Immigrant Memoirs

Between 2 Worlds takes you through the life of an immigrant living a life of despair entrenched with a feeling of alienation. It's a heart-touching story that provides the readers with a glimpse of an immigrant surviving in western countries. It's Bahadir's tale of survival, living through the dungeons of Islamophobia and hate. This book provides an in-depth view of the life of an immigrant juggling the dilemma of identity.

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.

Intimate and honest essays on motherhood, marriage, love, and acceptance. Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is White; her adopted child, Shiv, who is Black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues.

Chasing My Dream: An African Immigrant Story in America is a story of courage, resilience, and perseverance in the face of life challenges. In this audiobook, Komi Afetse talks about his early years in Togo, West Africa, his adjustments to America, his life of service as a US Army Officer, and how he went from earning minimum wage to become financially independent in 14 years.

Far too often, immigrants are demonized and scapegoated, when they should be celebrated as heroes and revolutionaries. This audiobook strings together both triumphant and painful tales of immigrants who blazed trails and broke barriers in the fight for fundamental human rights. These are ordinary people who have used their own stories on the fight for citizenship to illustrate their triumphs and trials as immigrants in a new land.

A Mexican immigrant and rising star within the Christian community abandons his faith and comes out as a gay atheist in this exceptionally moving and soul-searching memoir. Fernando Alcántar recounts his incredible journey from poor Catholic boy on the dusty streets of Mexico to globetrotting missionary and high-profile Christian leader in the United States - where he eventually left his celebrated life behind to advocate for the liberating power of reason and equality.

After stowing away as a boy to come to America around 1905, an Italian immigrant sculptor later stands firm in his love for an unfaithful woman. Trapped behind enemy lines during World War II, he and his family go on to save over 600 Allied troops. This is the epic multi-generational, true story of Salvatore Cartaino Scarpitta and family. His story was only partially told in a 1953 episode of This Is Your Life. Salvatore’s role in WWII is just one of the many stories found throughout this book.

Enter the world of 'Damned Immigrants,' a compelling account of the modern immigrant experience. This story offers a unique perspective on the trials and triumphs of those who've embarked on a journey of hope, resilience, and adaptation. Discover the complex and diverse lives of these newcomers, and gain insight into the challenges they face as they navigate the uncharted territory of a new homeland.

In a world of rapidly changing values and traditions, an Indian woman enters into an arranged marriage to a man she barely knows and moves to distant Canada. Thirty-year-old Nina is an English teacher living alone in Jangpura, India. With diminishing prospects, she agrees to an arranged union. Her groom is the Indian-born Ananda, who lives in Canada. He once dreamed of becoming a doctor but settled for dentistry. He is lonely, and also in want of a spouse.

In The Snakehead, Patrick Radden Keefe reveals the inner workings of Cheng Chui Ping aka Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of undocumented immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them.

On December 7th, 1955, Kitty McInerney lay dying in a New York hospital bed. The 47-year-old Irish immigrant, suffering from severe toxemia, was preparing for an emergency c-section to give birth to her 17th child. As a Catholic priest performed her last rites, Kitty succumbed to a rare moment of quiet reflection.

This is a memoir about a man who left the comforts of a modern home in faraway India and did what he had to do to make a living and succeed in a new land. This book reaches out to immigrants and those who wish to immigrate. It reminds them that the journey toward a new, unchartered territory may be difficult, but to the brave, resilient, and hardworking, the promise of a safe and thriving life is not far behind. This book should give you a place to start planning your immigration. Now it's time to ask those questions, and hopefully, you get the answers you deserve.

What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question few in the West give much thought to, and yet to be a refugee - or an immigrant - is to grapple with your place in the world, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with the unfamiliar. With this comes the weight of the expectations (and fears and resentment) of those born in the host country; foremost is the burden of gratitude: to be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed.

The descendant of survivors of the Armenian genocide, Arlene Avakian was raised in America, where she could live free. But even with that freedom, she found herself a prisoner of both her family and society, denying her heritage along with her true sexuality. After marriage and motherhood, Arlene found herself exploring the growing women’s lib movement of the 1970s, coming to embrace the strength of her grandmother—known as the Lion Woman—and realizing her full potential and personhood.

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.

On a crisp January morning in 2000, Héctor E. Quiroga bid farewell to his native Colombia, with nothing but a suitcase and a dream of building a life in America. He embarked on a journey filled with challenges and victories, often grappling with a language he barely spoke, dream deferred, and jobs far removed from his aspirations. Prove Them Wrong: One Immigrant’s 10-Year Journey from Bankrupt to Millionaire is the inspirational story of an immigrant's pursuit of the American Dream – a trajectory fraught with unparalleled obstacles and exceptional triumphs.

When Ye Pei dreamed of Venice as a girl, she imagined a magical floating city of canals and gondola rides. And she imagined her mother, successful in her new life and eager to embrace the daughter she had never forgotten. But when Ye Pei arrives in Italy, she learns her mother works on a farm far from the city. Her only connection, a mean-spirited Chinese auntie, puts Ye Pei to work in a small-town café. Rather than giving up and returning to China, a determined Ye Pei takes on a grueling schedule.

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?

Numerous newspaper and magazine articles have talked about it, and now this riveting book, We All Wore Blue, is the true account of a youth soccer team in Washington state that transformed over several seasons into a team comprised largely of immigrants from around the globe, representing a myriad of different countries, most races, and major religions. The story tells how these immigrant boys and families bonded with the middle-class White kids and their families, coming together and dealing with numerous challenges, great adversity, and racism.

In this book, the author shares personal stories, captivating the listener with descriptions of her experiences and challenges as an African immigrant, an international student, and later, as a mother of three children. The quotes she chooses to use as openers for each letter reflect her background as an African anthropologist and spiritual leader. She sums up each missive with lessons she has learned during her decades of living in the United States. This book offers insight into the life a minoritized American immigrant from an internal perspective.