WRPR 162: Immigration and Representation (HC): Finding Books

This collection presents 30 stories that reveal the initial adjustments of immigrants, the challenges of forming relationships, the political nuances of being Arab American, the vision directed towards homeland, and the ongoing search for balance and identity. Use the Project Muse link for a fully downloadable ebook.

Set in the summer of 1979 at the height of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, Farewell, Mama Odessa is an autobiographical novel whose intertwined story lines follow a variety of people--dissidents, victims of ethnic discrimination, and black marketeers among them--as they bid farewell to their beloved hometown of Odessa and make their way to the U. S.

Grieving for Guava revels in the unbroken ties between past and future, Havana and Miami, and recounts the unintended generational costs of immigration. The stories explore the lives of Cuban refugees and capture the heartache and hope that are common in the immigrant experience.

This poignant short novel follows North Korean refugee Loh Kiwan to a place where he doesn't speak the language or understand the customs. His story of hardship and determination is gradually revealed in flashbacks by the narrator, Kim, a writer for a South Korean TV show. She traces his progress from North Korea to Brussels to London as he struggles to make his way and find a home.

As a blizzard blankets the northeast, the Farrah family eagerly awaits the arrival of Eva, a cousin visiting from Lebanon after a long absence. Over the course of several days, while Eva is stranded in New York City, Chehade's nuanced story unfolds in the reminiscences and anxieties of each family member. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

In this short story collection, Sri Lankan immigrants grapple with events that challenge perspectives and alter lives. A volunteer faces memories of wartime violence when she meets a cantankerous old lady on a Meals on Wheels route. A maidservant challenges class divisions when she becomes an American professor's wife. These and other tales explore the immigrant experience with a piercing authenticity.

A fascinatingly diverse anthology of the literature of exile, from the myths of Ancient Egypt to contemporary poetry.

Offering the first interdisciplinary study of refugees in the Caribbean, Central America, and the United States, Asylum Speakers relates current theoretical debates about hospitality and cosmopolitanism to the actual conditions of refugees. In doing so, the author weighs the questions of truth value associated with various modes of witnessing to explore the function of testimonial discourse in constructing refugee subjectivity in New World cultural and political formations.

Written and recorded by people from Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, the texts presented here reflect the dualities that have characterized the Hispanic immigrant experience in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century, set always against a longing for homeland.

This text offers an account of the ways in which contemporary American fiction has been shaped by the successive waves of immigrants to reach U.S. shores in the past 50 years. It focuses on Holocaust survivors, Chicanos, Latinos, African Caribbeans and Asian Americans. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

The celebrated Nigerian writer Tanure Ojaide relates here his experience of living in the United States where he has been based teaching and writing since 1996. Less a purely personal tale and more a story of the many other African immigrants in the United States Ojaide in the text uses "we" to speak collectively for a traditionally communal society now residing in an individualistic setting.

A day after N. first crossed the U.S. border from Mexico, he was caught and then released onto the streets of Tijuana. Undeterred, N. crawled back through a tunnel to San Diego, where he entered the United States forever. "Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant" is his timely and compelling memoir of building a new life in America. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Drawing upon a personal collection of more than 300 letters exchanged between her parents and other family members across the U.S.-Mexico border, Chavez-Garcia recreates and gives meaning to the hope, fear, and longing migrants experienced in their everyday lives both "here" and "there". This account ranges from the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s to the emergence of Silicon Valley in the late 1960s.

Collected here are 15 first-person narratives written by refugees who left Vietnam as children and later enrolled as students at the University of California, where they studied with Sucheng Chan. She has provided a comprehensive introduction to their autobiographical accounts. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

In this remarkable memoir, Tung Pok Chin casts light on the largely hidden experience of those Chinese who immigrated to this country with false documents during the exclusion era. Although scholars have pieced together their history, first-person accounts are rare and fragmented; many of the so-called "Paper Sons" lived out their lives in silent fear of discovery. Chin's story speaks for the many Chinese who worked in urban laundries and restaurants, but it also introduces an unusually articulate man's perspective on becoming Chinese American.

