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The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf

Mohja Kahf · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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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

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentitySelf-Discovery
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Everything Sad Is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages

Cultural IdentityImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationSelf-Discovery
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White Teeth

Zadie Smith · 480 pages

One of the most talked about fictional debuts of recent years, WHITE TEETH is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityReligious Identity
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Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides · 544 pages

A unique coming of age story. While the main character in this novel is dealing with gender identity issues the main focus of this brilliantly written story is the confusion we all face as we grow into the person we were meant to be. The reader finds himself identifying with the main character's experiences. This is a brilliantly written story. The prose is honest in a way that few authors dare t

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityComing of Age
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A Good Country

Laleh Khadivi · 256 pages

"Laguna Beach, California, 2009. Alireza Courdee, a fourteen-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. He loses his virginity, takes up surfing, and sneaks away to all-night raves. For the first time, Reza--now Rez--feels l

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationReligious Identity
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The Golem and the Jinni

Helene Wecker · 512 pages

In The Golem and the Jinni, a chance meeting between mythical beings takes readers on a dazzling journey through cultures in turn-of-the-century New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationSelf-DiscoveryCultural Identity
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz · 352 pages

Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Díaz immerses us

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityComing of Age
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Sour Heart

Jenny Zhang · 310 pages

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityComing of Age
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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 ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationComing of Age
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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

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationComing of Age
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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

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityComing of Age
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Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok · 293 pages

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityComing of Age
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Kay's Lucky Coin Variety

Ann Y.K. Choi · 288 pages

Mary, a Korean girl growing up with her brother above her parents' convenience store in 1980s Toronto, is caught between the traditional culture of her parents and her desire to be a Canadian.

ImmigrationCultural IdentityImmigrant ProtagonistComing of Age
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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.

ImmigrationCultural IdentityImmigrant ProtagonistComing of Age
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong · 256 pages

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once

ImmigrationImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityComing of Age
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The Bamboo Stalk

Saud Alsanousi, s`wd lsn`wsy · 377 pages

Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and with the rumble of war growing ever louder, Rashid bows to family and social pressure, and sends her back home with her

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityReligious Identity
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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

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationSelf-Discovery
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Brick Lane

Monica Ali · 422 pages

Monica Ali's debut novel, Brick Lane, was published in 2003 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name. Carrying into her adult years a sense of fatalism instilled during her hardscrabble birth, Nazneen finds herself married off to a man twice her age and moved to London, where she begins to wonder if she has a say in her own destiny.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityReligious Identity
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American Dervish

Ayad Akhtar · 357 pages

A young Pakistani boy, whose parents left the fundamentalists behind when they came to America, finds transformation and a path to happiness through a family friend, Mina, who shows him the beauty and power of the Quran.

Immigrant ProtagonistReligious IdentityCultural IdentityComing of Age
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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 ProtagonistCultural IdentitySelf-Discovery
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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

Marjane Satrapi · 187 pages

187 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmGN500L Lexile

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityReligious IdentityComing of Age
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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

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationComing of Age
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The Boston Girl

Anita Diamant · 322 pages

A story "about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's in

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationComing of Age
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Religious IdentityImmigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentitySelf-Discovery
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