Guides: Immigration: Immigration in Literature

Fiction

An American Brat. 1995
A Pakistani girl moves to America.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. 2007
Behold the Dreamers./ Mbue. 2015
The story of a Cameroonian couple trying to make it in New York.
Call it Sleep./ Roth.
Jewish boy's coming of age in New York's lower east side.
Christ in Concrete./Donato. 1939
Exit West: a novel./ Hamid. 2017
A couple flee their war torn homeland; first to Greece, and then to London.
Giants in the Earth./Rolvaag. 1927
About an immigrant Norwegian family in the 1870s.
The House on Mango Street./ Cisneros. 2011
Takes place in a Latin- American ghetto in Chicago.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
The Jungle./ Sinclair.
Mostly known for its horrific depictions of the Chicago meat packing industry in the early 20th century, but Sinclair was really writing to the marginalized state of the immigrants who worked in it.
Maggie: a girl of the streets./ Crane. 1893.
Mrs. Spring Fragrance and other writings./ Far.
Chinese immigrants.
My Antonia./ Cather. 1918.