Celebrating Stories of Immigration during National Book Month

BY kama dc team

There’s nothing quite like a good book to bring a feeling, a culture or an experience to life. For immigrants and refugees, the journey that they take when moving to a new country is different for every individual, yet the themes that often accompany stories of immigration are universal — identity, culture, language, loss, triumph, loneliness, community, family, love.

This October, in honor of National Book Month, the volunteers at KAMA DC wanted to share with you some of our favorite stories written by immigrants and their children that touch on the experience of immigrants and refugees and all of the hardships and triumphs that accompany them.

We also encourage you to purchase from local bookstores or check them out from your public library for free! By purchasing from local bookstores, you are not only helping to support the local community, but also more of your purchase will go toward the author. Check out our list of some local DMV bookstores at the bottom of this page.

Without further ado, here is our list of 11 books written by immigrants and their children that we recommend:

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
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“Ocean Vuong’s remarkable debut novel captures the violence of surviving as an immigrant in America. It is a letter from Little Dog, whose life closely resembles Vuong’s own, to his illiterate mother. Vuong is a poet and much of his writing feels more like poetry than prose. Though sometimes dense and often harrowing, the novel ultimately allows the narrator to reconcile the pain and grief of Little Dog’s relationships.” - Will T.

The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

It is the summer of 2011, and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. Her mother, a cartographer who creates unusual, hand-painted maps, decides to move Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. But the country Nour’s mother once knew is changing, and it isn’t long before protests and shelling threaten their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a shell destroys Nour’s house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee as refugees across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety. More than eight hundred years earlier, Rawiya, sixteen and a widow’s daughter, knows she must do something to help her impoverished mother. Restless and longing to see the world, she leaves home to seek her fortune. Disguising herself as a boy named Rami, she becomes an apprentice to al-Idrisi, who has been commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily to create a map of the world. In his employ, Rawiya embarks on an epic journey across the Middle East and the north of Africa where she encounters ferocious mythical beasts, epic battles, and real historical figures.
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​“An unforgettable book that skillfully maps the journey of Nour and her family as they flee Syria at the start of the 2011 Arab Spring, and how their travel reflects the journey of Rawiya, a young woman who travelled across the Middle East and North Africa 800 years previously. The story beautifully juxtaposes the rich history of the Middle East, the bliss ignorance of childhood, and the dark realities that face refugees.” - Ben

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Willis Wu doesn't perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. Every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here too. . . but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the highest aspiration he can imagine for a Chinatown denizen. Or is it? After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he's ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family, and what that means for him, in today's America.

“Interior Chinatown is a book that asks to be read in a single sitting. Written in a format more akin to a television screenplay, Charles Yu's Chinatown breathlessly moves from scene to scene and character to character, exploring the insidious and painful and sometimes farcical stereotypes that seem to color the thoughts and behaviors of every character in the novel, even the folks whose backgrounds are not shared by the protagonist. He gives voice to the background characters of our society, revealing a world of whimsy and tragedy and above all, humanity, to people marginalized and burdened by the curse of expectations.” - Will L.

American Street by Ibi Zoboi

The rock in the water does not know the pain of the rock in the sun. On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie—a good life. But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own. Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream?
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“Perfect for young adults or those that love a beautiful coming-of-age story with just a hint of magic — Zoboi masterfully weaves Haitian vodou and culture into the gritty Detroit streets that our main character, Fabiola, finds herself in. At times heartbreaking, but always full of love and family, American Street is a meditation on what it means to leave somewhere in search of a better life and find yourself amidst yet another disenfranchised community.” - Allie

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant — and that her lover is married — she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

“‘History has failed us, but no matter,’ is the opening line of Pachinko. This is Min Jin Lee's middle finger to history, which has often failed to record the lives and trials of ordinary people. We follow generations of this family as they navigate the hardships under the Japanese rule of Korea and integration as immigrants in Japan. Through the lense of one family, we face cultural, racial, and ethnic bias that reverberates through their tragic lives. As I read, I found myself constantly hoping for that fairytale ending — for a rags to riches story — but this novel is ultimately grounded in its realism.” - Dana

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

“The novel explores the vastly different perspectives of the three main characters and their relationships to the war and each other as they experience profound love, loss, fear, and betrayal. Throughout the novel, Adichie writes both beautifully about Nigeria — transporting the reader to the sites, sounds, smells, and tastes of her home country — and with brutal honesty about the devastating costs of the war on the individual lives of the characters and the country as a whole.” - Alayna

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo–until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees.

