Catalog Search Results
Author
Pub. Date
2013.
Language
English
Formats
Description
It's been fifty years since Antonio Grasso married Maddalena and brought her to America. That was the last time she saw her parents, her sisters and brothers-everything she knew and loved in the village of Santa Cecilia, Italy. Maddalena sees no need to open the door to the past and let the emotional baggage and unmended rifts of another life spill out.
But Prima was raised on the lore of the Old Country. And as she sees her parents aging, she...
2) The jungle
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A documentary novel portraying industry's conditions at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Sinclair's novel prompted public outrage which led President Theodore Roosevelt to demand an official investigation. This eventually led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Thirtysomething Flores and her mother, Paula, still live in the same Brooklyn apartment, but that may be the only thing they have in common. It's been nearly three years since they lost beloved husband and father Martín, who had always been the bridge between them. One day, cleaning beneath his urn, Flores discovers a note written in her mother's handwriting: Perdóname si te falle. Recuerda que siempre te quise. ("Forgive me if I failed you....
Author
Language
English
Description
The acclaimed novel of Jewish immigrant life on New York City’s Lower East Side from the literary phenomenon known as the “Cinderella of the Tenements.”
It is Manhattan in the 1920s, and the Polish American Smolinsky family struggles to survive in their home on Hester Street. At ten years old, Sara, the youngest daughter, is keenly aware of the family’s precarious financial situation. With food scarce,...
It is Manhattan in the 1920s, and the Polish American Smolinsky family struggles to survive in their home on Hester Street. At ten years old, Sara, the youngest daughter, is keenly aware of the family’s precarious financial situation. With food scarce,...
5) Cockroach
Author
Pub. Date
2009.
Language
English
Description
In Cockroach, the unnamed hero-an impoverished immigrant living in Montreal-is in therapy after an attempted suicide. There he deals with insect hallucinations, sexual fantasies, and buried guilt over the death of his sister.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
From National Book Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author Louise Erdrich, a profound and enchanting new novel: a richly imagined world "where butchers sing like angels."
Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious knife set, Fidelis sets out for America. In Argus, North...
Author
Pub. Date
2005.
Edition
First edition.
Language
English
Description
It is 1953 in the tight-knit Italian neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. Maddalena Grasso has lost her country, her family, and the man she loved by coming to America; her mercurial husband, Antonio, has lost his opportunity to realize the American Dream; their new friend, Guilio Fabbri, a shy accordion player, has lost his beloved parents.
In the shadow of St. Anthony's Church, named for the patron saint of lost things, the prayers of these troubled...
8) Martyr!
Author
Language
English
Description
"A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum"--
Author
Language
English
Description
Best-selling author Gary Shteyngart's exquisite fiction is met with a level of critical acclaim reserved for the very best in the field. In this startlingly provocative work, Russian immigrant Vladimir Girshkin searches for love and self-identity while interacting with a quirky set of acquaintances.
Author
Pub. Date
2003.
Language
English
Formats
Description
Nazneen is forced into an arranged marriage with a much older man whose expectations of life are miserably low. When they flee the oppression of their Bangladeshi village for a high-rise block in the East End, she finds herself cloistered and dependent on her husband. It soon becomes apparent that of the two, she is the real survivor and more able to deal with the ways of the world and the vagaries of human behavior. Through her friendship with another...
Author
Language
English
Description
A magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted -- and divided -- family, set against the backdrop of postwar America On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish emigre scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and--against all odds and better judgment--they marry. They vow to raise their...
12) The refugees
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
A collection of stories, written over a twenty-year period, examines the Vietnamese experience in America as well as questions of home, family, and identity.
Author
Language
English
Description
"From the author of The Water Dancers and Good Family comes the story of an Irish family that emigrates to America in 1819 and settles in Cincinnati, Ohio, where they will confront the horrible reality of slavery on the opposite bank of the Ohio River"--
1819. Cheated out of their family estate in Northern Ireland after the Napoleonic Wars, the Givens family settle in Cincinnati. After losing their mother in childbirth and their father to a riverboat...
Author
Language
English
Description
When 11-year-old Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life, like her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition, Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds...
15) Empire rising
Author
Pub. Date
2005.
Language
English
Formats
Description
A Novel of High-Stakes Romance and Betrayal, Set During the Race to Finish the World's Tallest Building
In Empire Rising, his extraordinary third book, Thomas Kelly tells a story of love and work, of intrigue and jealousy, with the narrative verve that led the Village Voice's reviewer to dub him "Dostoevsky with a hard hat and lead pipe."
As the novel opens, it is 1930-the Depression-and ground has just been broken for the Empire State Building....
Author
Language
English
Description
Nicole Krauss' first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and her short fiction has been collected in Best American Short Stories. Now The History of Love proves Krauss is among our finest and freshest literary voices. It has been decades since Leo Gursky first surrendered his heart, then wrote a book about it, at the tender age of 10, and he's been in love with the same person ever since. Leo believes...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Growing up in the frozen, snow-padded town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, Ruthie, dealing with shame handed down from her immigrant ancestors and her indomitable mother, and violence endured by her high school friends, wonders if she’ll ever get out of this town alive.
Author
Pub. Date
2010.
Language
English
Formats
Description
African-born author Dinaw Mengestu's prose is praised as "heart-rending and indelible" (Publishers Weekly), and his debut novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was a New York Times Notable Book. In How to Read the Air, Mengestu crafts a moving tale about one man's search for identity. After his estranged Ethiopian immigrant father dies, Jonas hopes to answer questions about his heritage and culture. So he leaves his wife and home in New York...
19) O, pioneers!
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Cather's sentimental and somewhat controversial novel tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish pioneers that settles for life in the American prairie. While Alexandra, the family matriarch, is able to turn the family farm into a financial success, her brother Emil must grapple with the tragedy of solace and forbidden love. A novel surprisingly ahead of its time, this proto-feminist work touches upon a wide range of themes, including love,...
20) My Ántonia
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A successful lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with an immigrant Bohemian girl. Includes background information, a chronology of the author's life, explanatory notes, critical analyses, and other reference material."
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