The Penguin Book of Migration Literature

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF MIGRATION LITERATURE by Dohra Ahmad, a professor of English at St. John’s University, is split into four sections: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, and Returns, plus a foreword by award-winning author Edwidge Danticat. Honestly, I have been very excited about this book and have several teachers who may consider using it with their classes. The selections here are varied – in terms of genre (poetry, essay, memoir, story); in terms of geography (to/from countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia) and in terms of time (ranging from colonial times to the 21st century). As a result, there is plenty of choice for sparking student interest and adding to the curriculum. Many of the authors (e.g., Mohsin Hamid, Julie Otsuka, Salman Rushdie and Marjane Satrapi to name just a few) will be ones students already know and read or ones to whom they should be introduced. Booklist says, “Recommended for teens: The diversity of viewpoints and genres makes for an invaluable introduction to the personal dimensions of global immigration.” I am truly looking forward to working with teachers and to developing projects related to these readings which deal with issues like the motivations for migrating, the reality (and sometimes disappointment) of reaching a destination, the different experiences for children and parents, and the multi-directional nature of movement.  Thank you to Penguin and to Dohra Ahmad for compiling the much needed collection (accompanied by almost twenty pages of suggestions for further reading and viewing) in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF MIGRATION LITERATURE.

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

SEARCHING FOR SYLVIE LEE by Jean Kwok (Girl in Translation) is her latest, much anticipated novel about two sisters born after their parents immigrated to New York City from China.  Sylvie is the elder sister by several years and she was actually raised by cousins and a grandmother in the Netherlands until age nine when she joined the family in New York, helping care for Amy, a then-two-year-old toddler. 

Now an adult, Sylvie returns to the Netherlands to be with her terminally ill Grandmother, but disappears after her Grandmother’s death. That prompts Amy to fly to Europe, but the police are relatively unconcerned, the cousins are kind of mean and uncaring and Amy struggles with language differences as she tries to find Sylvie.  

There’s some menacing suspense in the air and obvious questions about whom Amy should trust, but the story moves slowly.  Flashbacks told by Sylvie alternate with Amy’s recounting of her search and with their mother’s thoughts. SEARCHING FOR SYLVIE LEE uses family relationships, secrets, and assumptions (including some racial and immigrant stereotypes) to show how little we really know each other. Kwok’s novel received a starred review from Booklist. 

A Good Provider is One Who Leaves by Jason DeParle

A GOOD PROVIDER IS ONE WHO LEAVES by Jason DeParle is a non-fiction work that deals with “One Family and Migration in the 21st Century.” DeParle, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, builds on his decades long acquaintance with Tita Comodas to tell her family’s story of life in the Philippines and assimilation by her daughter (Rosalie) and grandchildren in the United States.  He was able to immerse himself in their experience – recently (beginning in 2012) following shifts at work, observing the children in classrooms and having nearly daily contact for a few years. DeParle says, “[the family’s] experiences across three generations can only be understood as part of a broader epoch of migration that is transforming much of the world.” 

In an accessible and engaging manner, he splits the book into two parts: There and Here, combining anecdotes about Rosalie’s becoming a nurse in the Philippines (and working in Saudi Arabia and UAE before moving to Texas) with immigration facts and context. Roughly fifteen percent of DeParle’s book is devoted to extensive notes and a helpful index. The facts that he relates in the prologue alone are pretty amazing: consider that one in four children in the United States is an immigrant or a child of one; or that there are 258 million migrants around the world, assuming an equal size (if not bigger) population back home that they support, this group of half a billion would together form the world’s third largest country. DeParle writes, “my own light bulb moment came in learning that remittances – the sums migrants send home – are three times the world’s foreign aid budgets combined.”  A GOOD PROVIDER IS ONE WHO LEAVES received starred reviews from Booklist (“family story [that] will captivate YAs interested in immigration and globalization”), Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. For more of his observations follow the link to an interview on NPR.

A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib

A PURE HEART by Rajia Hassib received well-deserved starred reviews from both Booklist and Kirkus. This is the contemporary story of two Egyptian sisters.  One, Fayrouz, chooses to be called Rose and is an archeologist who marries an American journalist, studies at Columbia University and eventually works at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The other sister, Gameela, is more obviously religious (for example, she wears a hijab), harbors a number of secrets, and is killed in a suicide bombing. Hassib uses flashbacks to develop the characters and motivations of both sisters. She deftly weaves in questions of fate and identity: [Rose] “thinks that maybe there are multiple versions of her, too, just as there are multiple versions of him and multiple versions of Gameela, and that her different Roses will have to learn to co-exist, that Gameela’s sister and Mark’s wife cannot go on believing they are enemies …” and of faith: “so much of faith as she [Gameela] understood it lay in a constant struggle to improve oneself, in the true meaning of jihad as an ongoing striving to be better, to do better, to let go of egotistic, selfish notions….”   A PURE HEART is very informative about Egyptian culture and history; plus, this novel explores so much more, including family relationships, sibling jealousy, dissent, poverty, privilege, religion, the role of women, guilt, after-life and death. This would be an excellent title for our Global Voices students as well as adventurous book groups.