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Across the Mekong River

Elaine Russell · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

What Is the What

Dave Eggers · 475 pages

*What Is the What* is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children--the so-called Lost Boys--was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the Un

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural Identity
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The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini · 368 pages

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacri

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural Identity
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The Good Braider

Terry Farish · 224 pages

Follows Viola as she survives brutality in war-torn Sudan, makes a perilous journey, lives as a refugee in Egypt, and finally reaches Portland, Maine, where her quest for freedom and security is hampered by memories of past horrors and the traditions her mother and other Sudanese adults hold dear. Includes historical facts and a timeline of Sudan.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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We Need New Names

NoViolet Bulawayo · 304 pages

Whenever foreigners visit Paradise they always ask Darling and her friends to smile for the camera. Here are some of the things Darling and her friends have to smile about: stealing guavas, gifts from NGOs, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices. But they all want to go to the real paradise in America or Britain.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationRefugee ExperienceCultural Identity
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Do They Hear You When You Cry?

Fauziya Kassindja, Layli Miller Bashir, Fauziya Kasinga · 518 pages

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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The Red Umbrella

Christina Diaz Gonzalez · 284 pages

The Red Umbrella is the moving tale of a 14-year-old girl's journey from Cuba to America as part of Operation Pedro Pan--an organized exodus of more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, whose parents sent them away to escape Fidel Castro's revolution.In 1961, two years after the Communist revolution, Lucia Alvarez still leads a carefree life, dreaming of parties and her first crush. But when the so

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationComing of Age
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Nowhere in Africa: An Autobiographical Novel

Stefanie Zweig, Marlies Comjean · 303 pages

When the Nazi regime comes to power, Jewish attorney Walter Redlich flees Germany with his family and finds refuge in Kenya, where the family must learn to adapt to their new life.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural Identity
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The Free World

David Bezmozgis · 368 pages

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson

Bette Bao Lord · 169 pages

In 1947, a Chinese child comes to Brooklyn where she becomes Americanized at school, in her apartment building, and by her love for baseball.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityComing of Age
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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

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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Shooting Kabul

N.H. Senzai · 262 pages

Escaping from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, eleven-year-old Fadi and his family immigrate to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Fadi schemes to return to the Pakistani refugee camp where his little sister was accidentally left behind.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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The Refugees

Viet Thanh Nguyen · 224 pages

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural Identity
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The Radius of Us

Marie Marquardt · 295 pages

Told in alternating first person points of view, The Radius of Us is a story of love, sacrifice, and the journey from victim to survivor. It offers an intimate glimpse into the causes and devastating impact of Latino gang violence, both in the U.S. and in Central America, and explores the risks that victims take when they try to start over. Most importantly, The Radius of Us shows how people strug

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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Mãn

Kim Thuy · 139 pages

"Oriente-Occidente. Saigón-Montreal. Es el trayecto de Mãn, una joven refugiada a la que su madre quiere proteger casándola con el propietario de un restaurante vietnamita también exiliado en Canadá. Mãn ha aprendido a crecer sin sueños, a vivir sin necesitar apenas nada en apariencia. Pero en la cocina, cuando reinterpreta las sencillas recetas de su infancia, las emociones se desatan: el jugo de

ImmigrationRefugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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Daughter of Fortune

Isabel Allende · 416 pages

"Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaiso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquin Andiera, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen pre

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityComing of Age
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Everything Sad Is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

Dinaw Mengestu · 234 pages

Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers beat his father to the point of certain death, selling off his parents' jewelry to pay for passage to the United States. Now he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. His only companions are two fellow African immigrants who share his feelings of f

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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The Arrival

Shaun Tan · 128 pages

In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and try to support his family back home. His new country is full of strange arquitectural wonders, fantastic animals and other immigrants with stories of why they left home.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural Identity
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Inside Out & Back Again

Thanhha Lai · 274 pages

Inside Out & Back Again is a verse novel by Thanhha Lai. The book was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and one of the two Newbery Honors. The novel was based on her first year in the United States, as a ten-year-old girl who spoke no English in 1975.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural Identity
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Brooklyn

Colm Toibin · 262 pages

In Ireland in the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one of many who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving behind her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, t

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityComing of Age
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Lucky Broken Girl

Ruth Behar · 243 pages

In 1960s New York, fifth-grader Ruthie, a Cuban-Jewish immigrant, must rely on books, art, her family, and friends in her multicultural neighborhood when an accident puts her in a body cast.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityComing of Age
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Foreign Soil

Maxine Beneba Clarke · 265 pages

ImmigrationRefugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistCultural 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 ProtagonistComing of AgeCultural Identity
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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.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityComing of Age
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