KDL Recommends

In a memoir about the joys and difficulties of straddling two cultures, the author describes her life in upstate New York with an extended Arab and American family, her family’s move “home” to Jordan, and her return to the United States.

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan at the peak of the war between the Soviet Union and the mujahideen, a young woman’s memoir intertwines the story of her childhood in the war-torn country with her experiences as a Afghan American adolescent in Chicago.

A warm, nostalgic, and funny account of the life and times of Gootie Goodstein and his memorable grandmother, who immigrated to the U.S. from a small village in Lithuania.

A journalist describes her efforts to come to terms with her dual heritage as a Hispanic American and offers a portrait of her family members.

The author plumbs the boundaries of slave law and identity in the 19th century, focusing on the famous case of Sally Miller—a German girl who was reported to have been kidnapped and sold into slavery in New Orleans.

In a harrowing account of children at war, three young refugees in California—two brothers and a cousin—remember how they were driven from their homes in southern Sudan during the ethnic and religious conflicts that have left million dead.

An Iranian American poet recounts her life as a daughter of Jewish parents growing up in Tehran, during which she witnessed the impact of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to the nation and contemplated political asylum.

An Iranian daughter of a colonel in the Shah’s army describes her privileged early childhood, her father’s public arrest and execution, and her mother’s agonizing decision to send the author and her sister away for six years until their family could rebuild a life together in America.

Describes one Honduran boy’s difficult and dangerous journey to find his mother, who had made the trek northward to the United States in search of a better life when Enrique had been five years old, but who had never made enough money to return home for her children, in a poignant account that addresses the issues of family and the implications of illegal immigration.

Describes the devastating 1911 fire that destroyed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York’s Greenwich Village, the deaths of 146 workers in the fire, the Jewish and Italian immigrants, mostly women, who made up the majority of the victims, and the implications of the catastrophe on twentieth-century politics and labor relations.