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Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon
Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorStealing Buddha's Dinner
Bich Minh Nguyen · 272 pages
As a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Nguyen is filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, and in the pre-PC-era Midwest (where the Jennifers and Tiffanys reign supreme), the desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food. More exotic- seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialties, the campy, preservative-filled "delicacies" of mai
God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir
John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney · 295 pages
"Lost Boy" John Bul Dau's harrowing experience surviving the brutal horrors of Sudanese civil war and his adjustment to life in modern America is chronicled in this inspiring memoir and featured in an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Movingly written, the book traces Dau's journey through hunger, exhaustion, terror, and violence as he fled his homeland, dodging ambushes, massacres
Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
Firoozeh Dumas · 205 pages
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a
American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot
Craig Ferguson · 332 pages
In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark-as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer.To numb the pain of failur
Reaching Out
Francisco Jimenez · 196 pages
Leaving his home in a migrant community, Francisco sets off for college, carrying memories of years of poverty and prejudice.
Do They Hear You When You Cry?
Fauziya Kassindja, Layli Miller Bashir, Fauziya Kasinga · 518 pages
Paper Daughter: A Memoir
M. Elaine Mar · 292 pages
When she was five years old, M. Elaine Mar and mother emigrated from Hong Kong to Denver to join her father in a community more Chinese than American, more hungry than hopeful. While working with her family in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant and living in the basement of her aunt's house, Mar quickly masters English and begins to excel in school. But as her home and school life - Chinese trad
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
Yeonmi Park, Maryanne Vollers · 288 pages
"'I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea.' Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn't even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her life, that if she and her family stayed behind they would die--from starvation, or disease, or even execution. This book is t
Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations
Ayaan Hirsi Ali · 277 pages
"In this highly personal follow-up to Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali examines the high cost of freedom - estrangement from her family and country, the loud criticism of her by many Muslims (some of them women), the 24-hour security which came as a result of death threats, and her struggle to come to terms with an often lonely independence. She records the painful reconciliation with her beloved father,
When I Was Puerto Rican
Esmeralda Santiago · 274 pages
Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she
The Book of My Lives
Aleksandar Hemon · 214 pages
"Aleksandar Hemon's lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed with street soccer with his casually multi-ethnic group of friends, resentment of his younger sister, and occasional trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father, and a young man's life is about poking at the pretensions of the city's elders with American music, bad poetry, and slightly
The Cooked Seed: A Memoir
Anchee Min · 361 pages
From Anchee Min, the author of the internationally bestselling memoir "Red Azalea"--The eagerly awaited sequel, in which she comes to America to find her way, her voice, and her love.
Brother, I'm Dying
Edwidge Danticat · 288 pages
From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her "second father," when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who sh
A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey
Leila Ahmed · 318 pages
Leila Ahmed grew up in Cairo in the 1940s and '50s in a family that was eagerly and passionately political. Although many in the Egyptian upper classes were firmly opposed to change, the Ahmeds were proud supporters of independence. But when the Revolution arrived, the family's opposition to Nasser's policies led to persecutions that would throw their lives into turmoil and set their youngest chil
Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey from War‐Torn Syria in a Wheelchair
Nujeen Mustafa · 312 pages
This book tells the inspiring true story of a remarkable young hero: Nujeen Mustafa, a teenager born with cerebral palsy, whose harrowing journey from war-ravaged Syria to Germany in a wheelchair is a breathtaking tale of fortitude, grit, and hope that lends a face to the greatest humanitarian issue of our time, the Syrian refugee crisis.For millions around the globe, sixteen-year-old Nujeen Musta
Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard
Mawi Asgedom, Dave Berger · 167 pages
An autobiography of a boy who, at the age of three, fled civil war in Ethiopia by walking with his mother and brother to a Sudanese refugee camp, and later moved to Chicago and earned a scholarship to Harvard University. Includes recipes and discussion questions
How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child
Sandra Uwiringiyimana, Abigail Pesta · 296 pages
The author shares the story of her survival during the Gatumba massacre, despite losing her mother and sister, and how after moving to America she found healing through art and activism.
Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan
John Bul Dau, Martha Arual Akech · 128 pages
The Distance Between Us
Reyna Grande · 352 pages
Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart
James R. Doty · 276 pages
The author relates how a chance encounter in a magic shop with a woman who taught him exercises to ease his sufferings and manifest his greatest desires gave him a glimpse of the relationship between the brain and the heart, and drove him to explore the neuroscience of compassion and altruism.
Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child
Elva Trevino Hart · 236 pages
Autobiography. Latino/a Studies. BAREFOOT HEART is a vividly told autobiographical account of the life of a child growing up in a family of migrant farm workers. Elva Trevino Hart was born in south Texas to Mexican immigrants and spent her childhood moving back and forth between Texas and Minnesota, eventually leaving that world to earn a master's degree in computer science/engineering. This is a
Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt
Jean Naggar · 373 pages