Immigrant Stories: Nonfiction

What's it like to move your whole life to a new place? Read these true stories, personal experiences, opinions, and history

Updated June 5, 2023
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Brown album : essays on exile and identity
Khakpour, Porochista
Paper Book
From the much-acclaimed novelist and essayist, a beautifully rendered, poignant collection of personal essays, chronicling immigrant and Iranian-American life in our contemporary moment. Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian...
Conditional citizens : on belonging in America
Lalami, Laila
Paper Book
A New York Times Editors' Choice * Best Book of the Year: Time, NPR, Bookpage, L.A. Times What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize­­-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely...
A map is only one story : twenty writers on immigration, family, and the meaning of home
Chung, Nicole
Paper Book
From rediscovering an ancestral village in China to experiencing the realities of American life as a Nigerian, the search for belonging crosses borders and generations. Selected from the archives ofCatapultmagazine, the essays inA Map Is Only One Storyhighlight the...
One mighty and irresistible tide : the epic struggle over American immigration, 1924-1965
Yang, Jia Lynn
Paper Book
The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from southern and eastern Europe and outright...
Separated : inside an American tragedy
Soboroff, Jacob
Paper Book
Now a major film by Academy Award winner Errol Morris THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The seminal book on the child-separation policy." --Rachel Maddow Featuring updated reporting and a new afterword: The award-winning NBC News correspondent lays bare the full truth...
Solito : a memoir
Zamora, Javier
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller * Read With Jenna Book Club Pick as seen on Today * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography * Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award A young poet tells the inspiring story of his ...

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