Immigration Reading Group

In Spring 2017, the Center launched an immigration reading group to promote an understanding of the multiple experiences of immigrants. This informal reading group will meet a few times during the semester to discuss novels featuring immigrant characters and the American immigrant experience. This past semester, the reading group was led by Dr. Robert Chiles of the UMD Department of History.

Please see below for our past books and an upcoming look at books for Fall 2017. We hope you will join us!

Bodega Dreams by Ernesto Quiñonez
The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

The three books for Fall 2017 focus on a diverse range of immigrant experiences. In September, meet Chino, an artist and son of an Ecuadorian father and Puerto Rican mother living in East Harlem, as he uses his abilities to improve his socioeconomic situation. In October, we will read Mario Puzo's semi-biographical novel, inspired by his own mother, that follows Lucia Santa and her journey guiding her immigrant family through the Great Depression and World War II in New York City. Finally, in November join us to read Thanhha Lai's story of a young girl and her family who move to Alabama to escape the Vietnam War.

Past Books

My Antonia by Willa Cather
Thursday, April 6

My Antonia tells the story of two migrants, an orphaned boy from Virginia and a daughter of Bohemiam immigrants, who come to Nebraska as pioneers in the late nineteenth century. My Antonia was first published in 1918 as part of Cather's trilogy of novels about life in the American West, and is widely regarded as Cather's masterpiece.

Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska
Thursday, May 11

Bread Givers, written in 1925 by Jewish-American autor Anzia Yezierska, tells the coming-of-age story of a young, Polish-American Orthodox Jewish girl growing up in the Lower East Side in the 1920s. The protagonist and narrator, Sara Smolinsky, lives with her immigrant parents and three sisters in a tenament and faces struggles related to destitution and familial conflict. The novel follows Sara's journey in pursuing her education and her complicated identity as Jewish and as a second-generation immigrant.