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No One Can Pronounce My Name

Rakesh Satyal · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Secret Daughter

Shilpi Somaya Gowda · 352 pages

On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to a baby girl. But in a culture that favors sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away. It is a decision that will haunt her and her husband for the rest of their lives, even after the arrival of their cherished son.Halfway around the globe, Somer, an American doctor, decides to a

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityCharacter-Driven
❤️

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 IdentityCharacter-Driven
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The Year of the Runaways

Sunjeev Sahota · 496 pages

The Year of the Runaways tells of the bold dreams and daily struggles of an unlikely family thrown together by circumstance. Thirteen young men live in a house in Sheffield, each in flight from India and in desperate search of a new life. Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his past in Bihar; and Avtar has a secret that binds him to protect the choatic Randeep. Randeep, in

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationContemporary Fiction
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Digging to America

Anne Tyler · 304 pages

Two families awaiting the arrival of their adopted infant daughters from Korea meet at the airport. The families lives become interwined after the Donaldsons, a young American couple invite the Yazdan's, Maryam, her son and his Iranian American wife to an arrival party, which becomes an annual event. Maryam, who came to this country thirty-five years earlier, feels her values threatened when she i

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityContemporary Fiction
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The Invitation

Anne Cherian · 295 pages

Vikram, a successful first-generation Indian immigrant, invites three of his college friends to his son's graduation from MIT--an event where real life collides with unmet expectations.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityContemporary Fiction
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The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai · 336 pages

In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judgeʼs cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are often on his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. Kiran Desaiʼs brilliant novel, pu

ImmigrationCultural IdentityImmigrant ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
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How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Julia Alvarez · 304 pages

It\'s a long way from Santo Domingo to the Bronx, but if anyone can go the distance, it\'s the Garcia girls. Four lively latinas plunged from a pampered life of privilege on an island compound into the big-city chaos of New York, they rebel against Mami and Papi\'s old-world discipline and embrace all that America has to offer.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityCharacter-Driven
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Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng · 300 pages

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unabl

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityCharacter-Driven
❤️

In the Country

Mia Alvar · 347 pages

"Mia Alvar's ... debut gives us a vivid ... picture of the Filipino diaspora: exiles and emigrants and wanderers uprooting their families to begin new lives in the Middle East and America--and, sometimes, turning back"--

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityCharacter-Driven
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Black Cake

Charmaine Wilkerson · 385 pages

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationCharacter-Driven
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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 ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityContemporary Fiction
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The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri · 406 pages

Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives--Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America--until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds.

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityMultiple POV
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Behold the Dreamers

Imbolo Mbue · 408 pages

When Jende Jonga journeys to New York City from Cameroon in 2004 on a visitors' visa in hopes of obtaining a green card, he's sure his life will only improve. After saving up enough money to bring over Jende's wife, Neni, and six-year-old son, the family moves into an apartment in Harlem. Then Jende hits the jackpot in 2007 when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a wealthy Lehman Bro

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationContemporary Fiction
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The Wangs vs. the World

Jade Chang · 368 pages

"A hilarious debut novel about a wealthy but fractured Chinese immigrant family that had it all, only to lose every last cent--and about the road trip they take across America that binds them back together. Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is t

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityContemporary Fiction
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Arranged Marriage: Stories

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni · 320 pages

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationCharacter-Driven
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A Life Apart

Neel Mukherjee · 352 pages

Ritwik Ghosh, twenty-two and recently orphaned, finds the chance to start a new life when he arrives in England from Calcutta. But Oxford holds little of the salvation Ritwik is looking for. Instead, he moves to London, where he drops out of official existence into a shadowy hinterland of illegal immigrants. The story that Ritwik writes to stave off his loneliness begins to find ghostly echoes in

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityCharacter-Driven
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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

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityCharacter-Driven
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The Mortifications

Derek Palacio · 310 pages

In 1980, a rural Cuban family is torn apart during the Mariel Boat-lift. Uxbal Encarnación--father, husband, political insurgent--refuses to leave behind the revolutionary ideals and lush tomato farms of his sun-soaked homeland. His wife Soledad takes young Isabel and Ulises hostage and flees with them to America, leaving behind Uxbal for the promise of a better life. But instead of settling with

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationCharacter-Driven
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Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Helen Simonson · 394 pages

You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major P

Cultural IdentityImmigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCharacter-Driven
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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 IdentityImmigrationContemporary Fiction
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The Story Hour

Thrity Umrigar · 317 pages

An experienced psychologist, Maggie carefully maintains emotional distance from her patients. But when she meets a young Indian woman who tried to kill herself, her professional detachment disintegrates. Cut off from her family in India, Lakshmi is desperately lonely and trapped in a loveless marriage to a domineering man who limits her world to their small restaurant and grocery store. Determined

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityContemporary Fiction
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Chicago

Alaa Al Aswany · 342 pages

Post-September 11 Chicago becomes the site of a cultural collision of Egyptian and American lives, including a Ph. D. candidate whose traditional upbringing is challenged by her American experiences, and an émigré whose western values are countered by questions about his daughter's honor.

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationCharacter-Driven
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Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge

Ezzedine C. Fishere, `zldyn shkry fshyr · 168 pages

Immigrant ProtagonistImmigrationCultural IdentityCharacter-Driven
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The Mango Bride

Marivi Soliven Blanco

Immigrant ProtagonistCultural IdentityImmigrationContemporary Fiction

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