread?:-)

Wanted to mention that Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir Infidel talks a lot about immigration and the issues that follow (i.e. assimilation). I had an opportunity to reread parts of it yesterday and it reminded me.

Cestovatela and others -- I recently read Small Island and really, really enjoyed it. It took me a while to warm up to it, but once I got a few chapters in I couldn't stop.

A story with a similar Caribbean/migration theme is the novel Continental Drift by Russell Banks. Parts of it broke my heart, it was so moving. That story combines a New Hampshire family moving south to Florida while members of a Haitian family attempt to get there by boating north.

While Levy's story dealt with a more distant past, Continental Drift took up a couple of similar themes (race most specifically) in a slightly more recent setting.

Glad I found this group!

Elizabeth ("fullmoonblue")

#45 - This totally cracked me up. The link to No New Land took me to a Batman comic! Which got me thinking - Batman didn't immigrate, but Superman did.

45 & 54

Here is the proper link to No New Land; one has to read through the choices, as this is a somewhat common title for a book.

I am intrigued enough to want to pick it http://www.librarything.com/work/85964 up and read it. At this point there are no reviews in LT, and only one on Amazon.

I have indeed picked up Unaccustomed Earth, and am ready for June.

Hey, VP (A Vice-president?),

I highly recommend No New Land by Vassanji. (in Touchstones it came up as Batman again -- maybe there is a mystical connection).

I will try to get around to writing a serious review soon.

When you put in No New Land, Batman does come up as this book is more common than the one by Vassanji. To pull up the right Touchstone, you will see that the word 'others' in blue parentheses comes at the end of the author's name (in this case, Bob Gale). Punch on 'others', and seven options will come up. Go down about 4 works and you can see Vassanji's work, you click on this black title (a rectangle will appear) and this rather than the Batman book becomes your Touchstone.

An interesting novel (actually a suite of novels) is The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) by Vilhelm Moberg. It follows a Swedish family to the US during the nineteenth century. So many Swedes came here during this period that, at one point, more Swedish speakers lived in Chicago than in all of Sweden combined. As an additional bonus, anyone who reads the novel (or the whole suite) can listen to appropriate background music while she/he reads. The novel was turned into an immensely popular musical in Sweden entitled Kristina från Duvemåla. For those of you who hail from the mists of antiquity and bad pop music, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, former members of ABBA, wrote the lyrics and music. The music is actually quite good (3 CD's worth). Supposedly, at some point in the near or distant future, the musical is slated to be translated and make its way to Broadway, but I wouldn't hold my breath. For those of you who aren't sure that you've ever heard any music by ABBA, just watch Priscilla Queen of the Desert - a great multicultural experience in its own right. The movie includes several songs by ABBA.

An interesting novel (actually a suite of novels) is The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) by Vilhelm Moberg. It follows a Swedish family to the US during the nineteenth century. So many Swedes came here during this period that, at one point, more Swedish speakers lived in Chicago than in all of Sweden combined. As an additional bonus, anyone who reads the novel (or the whole suite) can listen to appropriate background music while she/he reads. The novel was turned into an immensely popular musical in Sweden entitled Kristina från Duvemåla. For those of you who hail from the mists of antiquity and bad pop music, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, former members of ABBA, wrote the lyrics and music. The music is actually quite good (3 CD's worth). Supposedly, at some point in the near or distant future, the musical is slated to be translated and make its way to Broadway, but I wouldn't hold my breath. If you who aren't sure that you've ever heard any music by ABBA, just watch Priscilla Queen of the Desert - a great multicultural experience in its own right. The movie includes several songs by ABBA.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert is a gem!

Post 61- aluvalibri - Yay, another Priscilla Queen of the Desert fan. I once taught this work in a critical theory class. I was teaching at a small church-related college in the South. Although the students found it illuminating, I don't think I won any brownie points with the administration for that one. And then there was the time I drew breasts on the board with a big slash through them (just say no to the breasts) during a lecture on Gilligan's critique of Freud's theory of women's moral development. Again the students liked it, but the board of church visitors happened to be there that day. . . . And I was really trying to be sweet and discreet for them. I don't know what gets in to me. I'm clearly not suited for labor in the American academic labor force.

#62> you know, the more I read what you say, the more I think YOU ROCK!
When I was married (very conservative Italian-American family), I used to stick out like a sore thumb. I guess my European liberal upbringing did not make me very popular.
My divorce was a real liberation!

#62.aluvalibri, Thanks!