Set in the 1930s, Pam Munoz Ryan’s Newbery-winning novel Esperanza Rising (2000) takes up issues of racism, class, and farm labor against the backdrop of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Esperanza Ortega is the privileged daughter of a wealthy family in Mexico—until her father’s murder changes her family’s fortunes. Forced to flee to the United States, Esperanza, her mother, and their former servants settle in a farm camp to take on agricultural work. Labor tensions simmer, and poor working conditions lead to coughs and fevers. Meanwhile, Esperanza struggles to adjust to her new reality, one in which she now occupies a marginal class and race status, but over time, she builds strong friendships and learns to hold on to hope— the very thing her name means in Spanish.

-NK

Set in a busy airport, You Are Here: Connecting Flights (2024) brings together twelve interconnected stories of young Asian Americans navigating friendships, belonging, and discriminatory hostility. The choice of an airport setting calls our attention not only to travel but also to immigration, and the interconnected form serves as a reminder that we live in an interconnected world, a social ecosystem. Inclusive of both East and Southeast Asian American characters and writers, the anthology features a star-studded line-up of contributing writers, including Erin Entrada Kelly, Christina Soontornvat, Grace Lin, and Linda Sue Park.

-NK

Through twelve-year-old Nisha’s journal entries, Veera Hiranandani’s The Night Diary (2018) takes up the effects of the 1947 partition of colonial British India into two independent countries, India and Pakistan. Nisha comes from a mixed religious background—Muslim and Hindu—and the partition raises pressing questions about belonging, identity, and safety. As Nisha and her family become refugees, fleeing across the new border, she records the journey in her diary, addressing her entries as letters to her deceased mother.

-NK

Author Jasmine Warga, whose immigrant father was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugees, has explained that as a child, she faced a lack of representation—until post-9/11 depictions burst onto the media scene with largely pejorative views of Muslims and Arabs. Growing up with both invisibility and Islamophobia influenced Warga’s desire to increase positive Arab American representation through her own writing, including Other Words for Home (2019). Twelve-year-old Jude and her family live in a coastal town in Syria, but as the Syrian Civil War unfolds, she and her mother flee to join her uncle’s family in Cincinnati, Ohio. School, language, friendships, food, and even family life are rendered unfamiliar and challenging with the move. In free verse, Jude spins lyrical lines that convey her struggle to adjust to life in the United States as a Muslim and an Arab.

-NK

Edwidge Danticat’s picture book Mama’s Nightingale (2015), illustrated by Leslie Staub, features a Haitian family in the U.S. dealing with separation caused by the detention of undocumented immigrants. Saya’s mother has been taken to the “Sunshine Correctional” because of her immigration status. Struggling with the separation, Saya finds comfort in listening to recordings of her mother telling stories and eventually writes her own. Danticat’s writing weaves in Haitian Creole and demonstrates the liberating power of storytelling, while Staub’s illustrations feature birds and birdcages as visual motifs that emphasize freedom and incarceration. Both word and image work together in Mama’s Nightingale as a testament to the difference that art in various forms can make.

-NK

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006) is a treat to read, telling the story of one migrant’s journey solely through surreal illustrations. Our main character leaves behind his home, travels across the ocean, and arrives in a unfamiliar country to make a new home, where his family eventually joins him. By omitting any form of recognizable language or writing, Tan conveys the language barrier that the migrant faces—and puts the reader in his shoes. Both the character and the reader are forced to attend carefully to visual cues to make sense of a disorienting world. Yet despite the fantastical setting of The Arrival, Tan’s illustrations include details reminiscent of “real-world” histories, like Ellis Island, that remind us how his tale is rooted in the real immigrant experiences.

-NK

Set in the 1930s, Pam Munoz Ryan’s Newbery-winning novel Esperanza Rising (2000) takes up issues of racism, class, and farm labor against the backdrop of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Esperanza Ortega is the privileged daughter of a wealthy family in Mexico—until her father’s murder changes her family’s fortunes. Forced to flee to the United States, Esperanza, her mother, and their former servants settle in a farm camp to take on agricultural work. Labor tensions simmer, and poor working conditions lead to coughs and fevers. Meanwhile, Esperanza struggles to adjust to her new reality, one in which she now occupies a marginal class and race status, but over time, she builds strong friendships and learns to hold on to hope— the very thing her name means in Spanish.

-NK

Set in a busy airport, You Are Here: Connecting Flights (2024) brings together twelve interconnected stories of young Asian Americans navigating friendships, belonging, and discriminatory hostility. The choice of an airport setting calls our attention not only to travel but also to immigration, and the interconnected form serves as a reminder that we live in an interconnected world, a social ecosystem. Inclusive of both East and Southeast Asian American characters and writers, the anthology features a star-studded line-up of contributing writers, including Erin Entrada Kelly, Christina Soontornvat, Grace Lin, and Linda Sue Park.

-NK

Through twelve-year-old Nisha’s journal entries, Veera Hiranandani’s The Night Diary (2018) takes up the effects of the 1947 partition of colonial British India into two independent countries, India and Pakistan. Nisha comes from a mixed religious background—Muslim and Hindu—and the partition raises pressing questions about belonging, identity, and safety. As Nisha and her family become refugees, fleeing across the new border, she records the journey in her diary, addressing her entries as letters to her deceased mother.

-NK

Author Jasmine Warga, whose immigrant father was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugees, has explained that as a child, she faced a lack of representation—until post-9/11 depictions burst onto the media scene with largely pejorative views of Muslims and Arabs. Growing up with both invisibility and Islamophobia influenced Warga’s desire to increase positive Arab American representation through her own writing, including Other Words for Home (2019). Twelve-year-old Jude and her family live in a coastal town in Syria, but as the Syrian Civil War unfolds, she and her mother flee to join her uncle’s family in Cincinnati, Ohio. School, language, friendships, food, and even family life are rendered unfamiliar and challenging with the move. In free verse, Jude spins lyrical lines that convey her struggle to adjust to life in the United States as a Muslim and an Arab.

-NK

Edwidge Danticat’s picture book Mama’s Nightingale (2015), illustrated by Leslie Staub, features a Haitian family in the U.S. dealing with separation caused by the detention of undocumented immigrants. Saya’s mother has been taken to the “Sunshine Correctional” because of her immigration status. Struggling with the separation, Saya finds comfort in listening to recordings of her mother telling stories and eventually writes her own. Danticat’s writing weaves in Haitian Creole and demonstrates the liberating power of storytelling, while Staub’s illustrations feature birds and birdcages as visual motifs that emphasize freedom and incarceration. Both word and image work together in Mama’s Nightingale as a testament to the difference that art in various forms can make.

-NK

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006) is a treat to read, telling the story of one migrant’s journey solely through surreal illustrations. Our main character leaves behind his home, travels across the ocean, and arrives in a unfamiliar country to make a new home, where his family eventually joins him. By omitting any form of recognizable language or writing, Tan conveys the language barrier that the migrant faces—and puts the reader in his shoes. Both the character and the reader are forced to attend carefully to visual cues to make sense of a disorienting world. Yet despite the fantastical setting of The Arrival, Tan’s illustrations include details reminiscent of “real-world” histories, like Ellis Island, that remind us how his tale is rooted in the real immigrant experiences.

-NK