This book provides an examination of the lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our food system. An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer, Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health. Holmes lived with indigenous families in Mexico and in farm labor camps in the U.S. This "embodied anthropology" shows how inequalities and suffering come to be perceived as normal. Use the JSTOR or ACLS links for fully downloadable ebooks.

For two decades, Dr. Danielle Ofri has cared for patients at Bellevue, the oldest public hospital in the country and a crossroads for the world’s cultures. Here she introduces us to her patients, who have braved language barriers, religious and racial divides, and the difficulties of exile in order to access quality health care. See more

Jusionyte's firsthand experience as an emergency responder provides the background for her gripping examination of the politics of injury and rescue in the militarized region surrounding the US-Mexico border. Operating in this area, firefighters and paramedics are torn between their mandate as frontline state actors and their responsibility as professional rescuers, between the limits of law and pull of ethics.

Abel's revealing account provides a critical lens through which to view both the contemporary debate about immigration and the U.S. response to the emergent global tuberculosis epidemic. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Can the recent influx of immigrants successfully enter the mainstream of American life, or will many of them fail to thrive and become part of a permanent underclass? Achieving Anew examines immigrant life in school, at work, and in communities and demonstrates that recent immigrants and their children do make substantial progress over time, both within and between generations.

Unlike the 1930s, when the U.S. tragically failed to open its doors to Jews fleeing Nazism, the country admitted over 3 million refugees during the Cold War. This reversal gave rise to intense battles, pitting advocates against determined opponents. This study of American refugee affairs from the midcentury to the present shows the reasons behind the remarkable changes to American policy. Use the JSTOR link for a fully downloadable ebook.

Many of America's greatest artists, scientists, investors, educators, and entrepreneurs have come from abroad. Rather than suffering from the "brain drain" of talented and educated individuals emigrating, the United States has benefited greatly over the years from the "brain gain" of immigration. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Golash-Boza uses the stories of 147 deportees to explore the racialized and gendered dimensions of mass deportation in the United States, showing how this crisis is embedded in economic restructuring, neoliberal reforms, and the disproportionate criminalization of black and Latino men.

Taking as its focal point the Trump administration's decision to rescind Obama-era DACA protection, Dreams Derailed delves into the economic, political, and social factors that inform the public conversation about immigration, making a clear case for the many benefits of inclusive policies and the protection of undocumented youths.

Throughout history, migrants have fueled the engine of human progress. Their movement has sparked innovation, spread ideas, relieved poverty, and laid the foundations for a global economy. In a world more interconnected than ever before, the number of people with the means and motivation to migrate will only increase.

Zayas draws on his extensive work as a mental health clinician to present how immigration policy subverts children's rights, harms their mental health, and leaves lasting psychological trauma. Children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents have been silenced and their stories largely overlooked in the broader debates about immigration policy.

On both sides of the Atlantic, restrictive immigration policies have been framed as security imperatives since the 1990s. This book raises two questions. First, does the securitization of immigration issues actually contribute to internal security? Second, does the use of counterterrorist measures address the increasing number of illegal immigrants, the resilience of ethnic tensions, and the emergence of homegrown radicalization? Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Growing Up American tells the story of Vietnamese children and sheds light on how they are negotiating the difficult passage into American society. The authors examine the complex skein of family, community, and school influences that shape these children's lives.

Brown shows why nonprofit electoral participation has emerged in relationship to new threats to immigrants, on one hand, and immigrant integration into U.S. society during a time of demographic change, on the other. Immigrants tend to register and vote at low rates, thereby limiting the political power of many of their communities. In an attempt to boost electoral participation through mobilization, some nonprofits are working to increase immigrant voting. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Policymakers often view immigrants as an economic problem, but the issue has a human dimension. Immigrant parents without legal status are raising their citizen children under stressful financial conditions, with the constant threat of deportation that limits social contacts and participation in public programs that would benefit their children. Use the Project Muse link for a fully downloadable ebook.

Motomura looks at ways in which unauthorized immigrants are becoming part of American society and why it is critical to pave the way for this integration. The author focuses on practical and politically viable solutions to the problem in three public policy areas: international economic development, domestic economic policy, and educational policy.