“What does it mean to see? In this heart wrenching and compassionate novel, we travel with Afra and Nuri as they flee their destroyed ordinary lives in war-torn Syria and seek asylum in the United Kingdom. The reader experiences first-hand the terror, enduring trauma, and overwhelming odds against their survival as they escape across countries trying to find a new life and each other in the process. The reader must ask themselves ‘Do we really see and understand the plight of refugees?’” - Sarah

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose the truth of racialized consciousness in America. Binding these essays together is Hong's theory of "minor feelings." As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity.

"As an Asian-American, this book perfectly and poignantly verbalizes my own wrestling and understanding of the conflicted position of Asian-Americans in the racial and capital hierarchy of America. I have felt all spectrums of emotions when reading this — from crying when reading how her parents debased themselves in the face of whiteness to pure puzzlement when learning of Black, white, and Asian racial triangulation. I absolutely loved this book — I cannot recommend it enough!" - Angie

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love.
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“During an era of collective trauma, Gyasi’s work explores grief as an experience shaped by culture, curiosity and community. Transcendent Kingdom is definitive proof that we contain multitudes, and that it’s perfectly natural to want to yell at God. Equal parts scientific and spiritual, this book is for anyone who feels torn between wanting an escape from the world’s current narrative and searching for answers to life’s biggest questions.” - Halah

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

With humor and heart, Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
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“This memoir reads beautifully as Michelle reflects on her perceived failures as both a daughter and child of Korean lineage — grappling with all of this all while her life is transformed by her mother's illness and ultimate death. By exposing her life, insecurities, and relationships to us through her writing, the reader is left hoping that Michelle was able to find strength in that ultimate vulnerability.” - Dana

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

After their daughter Maribel suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras leave México and come to America. But upon settling at Redwood Apartments, a two-story cinderblock complex just off a highway in Delaware, they discover that Maribel's recovery–the piece of the American Dream on which they've pinned all their hopes–will not be easy. Every task seems to confront them with language, racial, and cultural obstacles. At Redwood also lives Mayor Toro, a high school sophomore whose family arrived from Panamá fifteen years ago. Mayor sees in Maribel something others do not: that beyond her lovely face, and beneath the damage she's sustained, is a gentle, funny, and wise spirit. But as the two grow closer, violence casts a shadow over all their futures in America. Peopled with deeply sympathetic characters, this poignant yet unsentimental tale of young love tells a riveting story of unflinching honesty and humanity that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be an American.
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“The book doesn’t promote a saccharine view of the American dream, but rather a realistic portrayal into the motivations and decisions, both life-altering and mundane, that make up the immigrant experience. As one character says, ‘I know some people here think we’re trying to take over, but we just want to be a part of it. We want to have our stake. This is our home, too.’ Through hardship and heartbreak, we witness the characters claim — or sometimes give up — their stake in this home.” - Karelia ​

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Local Bookstores to Support in the DMV:
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• Bridge Street Books, Georgetown
• East City Bookshop, Capitol Hill
• Kramers, Dupont Circle
• Lost City Books, Adams Morgan
• Loyalty Bookstore, Petworth & Silver Spring, MD
• MahoganyBooks, Anacostia (specializes in books by Black authors)
• Middle East Books And More, Adams Morgan (specializes in books about the Middle East)
• Old Town Books, Alexandria, VA
• One More Page Books, Arlington, VA
• Politics and Prose, Northwest, The Wharf & Union Market
• Sankofa Video, Books, and Cafe, Shaw (owned by a filmmaking couple from Ethiopia; specializes in books by and for people of the African diaspora) 
• Solid State Books, H Street