Emigration and immigration

Girl Under a Red Moon: Growing Up During China’s Cultural Revolution

In a small village called Yellow Stone, in southeastern China, Sisi is a model sister, daughter, and student. She brews tea for her grandfather in the morning, leads recitations at school as class monitor, and helps care for her youngest brother, Da. But when students are selected during a school ceremony to join the prestigious Red Guard, Sisi is passed over. Worse, she is shamed for her family’s past — they are former landowners who have no place in the new Communist order. Her only escape is to find work at another school, bringing Da along with her. But the siblings find new threats in Bridge Town, too, and Sisi will face choices between family and nation, between safety and justice. With the tide of the Cultural Revolution rising, Sisi must decide if she will swim against the current, or get swept up in the wave. Bestselling author Da Chen paints a vivid portrait of his older sister and a land thrust into turmoil during the tumultuous Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Escaping The Tiger

When you’re so skinny people call you Skeleton Boy, how do you find strength for the fight of your life? Twelve-year-old Vonlai knows that soldiers who guard the Mekong River shoot at anything that moves, but in oppressive Communist Laos, there’s nothing left for him, his spirited sister, Dalah, and his desperate parents. Their only hope is a refugee camp in Thailand—on the other side of the river. When they reach the camp, their struggles are far from over. Na Pho is a forgotten place where life consists of squalid huts, stifling heat, and rationed food. Still, Vonlai tries to carry on as if everything is normal. He pays attention in school, a dusty barrack overcrowded with kids too hungry to learn. And, to forget his empty stomach, he plays soccer in a field full of rocks.

Here I Am

Newly arrived from their faraway homeland, a boy and his family enter into the lights, noise, and traffic of a busy American city. The language is unfamiliar. Food, habits, games, and gestures are puzzling. They boy clings tightly to his special keepsake from home and wonders how he will find his way.

Join the discussion of Here I Amas well as other books centered around relocation on our My Take/Your Take page.

Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 4.

West Of The Moon

In nineteenth-century Norway, fourteen-year-old Astri, whose aunt has sold her to a mean goat-herder, dreams of joining her father in America. After being separated from her sister and sold to a cruel goat farmer, Astri makes a daring escape. She quickly retrieves her little sister, and, armed with a troll treasure, a book of spells and curses, and a possibly magic hairbrush, they set off for America. With a mysterious companion in tow and the malevolent “goatman” in pursuit, the girls head over the Norwegian mountains, through field and forest, and in and out of folktales and dreams as they steadily make their way east of the sun and west of the moon.

Mixing It

Steve, a British high school student, and Fatimah, a devout Muslim and daughter of immigrants, must learn to overcome their community’s prejudices after a picture of Fatimah nursing Steven after a terrorist attack is featured in a national newspaper.

Quien Es De Aqui: Una Historia De America/ Who Belongs Here?: An American Story (Spanish)

Describes the new life of Nary, a Cambodian refugee, in America, as well as his encounters with prejudice. Includes some general history of U.S. immigration.

Gervelie’s Journey

When Gervelie was born in 1995 in the Republic of Congo, her mother and father had a nice house in a suburb of Brazzaville. When fighting broke out two years later, her father’s political connections put the family in grave danger and they were forced to flee. Gervelie’s Journey follows the family from Congo to the Ivory Coast, and then to Ghana, across Europe, and finally to England. Told in Gervelie’s own voice and using her own photographs, it depicts with grace and sensitivity their long journey, their life in a new country, and their hopes for the future.

Going Home

Everything in Felita’s life seems to change the year she turns twelve. Felita spends her summer in Puerto Rico, where she struggles to fit in. By the time summer has ended, Felita is beginning to feel at home with herself and her Puerto Rican heritage.

Grandfather’s Journey

A Japanese American man recounts his grandfather’s journey to America which he later also undertakes, and the feelings of being torn by a love for two different countries.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume VII, Issue 4