Exploring Our Immigrant Heritages

There are so many wonderful novels written about the child/teen immigration experience from a historical perspective, but I can only focus on a few for this entry. Whether arriving to America by boat or by foot, these child protagonists are forced to work. The historical novel format allows for richer details within the text and more complex issues to be explored. While every novel features a crossing movement, some focus on the harrowing, dangerous journey to America while others show the struggle to assimilate while in America.

In my attempt to provide variety of cultural backgrounds, I noticed that each of these historical novels was inspired by the author's family background, usually the immigrant travels of their grandparents or great-grandparents.

The sequel to Nory Ryan's Song, Maggie's Door by Patricia Reilly Giff is told from two different points of view: Nory Ryan and her friend Sean. Traveling a few days apart, they are leave Ireland and the Potato Famine sail towards America, specifically her sister Maggie's house in Brooklyn. This narrative focuses mostly on the hardship of travel rather than the difficulty of American assimilation.

While the story of Nory Ryan was originally sparked by her Irish great-grandparents, Giff's A House of Tailors, is based on the life of another great-grandmother, this one from Germany. In 1870s, thirteen year old Dina belongs to a family whose business is sewing, and she hates it. When she immigrates to Brooklyn, she tries to leave sewing behind, but she cannot, as it becomes her job as she struggles to assimilate in America.

Inspired by her grandfather's story, The King of Mulberry Street by Donna Jo Napoli features nine year-old Beniamino, a Jewish boy whose mother smuggles him on a boat from Italy to America, where living in the streets of New York, Beniamino renames himself as Dom Napoli. He starts a sandwich selling business with dreams of returning back to his mother in Italy, but soon he realizes that America is his real home.

Based on her great-aunt Lucy's memories, Letters for Rifka by Karen Hesse is written in the epistolary format, specifically letters of twelve year-old Jewish Rifka to her cousin Tovah. Scribbled in the margins of a book of poetry by Pushkin, the letters cover Rifka's travels from the Ukraine to Poland and Belgium and finally Ellis Island. She escapes soldiers, disease, storms, and quarantine to make it to America.

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan is based on her grandmother's immigration story from Mexico to America. When her wealthy father dies, Esperanza and her mother flee her mother's evil suitor and journey to California, where they labor in the fields. Interesting twist of the immigrant forced to leave behind a life of luxury in exchange for poverty and hard work in America.

Besides Laurence Yep's Golden Mountain Chronicles, there are not that many historical novels written for kids and teens addressing Asian-American immigration. Nor could I find any novels focused solely on the African immigration in a historical context, though there is a wealth of well-written novels about the African-American experience, historical and contemporary.

But perhaps it is because the trend for the historical fiction immigrant novel is to explore the immigrant experiences of one's grandparents or great-grandparents. While there are third and fourth generation Asian Americans, there are many, many more first generation Asian Americans dealing not with their immigrant grandparents but their immigrant parents. Also, the immigrants ancestors of most African-Americans were most likely African slaves brought against their will to America, and the children of slaves were usually separated from their families as soon as they were able to work, so often the family history is lost.

Much of the immigrant historical fiction I've featured have been published within the past ten years, so perhaps there's more soon to be published. Please share your favorites!