Immigrant Memoirs

This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man’s attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence.

Tran is a toddler when her family immigrates to Queens from Vietnam. Torn between honoring her Buddhist roots and help her family’s livelihood with the pressure to fit in with her peers. Her father’s paranoia, born out of being a POW, deeply affects her sense of self.

Tran freshly arrived to largely white central Pennsylvania from Vietnam, tries to assimilate by going as far into the counter-culture world of punk as he can. Tran shares all trials of his fraught childhood, while also infusing humor and introspection.

A memoir by the first African refugee, Somali–American and one of the first Muslim women to be elected to congress.

Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.