Away
Amy Bloom
Life is no party for Lillian Leyb, the 22-year-old Jewish immigrant protagonist of Bloom's outstanding fifth novel: her husband and parents were killed in a Russian pogrom, and the same violent episode separated her from her three-year-old daughter, Sophie. Arriving in New York in 1924, Lillian dreams of Sophie, and after five weeks in America, barely speaking English, she outmaneuvers a line of applicants for a seamstress job at the Goldfadn Yiddish Theatre, where she becomes the mistress of both handsome lead actor Meyer Burstein and his very connected father, Reuben.
F/Bloom
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Burnt Bread & Chutney : Growing Up Between Cultures : a Memoir of an Indian Jewish Girl
Carmit Delman
A true literary first -- this coming-of-age memoir explores the life of an Indian Jewish girl as she straddles two cultures.
B/Delman
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China Boy
Gus Lee
A warm, engaging story of seven-year-old Kai Ting, set in the tough Panhandle District of San Francisco in the 1950s. Readers will weep with Kai when he's locked out of the house and left as prey to the McAllister street bullies. They'll laugh with him when he confuses English idioms and ethnic street slang.
A/Lee
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Digging to America
Anne Tyler
"In this novel, Anne Tyler gives us a story about what it is to be an American, and about Maryam Yazdan, who after thirty-five years in this country must finally come to terms with her "outsiderness."" "Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport - the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam's fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian American wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea.
F/Tyler. Also available on CD
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Free Food for Millionaires
Min Jin Lee
Lee mixes feminism and cultural awareness to create a sweeping story of first-generation Korean Americans finding their way between the old world and the new.
F/Lee
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Funny in Farsi
Firoozeh Dumas
A warm, affectionate, and frequently hilarious memoir of growing up Iranian-American in Southern California. "Funny in Farsi" is above all an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave readers laughing--without an accent.
B/Dumas
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The Language of Baklava
Diana Abu-Jaber
From the acclaimed author of Crescent, called "radiant, wise, and passionate" by the Chicago Tribune, here is a vibrant, humorous memoir of growing up with a gregarious Jordanian father who loved to cook. Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts with her Arab-American cousins to goat stew feasts under a Bedouin tent in the desert.
F/Abu-Jaber
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Music of the Mill
Luis J. Rodriguez
"When the Salcido family departs for the United States, their flight is hardly different from the journeys of the indigenous tribes who roamed America for tens of thousands of years, or immigrants who sailed across entire oceans, or countless others who have left their native lands behind for the promise of a better life." "Traveling mostly on foot, Procopio Salcido and his future wife, Eladia, leave Mexico for the United States to escape the bleak realities of their homeland." "Finally settling in Los Angeles, the young couple discover that the hopes they have for their children must now be weighted against the backdrop of the mighty Nazareth steel mill, their engine for survival, which will eventually become the lifeblood of their own American dream."
F/Rodriguez
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The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri
This first novel is an Indian American saga, covering several generations of the Ganguli family across three decades. Newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima leave India for the Boston area shortly after their traditional arranged marriage. The young husband, an engineering graduate student, is ready to be part of U.S. culture, but Ashima, disoriented and homesick, is less taken with late-Sixties America. She develops ties with other Bengali expatriates, forming lifelong friendships that help preserve the old ways in a new country.
F/Lahiri. Also available in Large Print, on CD and as e-Audiobook
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Once Upon a Quinceañera : Coming of Age in the USA
Julia Alvarez
Skillfully blending memoir and social science, Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) explores the quinceañera, the coming-of-age ceremony for Latinas turning 15. She spent a year researching and attending quince celebrations, finding out what rituals are favored and what they mean to the girls. She researched what the gowns and photo sessions cost. She interviewed people working in the quince industry, from party planners to cake bakers. After all, with more than 400,000 American Latinas turning 15 every year, and with the average quinceañera costing $5,000, the financial, if not the cultural importance of the quince should not be underestimated.
395.24 ALV
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The Rug Merchant
Meg Mullins
New York City teems with quiet desperation in this lucidly written but languid debut novel. The titular carpet salesman, Ushman Khan, has left his mother and his wife, Farak, in Iran in order to make a new start in America. Told from Khan's perspective, the narrative traces his subtle acculturation into Western life while he sets up shop and develops loyal customers like the wealthy socialite Mrs. Roberts.
F/Mullins
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The Turk and My Mother
Mary Helen Stefaniak
Storytelling is at the heart of Stefaniak's (Self Storage and Other Stories) lovingly crafted volume of three interwoven family tales (subtitled "A Novel"), which captures the history of a Croatian-American family settled in Milwaukee after World War I. The book's Decameron-esque framework is set from the beginning as George, the first-generation American son of Josef and Agnes, is on his deathbed, surrounded by his adult children. The stories he tells about life in Milwaukee in the 1930s lead to stories-within-stories told by his grandmother Staramajka, the family matriarch, who steals the show.
F/Stefaniak
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When Luba Leaves Home : Stories
Irene Zabytko
Award-winning author Zabytko creates a bright new voice to tell the classic story of how the children of America's melting pot grow up strong enough to carry their double identities.
F/Zabytko
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