Immigration Bibliography

AFRICANS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS

Slavery
Philip Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (1967)
Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (originally published in 1789)

Twentieth Century
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1959)
Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land (1965)
Jay Davids, ed., Growing Up Black (1992)

ASIAN AMERICANS AND PACIFIC ISLANDERS

Chinese
Frank Chin, Donald Duk (1991)
(On the eve of the Chinese New Year in San Francisco's Chinatown, a 12 year old deals with his feelings for his cultural heritage).
Louis Chu, Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961)
(Set in New York's Chinatown after World War II, deals with a Chinese American veteran, his immigrant bride, and their marital problems)
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1977)
Him Mark Lai, ed., Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (1980)
(Poetry written by Chinese immigrants on Angel Island, carved into the walls of the wooden barracks where they were detained waiting for immigration inspection, 1910-1940)
Gus Lee, China Boy (1991)
(Wartime and postwar San Francisco, intermarriage, immigration, assimilation, confronting prejudice, and 1950s masculinity)
Ruthanne Lum McCunn, A Thousand Pieces of Gold: A Biographical Novel (1981)
(Brought to the West--East for her--as a picture bride)
Victor Nee, Longtime Californ' (1973)
Amy Tan, Joy Luck Club (1989)
Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950)

Filipinos
Carlos Bulason, America is in the Heart (1946)
(Filipino farm worker in early 20th century California)

Hawaiians
Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (1993)

Indians
Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories (1988)
(Short stories about Asian Indians)

Japanese
Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1981)
Lydia Minatoya, Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An Asian American Odyssey (1992)
John Okada, No-No Boy (1976)
(A Nisei who, interned during WWII, refused to be drafted and was sent to prison)
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Farewell to Mazanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment (1973)
Monica Itoi Sone, Nisei Daughter (1953)

Koreans
Kim Ronyoung, Clay Walls (1990)

Vietnamese
Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace (1989)

EUROPEAN ETHNICS

Eastern Europeans
Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace (1941)

Irish
John McElgun, Annie Reilly; or The Fortunes of an Irish Girl in New York (1873)
Mary Anne Sadlier, Elinor Preston; or, Scenes at Home and Abroad (1857)

Italians
Jerre Mangionne, Mount Allegro: A Memoir of Italian American Life (1943)

Jews
Mary Antin, Promised Land (1912)
Abraham Cahan, Rise of David Levinisky (1960)
Mike Gold, Jews Without Money (1930)
Henry Roth, Call It Sleep (1935)
Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers: A Novel: A Struggle Between Father of the Old World and a Daughter of the New (1925)

Polish
Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (1989)

Swedish
Vilhelm Moberg, The Emigrants (1951)

HISPANICS

Cubans
Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban (1992)

Mexicans
Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me Ultima (1972)
Raymond Barrio, The Plum Plum Pickers (1969)
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1988)
(Very evocative about gender and community)
Ernesto Galarza, Barrio Boy (1971)
Jesse Lopez de la Cruz in Kerber, Women's America
Ruben Navarrette, Jr., A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano (1993)
Richard Rodriguez, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (1992)
Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)
(Presents the story of his assimilation in American society as a child and young man)
Jose Antonio Villarreal, Pocho (1959)

Puerto Ricans
Esmeralda Santiago, When I was Puerto Rican (1993)
(Impact of immigration on identity, vivid descriptions of childhood in Puerto Rico and coming of age in New York City)

AMERICAN INDIANS

Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (1961)
Ignatia Broker, Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative (1983)
Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, Lakota Woman (1990)
Ella Cara Deloria, Waterlily (1988)
Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916)
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine (1993)
(Traces two Native American families through 70 years of struggle between traditional values and modern realities
Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)
Jim Harrison, Dalva (1988)
Frank Bird Linderman, Pretty Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows (1972)
Nancy Oestreich Lurie, ed., Mountain Wolf Woman: Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnegago Indian (1961)
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968)
N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969)
Polingaysi Qoyawayma, No Turning Back: A True Account of a Hopi Indian Girl's Struggle to Bridge the Gap Between the World of Her People and the World of the White Man (1964)
Patricia Riley, ed., Growing Up Native American (1993)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977)
(Impact of WWII on the lives of the men who fought it and returned to the reservation; takes a returning soldier through alcoholic degeneration into traditional religion and back as a whole person who embraces his Indianness as his true identity)
Luther Standing Bear, My People, the Sioux (1928)
Leo Stein, ed., Fragments of Autobiography (1974)
Ruth Underhill, The Autobiography of a Papago Woman (1936)
James Welsh, Fools Crow (1986)
(Evokes the worldview of a culture--the Blackfeet Indians in 1870--on the brink of destruction)
Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories (1921)