A diverse set of stories about finding a home in a new country.
A debut essay collection about the immigrant experience in America.
Authors Sohan and Adin showcase a wide variety of experiences in this book; some are about relatively recent arrivals to the United States, while others are about people who have spent decades stateside, and they hail from such places as Afghanistan, Kosovo, India, Nigeria, England, and Mexico. However, the stories’ narrators aren’t clearly identified, and it would have been helpful to know, at a minimum, their full names. (The acknowledgements thank “Naseer, Parag, Myra, JC, Roselin, Azim, Sam, Benedict, Liti, Francisco, Ifeyinwa & Chidiebere, Lisian, Molly and Jose for sharing your life with us.”) However, the essays, while sometimes-unpolished, employ unique and effective narrative voices, and each adds a valuable contribution to the book as a whole. In “I Saw a Ripe Mango I’d Like to Pluck,” a Nigerian couple share the story of their long-distance courtship, while “I Love You Even Though You Are Old School, Mom!” is about the cultural gaps between generations. The English-born author of “I am Moo-Hay and French Because of My English Accent!” contends with more culture shock in the transition from Cornwall to Ohio than many non-English-speaking immigrants do (“It felt like I was from a different planet and was being introduced to the concept of washer and dryer”). Several themes repeat throughout this truly wide-ranging collection: immigrants who learned English in their home countries finding American speech to be a foreign language (“I think there is a difference between knowing a language and having an accent”); families finding ways to strengthen bonds, despite distance; and people who immigrated decades ago thinking that it’s more difficult for today’s immigrants to succeed. Many essays effectively express an ongoing sense of difference (“I am reminded each time of being a refugee, except now I am an American passport-holding refugee”), although other authors express a desire to assimilate (“I’d rather be in India if I were to live in a place that felt like India”).
A diverse set of stories about finding a home in a new country.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62865-552-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Motivational Press
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.
The debut book from “one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard.”
In addition to delivering memorable portraits of undocumented immigrants residing precariously on Staten Island and in Miami, Cleveland, Flint, and New Haven, Cornejo Villavicencio, now enrolled in the American Studies doctorate program at Yale, shares her own Ecuadorian family story (she came to the U.S. at age 5) and her anger at the exploitation of hardworking immigrants in the U.S. Because the author fully comprehends the perils of undocumented immigrants speaking to journalist, she wisely built trust slowly with her subjects. Her own undocumented status helped the cause, as did her Spanish fluency. Still, she protects those who talked to her by changing their names and other personal information. Consequently, readers must trust implicitly that the author doesn’t invent or embellish. But as she notes, “this book is not a traditional nonfiction book….I took notes by hand during interviews and after the book was finished, I destroyed those notes.” Recounting her travels to the sites where undocumented women, men, and children struggle to live above the poverty line, she reports her findings in compelling, often heart-wrenching vignettes. Cornejo Villavicencio clearly shows how employers often cheat day laborers out of hard-earned wages, and policymakers and law enforcement agents exist primarily to harm rather than assist immigrants who look and speak differently. Often, cruelty arrives not only in economic terms, but also via verbal slurs and even violence. Throughout the narrative, the author explores her own psychological struggles, including her relationships with her parents, who are considered “illegal” in the nation where they have worked hard and tried to become model residents. In some of the most deeply revealing passages, Cornejo Villavicencio chronicles her struggles reconciling her desire to help undocumented children with the knowledge that she does not want "kids of my own." Ultimately, the author’s candor about herself removes worries about the credibility of her stories.
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-59268-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
