Immigrant Memoirs

Sudhir Venkatesh, acclaimed sociologist at Columbia University and author of Gang Leader for a Day, returns to the streets to connect the dots of New York's divergent economic worlds and crack the code of the city's underground economy. Based on Venkatesh's interviews with prostitutes and socialites, immigrants and academics, high end drug bosses and street-level dealers, Floating City exposes the underground as the city's true engine of social transformation and economic prosperity - revealing a wholly unprecedented vision of New York.

In these nine essays, Susan Lieberman is exploring The Country of Old, in which she finds herself a new immigrant. She examines the difficulties of leaving "that other place" and making sense of this new country. Lieberman's touch is light but her analysis of the challenges/opportunities of aging is provocative. "If we are not old, then we are dead," she notes. And if we are, indeed, not dead then how can we live well in this moment in our life span?

Somewhere in the Unknown World is a themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis, collected and told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet.

Valentin Chmerkovskiy, the world championship-winning and beloved Dancing with the Stars ballroom dancer invites fans into his life as never before, sharing the experiences, including the failures and successes, that have shaped him, from his early childhood in Ukraine to growing up as an immigrant in the US to his rise to international fame.

In Sicily, on March 12, 1909, four gunshots thundered in the night. Two men fled, and investigators soon discovered who they had killed: Giuseppe Petrosino, the legendary American detective whose exploits in New York were celebrated even in Italy. Veteran New York City journalist and historian Paul Moses explores the lives of the nationally celebrated detectives who followed in the slain Petrosino's footsteps as leaders of the New York City investigative squad: Anthony Vachris, Charles Corrao, and Michael Fiaschetti.

He signed up to sail on SS Rajputana as soon as he'd heard it was bound for Canada. By the time the ship reached port in Esquimalt, British Columbia, in November of 1939, his decision had already been made. He had reached the land of freedom, and if he were to ever provide a better life for his wife and children, he couldn't possibly return to Bombay. With a heart full of hope, and only four dollars in his pocket, he slipped away from his crew. This is the story of Gafoor Khan, an illegal immigrant and a courageous man.

No Smiling Allowed is a comedic take on life in the former Soviet Union, as an immigrant in America. Julia Bendis has compiled many years of funny stories about her old-fashioned and traditional Russian parents, their understanding of how life works in the United States, their hilarious adventures, and her own younger generation's view of what it was like to blend in as a weird-looking kid from Russia.

"Like the Wind I Go" is a sweeping memoir about identity and independence, as a young man grapples with his burgeoning adulthood and an ancient empire faces its final hours of existence. It’s 1978, and Iran is swept up in a revolutionary fever. Still in college, author Vahid Imani remains cautious, even as his friends and family celebrate a new vision for the country. The people demand democracy, but is that what awaits them? Then, a mysterious tragedy. Vahid stumbles upon the corpse of his missing neighbor, hanging from the beams of his warehouse. He’s just one of many acquaintances to...

Marvel’s newest recruit shares his own inspiring and unexpected origin story, ranging from China to the bright lights of Hollywood. An immigrant who battled everything from parental expectations to cultural stereotypes, Simu Liu struggled to forge a path for himself, rising from the ashes of a failed accounting career (yes, you read that right) to become Shang-Chi.

In 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much—but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot.

Sam Louie grew up torn between cultures as part of a first-generation Chinese immigrant family from Hong Kong living in a predominantly African American neighborhood in the United States. He experienced the duality of existence with the tension of two vastly different worldviews, his identity intertwined with the country he lives in and his ancestral ties. What traditions and cultural beliefs get preserved, what gets discarded, and what gets lost in translation? Beneath it all was the presence of three generations of addiction, trauma, and shame.

The star of Marvel’s first Asian superhero film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, tells his own origin story of being a Chinese immigrant, his battles with cultural stereotypes and his own identity, becoming a TV star and landing the role of a lifetime. In this honest, inspiring and relatable memoir, Simu Liu chronicles his family's journey from China to the bright lights of Hollywood with wit and humour.

Florent "Flo" Groberg was born in 1983 in the suburbs of Paris. When he was in middle school, his family moved to the US, and Flo became a naturalized citizen in 2001. After attending the University of Maryland, he joined the army in 2008 and deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. He deployed a second time in 2012. In August of that year, Flo was guarding a high-level US-Afghan delegation and noticed someone suspicious: a local man stumbling toward his patrol. Flo reacted quickly and ran to tackle the man - who was wearing a suicide vest - before he could reach the patrol.

After witnessing the beheading of his uncle, a very young Doc Ping and his family escaped from China on foot in fear for their lives. They left everything behind, including his father's position in the nationalist Chinese government and all of their possessions, and fled the country—first to Bangkok, and then to Taiwan. When Doc was nine, his father secretly arranged for him to travel on a freighter with 15 other civilians to the USA to live with the woman who helped resuscitate him from drowning a few years earlier.

Witty, sharp, and unflinching, I Named My Dog Pushkin will have fans of Samantha Irby and Jenny Lawson howling with laughter at Margarita’s catastrophes, her victories, and her near misses as she learns to grow as both a woman and an immigrant in a world that often doesn’t appreciate either.

Jorge Ramos, an Emmy award-winning journalist, Univision's longtime anchorman and widely considered the "voice of the voiceless" within the Latino community, was forcefully removed from an Iowa press conference in 2015 by then-candidate Donald Trump after trying to ask about his plans on immigration. In this personal manifesto, Ramos sets out to examine what it means to be a Latino immigrant, or just an immigrant, in present-day America. With current research and statistics, a journalist nose for a story, and his own personal experience, Ramos shows us the changing face of America.

A quintessential American dream story from a Mexican entrepreneur who shares the tale of building a multi-million-dollar business from scratch, complete with both success and failure, and always a vision of hope.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noe Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother. A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At 19, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories and his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala.

While sitting at a restaurant with two of my fellow authors, one asked me about my Sicilian background. I laughed and said, “All I know is, we always have sauce on Sunday.” My friends joined in the laughter, but I realized that I didn’t really know too much about the maternal part of my heritage. Something awoke inside of me and I had the desire to find out exactly from where I came. I began the quest for my roots by taking an ancestry DNA test. Within a few months, I had the surprise of my life. I discovered that my grandfather had a second sister, whom he left behind in Sicily. Who ...

Leaving a life marked by crippling setbacks and his father's doubt, in 1967 a 20-something doctor from India arrived in America with only five dollars and the desire to claim his American dream. Faced with an entirely new culture, racism, and the lasting effects of disabling childhood injuries, through hard work and perseverance he overcame all odds. Now having performed over 15,000 open-heart surgeries, more than nearly every surgeon in history, Dr. Singh reflects on his most memorable patients and his incredible personal life.