There's a Book for That: Immigrant Stories
Penguin Random House’s publishing reflects the rich tapestry of America, a nation built by immigrants whose stories are inspiring and educational. In line with Penguin Random House’s commitment to amplify diverse voices and promote understanding, we believe in the importance of sharing immigrant stories. With protests centered around federal immigration raids occurring nationwide, it is vital to highlight the experiences of immigrant communities.
For more information, please visit our Immigrant Resources page, which contains helpful information, including organizations providing legal help for anyone with questions in the wake of Executive Orders and other actions by the administration regarding immigration. If you have questions or would like additional resources, please contact Human Resources.
An undocumented activist and a social scientist come together to tally of the structural costs of undocumented life. An inhumane math pervades this country: even as our government extracts labor and often taxes from undocumented workers, it excludes these same workers from its social safety net. As a result, these essential workers struggle to get their own basic needs met, from healthcare to education, from freedom of association to the ability to drive to work without looking for ICE in the rearview mirror.
An Indian American daughter reveals how the dangerous model minority myth tears families apart and wrecks mental health in this searing, brave memoir. How do we understand ourselves when the story about who we are supposed to be is stronger than our sense of self? What do we stand to gain—and lose—by taking control of our narrative? These questions propel Prachi Gupta’s heartfelt memoir, and can feel particularly fraught for many immigrants and their children, who live under immense pressure to belong in America.
Beautiful Country is the the moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world—an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent . In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.
“The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration” —People
Breaking the silence surrounding Ava Chin’s family’s past meant confronting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades. Chin traces the story of the pioneering family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, crossing an ocean to make their way in the American West of the mid-nineteenth century. She tells of their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and of the brutal racism of frontier towns, then follows their paths to New York City. She soon realizes that exclusion is not simply a political condition but also a personal one.
“What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes of the immigration crisis, the discussions that have been going on through multiple administrations.” —Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
Based on the popular podcast, Asylum Speakers is a collection of 31 stories of migration, from those leaving everything they know behind them, to those working alongside them. Here are the voices that often go unheard: the humans behind the statistics and the headlines. From Syria to Venezuela, Eritrea to Afghanistan, Asylum Speakers will transcend borders, nationalities, religions and languages, connecting you to the people with whom we share this world.
Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the nineties, Erika Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment—a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she’s now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she’s still got an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit, and singular powers of perception about the world around her.
A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping memoir” (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family. Solito is a memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING
“A magnificent, engagé investigative report… [an] act of witness…It is clear from [Hayden’s book] that the current politics of immigration have turned & twisted human nature against itself and our own kind and are fostering unimaginable maltreatment of those who wish only to survive and live a better life… [It] strongly convey[s] the urgency of fundamentally rethinking immigration policy… It is already late to act, but that is a poor reason for inaction.” – The New York Review of Books
A searing portrait of Muslim life in the West, this “profound and intimate” memoir captures one man’s struggle to forge an American Muslim identity (Washington Post)
An undocumented immigrant’s journey from a New York City homeless shelter to the top of his Princeton class. Undocumented is essential reading for the debate on immigration, but it is also an unforgettable tale of a passionate young scholar coming of age in two very different worlds.
A beautiful—tender yet searing—debut novel about intergenerational fractures and coming of age, following a young woman who immigrates to the U.S. from the Philippines and finds herself adrift between familial expectations and her own burning desires.
For more on these and related titles visit Immigrant Stories
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