Immigrant Memoirs

Focused on faith and woven with Christian, ecumenical, and patriotic themes, Our Immigrants’ Son is an exploration and celebration of family. The genres of prose poetry and historical fiction very cleverly takes you through the author’s rich Irish American history. It begins in misty Ireland and takes you through generations of the Murphy clan while also teaching you how to write your family story.

Guillermo Vicente Vidal's memoir chronicles his journey from Castro's Cuba to the United States - a tapestry of his coming of age, a broken family, and disorientation of political unrest. Vidal was barely 10 years old when he proudly shook the hand of Fidel Castro. Although Vidal's parents were once staunch supporters of La Revolucion, they soon found they could no longer keep their sons safe in the new face of Castro's reign, making the difficult decision to send Vidal and his brothers to the US via Operation Peter Pan in 1961.

A MacArthur “Genius” shares her inspiring story, from undocumented newcomer to leader in a powerful immigrant youth movement. Dreaming of Home is a coming-of-age story both for a young woman finding her true self and for a social movement of immigrant youth trailblazers who inspired the world and changed the lives of millions.

Molly’s story is a memoir. It is an account of a first-generation immigrant who came from Eastern Europe through Paris to America. We see the world, lovingly and playfully through the eyes of an innocent child, and then more reflective as an older adult. Her story is intermingled with those of her aunts and uncles who remained in Paris, and witnessed the horrors of Nazi occupation during World War II.

After stowing away as a boy to come to America around 1905, an Italian immigrant sculptor later stands firm in his love for an unfaithful woman. Trapped behind enemy lines during World War II, he and his family go on to save over 600 Allied troops. This is the epic multi-generational, true story of Salvatore Cartaino Scarpitta and family. His story was only partially told in a 1953 episode of This Is Your Life. Salvatore’s role in WWII is just one of the many stories found throughout this book.

Award-winning author Lisandro Perez tells Cuba's story through the lens of a single family: his own. The House on G Street is a unique depiction of one of the most consequential events of the twentieth century, told through generations of ancestors whose lives were shaped by dramatic historical forces. Perez disentangles the complex history by following his family's thread, imbuing political events with personal meaning. Their story begins with emigration to Cuba and follows the waning years of the colony.

In this book, the author shares personal stories, captivating the listener with descriptions of her experiences and challenges as an African immigrant, an international student, and later, as a mother of three children. The quotes she chooses to use as openers for each letter reflect her background as an African anthropologist and spiritual leader. She sums up each missive with lessons she has learned during her decades of living in the United States. This book offers insight into the life a minoritized American immigrant from an internal perspective.

Born with a physical handicap, illegal, and undocumented for 21 years, he was determined to enter mainstream American society and corporate America and overcame insurmountable odds to achieve unimaginable heights. His journey had a spiritual awakening that changed his life. After assimilating into corporate America, he set sales records and felt a calling to reach others in his race who were shut out and who also aspired to become productive citizens in the United States of America.

Few people watch sport for its politics. Yet what happens on the field of play often reflects the problems in our society. Such was the case in the '80s, when black footballers emerged from the dressing room to find bananas being hurled from the stands, and racially motivated attacks and police harassment were the norm. Today, things have improved. Crowds are less hostile and stars like Anthony Joshua and Sir Mohamed Farah are among our most revered sporting heroes. But for athletes of colour, success on the field seldom converts to power away from it.

When Aida Hernandez was born in 1987 in Agua Prieta, Mexico, the nearby US border was little more than a worn-down fence. Eight years later, Aida’s mother took her and her siblings to live in Douglas, Arizona. By then, the border had become one of the most heavily policed sites in America. Undocumented, Aida fought to make her way. She learned English, watched Friends, and, after having a baby at 16, dreamed of teaching dance and moving with her son to New York City. But life had other plans.

Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John's College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840 and 1850s and the most famous Roman Catholic in America, Hughes defended Catholic institutions in a time of nativist bigotry and church burnings and worked tirelessly to help Irish Catholic immigrants find acceptance.

Since 1949, when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Max Frankel began to write for The New York Times, readers have looked to his work as a lens through which they could witness America's role in a rapidly changing world. In this vivid and unforgettable memoir, Frankel chronicles the times of his extraordinary life as he experienced them...within the context of the news stories that defined an era.

On June 27, 2011, a deadly chemical accident took place inside the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas, where the company is headquartered. The company quickly covered it up although the spill left their employees injured, sick, and terrified. Over the years, Arkansas-based reporter Alice Driver was able to gain the trust of the immigrant workers who survived the accident. They rewarded her persistence by giving her total access to their lives.

Intimate and honest essays on motherhood, marriage, love, and acceptance. Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is White; her adopted child, Shiv, who is Black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues.

This anthology of popular American history presents the stories of nine incredible Irish immigrants as written by nine contemporary Irish-Americans. More than one in 10 Americans claims Irish ancestry and, with its celebrity contributors, Nine Irish Lives will have strong appeal for those listeners. It is also, though, a timely portrait of shared humanity. These are stories about immigrants - and in the tales of revolutionaries and visionaries, caretakers and unsung heroes, Nine Irish Lives reminds us of the values and the people that have shaped America.

A story of love, war, and life as a Jewish immigrant in the squalid factories and lively dance halls of New York’s Garment District in the 1930s, My Mother’s Wars is the memoir Lillian Faderman's mother was never able to write. The daughter delves into her mother's past to tell the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for America with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world: the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler’s deadly path.

Her dream had become reality: married to her lover, living in a luxurious home on the California coast where her sons would have opportunities that did not exist in her native Croatia, green card in hand so she could teach. Then it all fell apart: the unbridgeable rifts between her and her husband, having to live on her own in a country she barely knew, and, most terrifying, the discovery that her sons were technically in the country illegally and could be deported at a moment's notice.

Khabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions: What does it mean to belong, and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country?

Into the maelstrom of unprecedented contemporary debates about immigrants in the United States, this perfectly timed book gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like. Written as a "guide" for the newly arrived, and providing "practical information and advice", Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, reveals what those who settle here love about the country, what they miss about their homes, the cruelty of some Americans, and the unceasing generosity of others.

Entrepreneur extraordinaire, Nunzio Tumino’s drive to succeed was singular. He literally breathed the qualities that definitively separate the successful from the mega-successful. And now Tumino has released a new book called A Pocketful of Dreams. The stories of how Nunzio got from there to here define the success he garnered for both himself and his family, underpinned always by the supportive and ongoing partnership with his wife, Maria. And at every juncture, his word was the contract.