In April 1975, just before the fall of Saigon, the U.S. launched "Operation Babylift," a highly publicized plan to evacuate displaced Vietnamese children and place them with adoptive families overseas. Now, 35 years after the war ended, Sachs examines this unprecedented event more carefully, revealing how a single public-policy gesture irrevocably altered thousands of lives, not always for the better.

More than half of the 41 million foreign-born individuals in the United States today are non-citizens, half have difficulty with English, a quarter are undocumented, and many are poor. As a result, most immigrants have few opportunities to make their voices heard in the political process. Nonprofits in many cities have stepped into this gap to promote the integration of disadvantaged immigrants. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Chavez analyzes how activists use coalition to articulate the shared concerns of queer politics and migration politics, as both populations seek to imagine their ability to belong in various communities and spaces, their relationships to state and regional politics, and their relationships to other people whose lives might be very different from their own. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Builds on Hannah Arendt's analysis of statelessness and argues that these challenges reveal the perplexities of human rights. Human rights promise equal personhood regardless of citizenship status, yet their existing formulations are tied to the principle of territorial sovereignty. This situation leaves various categories of migrants in a condition of "rightlessness," with a very precarious legal, political, and human standing.

Examines the boundaries of political community by focusing on political membership - the principles and practices for incorporating aliens, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers into existing polities. Boundaries define some as members, others as aliens. But when state sovereignty is becoming frayed, and national citizenship is unravelling, definitions of political membership become much less clear. Use the Cambridge link for a fully downloadable ebook.

White Backlash provides an authoritative assessment of how immigration is reshaping the politics of the nation. Using an array of data and analysis, the authors show that fears about immigration fundamentally influence white Americans' core political identities, policy preferences, and electoral choices, and that these concerns are at the heart of a large-scale defection of whites from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

Starting from the transformation of the abandoned child into an adoptable resource for nations that give and receive children in adoption, this volume examines the ramifications of such gifts, especially for families created through adoption and later, the adopted adults themselves. Bolstered by an account of the author's own experience as an adoptive parent, and fully attuned to the contradictions of race that shape our complex forms of family.

Since the Korean War began, Western families have adopted more than 200,000 Korean children. Two-thirds of these adoptees found homes in the United States. The majority joined white families and in the process forged a new kind of transnational and transracial kinship.Kimberly D. McKee examines the growth of the neo-colonial, multi-million dollar global industry that shaped these families--a system she identifies as the transnational adoption industrial complex.

The first Korean adoptees were powerful symbols of American superiority in the Cold War; as Korean adoption continued, adoptees' visibility as Asians faded as they became a geopolitical success story--all-American children in loving white families. Kim Park Nelson analyzes the processes by which Korean American adoptees' have been rendered racially invisible, and how that invisibility facilitates their treatment as exceptional subjects within the context of American race relations and in government policies. Also in print.

Since the late nineteen sixties, transnational adoption has emerged as a global phenomenon. Due to a sharp decline in infants being made available for adoption locally, involuntarily childless couples in Western Europe and North America who wish to create a family, have to look to look to countries in the poor South and Eastern Europe. The purpose of this book is to locate transnational adoption within a broad context of contemporary Western life, especially values concerning family, children and meaningful relatedness, and to explore the many ambiguities and paradoxes that the practice entails.

"A few short days has changed my status in this country, although I myself have not changed at all." On December 8, 1941, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889-1953) awoke to find himself branded an "enemy alien" by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. This forced him to rethink his pictorial strategies and to confront questions of loyalty, assimilation, national and racial identity that he had carefully avoided in his prewar art.

Author T. J. Demos examines the ways contemporary artists have reinvented documentary practices in their representations of mobile lives: refugees, migrants, the stateless, and the politically dispossessed. He presents a sophisticated analysis of how artists from the United States, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East depict the often ignored effects of globalization and the ways their works connect viewers to the lived experiences of political and economic crisis.

How images portraying Asians as civil subjects contribute to debates on Asian American citizenship. Use the JSTOR or Project Muse links for fully downloadable ebooks.

Exploring theater works created for, by, and with refugees, this hybrid collection of essays combines newly commissioned scholarly work with examples of writing by refugees themselves. These varied contributions illuminate performances that range from theater in Thai refugee camps to site-specific works staged in a run-down immigrant community in the United Kingdom.