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🧲 Books like this

The Secret Side of Empty

Maria E. Andreu · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok · 293 pages

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationBelongingCultural Identity
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House of Sand and Fog

Andre Dubus III · 365 pages

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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American Street

Ibi Zoboi · 324 pages

When Fabiola's mother is detained upon their arrival to the United States, Fabiola must navigate her loud American cousins, the grittiness of Detroit's west side, a new school, and a surprising romance all on her own.

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistTeen ProtagonistCultural Identity
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Something in Between

Melissa de la Cruz · 432 pages

Jasmine de los Santos has always done what's expected of her. Pretty and popular, she's studied hard, made her Filipino immigrant parents proud and is ready to reap the rewards in the form of a full college scholarship.

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistTeen ProtagonistCultural Identity
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The Book of Unknown Americans

Cristina Henriquez · 294 pages

After their daughter Maribel suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras leave Mexico 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

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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Refugee Boy

Benjamin Zephaniah · 224 pages

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingTeen Protagonist
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Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 588 pages

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented li

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan · 332 pages

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have neve

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationBelongingCultural Identity
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Angel Cake

Cathy Cassidy · 256 pages

Anya used to dream of moving to Britain to start a brand-new life. But as she sits in a school where nobody understands her: she dreams of Polish summer skies and the place where she once belonged. Then Anya meets bad boy Dan. He’s no angel: but she’s sure there’s a sweeter side to him. And when things begin to fall apart: Anya realizes she’s not alone – how can Dan be such bad news when being wit

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationBelongingContemporary Fiction
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Everything Sad Is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationBelongingCultural Identity
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The Sun Is Also a Star

Nicola Yoon · 384 pages

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story. Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

Faiza Guene · 179 pages

Struggling with an overworked mother, an absent father, and the challenges of life within the infamous Paradise projects of suburban Paris, fifteen-year-old French Muslim Doria endures a parade of social workers, experiences a first kiss, and assumes a philosophical outlook regarding her circumstances.

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistTeen ProtagonistCultural Identity
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North of Beautiful

Justina Chen

As he continued to stare, I wanted to point to my cheek and remind him, But you were the one who wanted this, remember? You're the one who asked-and I repeat-Why not fix your face? It's hard not to notice Terra Cooper. She's tall, blond, and has an enviable body. But with one turn of her cheek, all people notice is her unmistakably "flawed" face. Terra secretly plans to leave her stifling small

BelongingImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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American Born Chinese

Gene Luen Yang · 240 pages

Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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Shanghai Girls

Lisa See · 417 pages

In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father's prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Th

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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Esperanza Rising

Pam Munoz Ryan · 262 pages

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

Marjane Satrapi · 187 pages

187 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmGN500L Lexile

Immigrant ProtagonistBelongingTeen ProtagonistCultural Identity
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The Other Side of the World

Stephanie Bishop · 269 pages

In the tradition of Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work or Maggie O'Farrell's The Hand That First Held Mine comes a complex, tender and gorgeously written novel of parenthood, love and marriage that is impossible to put down. Cambridge 1963. Charlotte struggles to reconnect with the woman she was before children, and to find the time and energy to paint. Her husband, Henry, cannot face the thought of anot

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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Exit West

Mohsin Hamid · 231 pages

"In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet-- sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors-- doo

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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This Is How You Lose Her

Junot Diaz · 240 pages

This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love, as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationBelongingCultural Identity
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The Leavers

Lisa Ko · 392 pages

"One morning, Deming Guo's mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. Set in New York and China, the Leavers is the story of how one boy com

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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Unaccustomed Earth

Jhumpa Lahiri · 352 pages

These eight stories by beloved and bestselling author Jhumpa Lahiri take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. Here they enter the worlds of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. Rich with the signature gifts that have established Jhumpa Lahiri as one of our most essential writers,

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural Identity
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A Step from Heaven

An Na · 160 pages

A young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust to life in America.

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistYoung AdultCultural Identity
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Laurinda

Alice Pung · 352 pages

Immigrant ProtagonistBelongingCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist

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