Nonfiction Immigration

Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States, typically framed as a battle between anti-immigrant conservatives and pro-immigrant liberals. Yet surprisingly, almost no one on either side of this issue seems to understand the true impact that immigrants have on any aspect of American life. In The Truth About Immigration, Wharton School professor Zeke Hernandez provides an accessible, apolitical, and evidence-based look at the effects of immigration on our local communities and our nation.

A Century of Immigration reviews the century of 1820 through 1920, in which there were two waves of immigration to the United States.

This book discusses the varied motivations and nationalities of these new Americans, as well as the effects of mass immigration on the country as a whole, and the rise of antiforeign sentiments among more recent immigrants.

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?

When her parents make the dangerous and illegal trek across the Mexican border in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced to live with their stern grandmother, as they wait for their parents to build the foundation of a new life. But when things don’t go quite as planned, Reyna finds herself preparing for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years: her long-absent father.

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop and watching action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. When US marines landed in Mogadishu to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered the arrival of these Americans, who seemed as heroic as those of the movies. Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it became dangerous to celebrate Western culture.

A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting - predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change.

After a deadly attack in South Sudan left six-year-old Achut Deng without a family, she lived in refugee camps for ten years, until a refugee relocation program gave her the opportunity to move to the United States. When asked why she should be given a chance to leave the camp, Achut simply told the interviewer: I want life. But the chance at starting a new life in a new country came with a different set of challenges. Some of them equally deadly. Taught by the strong women in her life not to look back, Achut kept moving forward, overcoming one obstacle after another.

The history of the United States has been shaped by immigration. Historians Carl J. Bon Tempo and Hasia R. Diner provide a sweeping historical narrative told through the lives and words of the quite ordinary people who did nothing less than make the nation.

Most Holocaust survivors who came to the US after WWII settled in big cities, but some chose an alternative way of life on American farms. More of these accidental farmers wound up raising chickens in southern New Jersey than anywhere else. Speaking Yiddish to Chickens is the first book to chronicle this chapter in American Jewish history when these refugees—including the author's grandparents—found an unlikely gateway to new lives in the US on poultry farms.

The Scots are one of the world's greatest nations of emigrants. For centuries, untold numbers of men, women, and children sought their fortunes in every part of the globe, from the British Empire to the United States, in cities and on prairie farms, as traders, bankers, missionaries, soldiers, politicians, and engineers.

In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi.

The Involuntary American demonstrates how even indi­viduals of humble circumstances were swept into the mael­strom of the First Global Age. It expands our understanding of immigration to the colonies, colonial servitude, the link­ages and tensions between Europe, Massachusetts Bay, and America's northeastern frontier, and of New England socie­ty in the early colonial period.

Illegal immigration continues to roil American politics. The right-wing media stir up panic over "anchor babies", job stealing, welfare dependence, bilingualism, al-Qaeda terrorists disguised as Latinos, even a conspiracy by Latinos to "retake" the Southwest. State and local governments have passed more than 300 laws that attempt to restrict undocumented immigrants' access to hospitals, schools, food stamps, and driver's licenses.

This eye-opening memoir tells the story of a young girl's life in Syria, her family's wrenching decision to leave their home, and the upheaval of life in a refugee camp. Though her life had utterly changed, one thing remained the same. She knew that education was the key to a better future—for herself, and so that she could help her country. She went from tent to tent in the camp, trying to convince other kids, especially girls, to come to school. And her passion and dedication soon had people calling her the "Malala of Syria."

America is a nation of immigrants. People have come to the United States from around the world seeking a better life and more opportunities, and our country would not be what it is today without their contributions. From writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to scientists like Albert Einstein, to innovators like Elon Musk, this book honors the immigrants who have changed the way we think, eat, and live. Their stories serve as powerful reminders of the progress we've made, and the work that is still left to be done.

Journey without End chronicles the years-long journey of "extracontinentales"—African and South Asian migrants moving through Latin America, toward the United States. Based on five years of collaborative research between a journalist and an anthropologist, this book makes a narrative-driven critique of how state-level immigration policy fails extracontinental migrants.

Floella Benjamin was just a young girl when she, her sister and two brothers arrived in England in 1960 to join their parents, whom they had not seen for 15 months. They had left their island home of Trinidad to make a new life in London—part of a whole generation of West Indians who were encouraged to move to Britain and help rebuild the country after the Second World War. Reunited with her mother, Floella was too overwhelmed at first to care about the cold weather and the noise and dirt from the traffic.

America meant "freedom" to the immigrants of the early 1900s - but a freedom very different from what they expected. Cities were crowded and jobs were scare. Children had to work selling newspapers, delivering goods, and laboring sweatshops. In this touching book, Newberry Medalist Russell Freedman offers a rare glimpse of what it meant to be a young newcomer to America.

When Estela Juarez's mom is deported to Mexico, Estela knows she has to speak up for her family. Told in Estela's own words, Hasta que alguien me escuche [Until Someone Listens] is a true story about a young girl finding her voice and using it to make change.

The United States has long been touted as a place where anyone with a little grit and determination could come to pursue the American Dream. But as more walls are erected and borders are closed, is that dream still alive today?