Adult Picks

Alpha: Abidjan to Paris by Bessora and Barroux

translated by Sarah Ardizzone

Determined to reunite with his family, Alpha sets off from his home in Cote d'Ivoire, bound for Paris, where his sister-in-law has a hair salon near the Gare du Nord train station. Alpha's wife and son left for France months ago, traveling without visas, and he has heard nothing from them since. With a visa, Alpha's journey would take a matter of hours. Without one, he is adrift for over a year, encountering human traffickers in the desert, refugee camps in Mali and Algeria, overcrowded boats carrying migrants between the Canary Islands and Europe's southern coast, and a cast of companions lost and found along the way. Throughout, Alpha stays the course, carrying his loved ones' photograph close to his heart as he makes his perilous trek across the continent.

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America

by Firoozeh Dumas

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since.

Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas’s wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot.

The Hudson Valley: The First 250 Million Years: A Mostly Chronological and Occasionally Personal History

by David Levine

From the dinosaurs and the glaciers to the first native peoples and the first European settlers, from Dutch and English Colonial rule to the American Revolution, from the slave society to the Civil War, from the robber barons and bootleggers to the war heroes and the happy rise of craft beer pubs, the Hudson Valley has a deep history.

Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences, and Writing in America

edited by by Abayomi Animashaun

No two immigrant poets are the same. Even those from the same country don’ t necessarily answer to the same poetics or, for that matter, speak to the same concerns. How, then, do immigrant poets in America define themselves? How do they see and position themselves within the landscape of American poetry or the poetic traditions of their own country? Who might they consider their influences? Answers to these questions are complex, individual, and varied, as seen with the essays included in this anthology.

What This Place Makes Me: Contemporary Plays on Immigration

edited by by Isaiah Stavchansky

Seven award-winning plays by rising stars of contemporary theater herald a profound shift in what it means to be an American, an immigrant, and an artist on today’s stage. This groundbreaking collection of works by first- and second-generation immigrants unites seven exhilarating new voices of Lebanese, Nigerian, Korean, Bengali, Polish, and Mexican descent. Echoing beyond the stage, their stories draw on common experiences of displacement, alienation, and the sense of living in suspension; sometimes torn between two worlds, sometimes plummeting into the spaces between them. Amid tangled relationships, vengeful landscapes, and buried family mysteries, something universal flickers; the search for safety and the promise of home. Both haunting and galvanizing, What This Place Makes Me will be a vital touchstone for years to come.

Sea Prayer

by Khaled Hosseini

A short, powerful, illustrated book written by beloved novelist Khaled Hosseini in response to the current refugee crisis, Sea Prayer is composed in the form of a letter, from a father to his son, on the eve of their journey. Watching over his sleeping son, the father reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is also a vivid portrait of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war, and of that city’s swift transformation from a home into a deadly war zone.

Kid and Teen Picks

Where Are You From?

by Yamile Saied Méndez and Jaime Kim

Ages: 4-8

When a girl is asked where she’s from—where she’s really from—none of her answers seems to be the right one. Unsure about how to reply, she turns to her loving abuelo for help. He doesn’t give her the response she expects. She gets an even better one.
Where am I from? You’re from hurricanes and dark storms, and a tiny singing frog that calls the island people home when the sun goes to sleep....
With themes of self-acceptance, identity, and home, this powerful, lyrical picture book will resonate with readers young and old, from all backgrounds and of all colors—especially anyone who ever felt that they don’t belong.

Tomatoes for Neela

by Padma Lakshmi

Ages: 4-8

Neela loves cooking with her amma and writing down the recipes in her notebook. It makes her feel closer to her paati who lives far away in India. On Saturdays, Neela and Amma go to the green market and today they are buying tomatoes to make Paati's famous sauce. But first, Neela needs to learn about all the different kinds of tomatoes they can pick from. And as Neela and Amma cook together, they find a way for Paati to share in both the love and the flavors of the day.

All the Way to America: The Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel

by Dan Yaccarino

Ages: 5-9

Dan Yaccarino’s great-grandfather arrived at Ellis Island with a small shovel and his parents’ good advice: “Work hard, but remember to enjoy life, and never forget your family.” With simple text and warm, colorful illustrations, Yaccarino recounts how the little shovel was passed down through four generations of this Italian-American family—along with the good advice.

It’s a story that will have kids asking their parents and grandparents: Where did we come from? How did our family make the journey all the way to America?

Blackbird Fly

by Erin Entrada Kelly

Ages: 8-12

Apple has always felt a little different from her classmates. She and her mother moved to Louisiana from the Philippines when she was little, and her mother still cooks Filipino foods and chastises Apple for becoming “too American.” When Apple’s friends turn on her and everything about her life starts to seem weird and embarrassing, Apple turns to music. If she can just save enough to buy a guitar and learn to play, maybe she can change herself. It might be the music that saves her…or it might be her two new friends, who show her how special she really is.

Only This Beautiful Moment

by Abdi Nazemian

Ages: 13-17

A sweeping story of three generations of boys in the same Iranian family.

2019. Moud is an out gay teen living in Los Angeles with his distant father, Saeed. When Moud gets the news that his grandfather in Iran is dying, he accompanies his dad to Tehran, where the revelation of family secrets will force Moud into a new understanding of his history, his culture, and himself.

1978. Saeed is an engineering student with a promising future ahead of him in Tehran. But when his parents discover his involvement in the country’s burgeoning revolution, they send him to safety in America, a country Saeed despises. And even worse—he’s forced to live with the American grandmother he never knew existed.

1939. Bobby, the son of a calculating Hollywood stage mother, lands a coveted MGM studio contract. But the fairy-tale world of glamour he’s thrust into has a dark side.

Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this tale of intergenerational trauma and love is an ode to the fragile bonds of family, the hidden secrets of history, and all the beautiful moments that make us who we are today.

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American

by Laura Gao

Ages: 14-18

After spending her early years in Wuhan, China, riding water buffalos and devouring stinky tofu, Laura immigrates to Texas, where her hometown is as foreign as Mars—at least until 2020, when COVID-19 makes Wuhan a household name.