The Immigrant Experience: APAHM 2024

As mentioned in the overview, there is blurring of the categories; that is especially true with immigration. 

From movies, YA and graphic novels, Picture Bride, Front Desk, Children of the River, Family Style, and The Best We Could Do contain details of coming over, while many others at least reference aspects that relate to being here after that move.

For example, in the To All the Boys movies, Laura Jean and her sisters have all been born in the United States. Their Korean-American mother is dead, but they still participate in traditional celebrations and they visit Korea in the final movie.

It makes sense that immigration comes up. It does seem like it was a little more this year, but that may just be due to the extended time period. There was also a lot of variety.

Here are the books intended for an adult audience that dealt with immigration. While all are to the Americas, that does not necessarily mean the United States.

Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture by Gaiutra Bahadur

Bahadur's great-grandmother went from India to Guiana as an indentured servant. This is a story about one family, but also the other women who came alone, and the experiences they had.

Unfortunately there are many questions that Bahadur raises but cannot answer. Sometimes starting that research can lead to other people getting farther, so it is worth the effort, but there are some frustrations because of that.

The Concubine's Children by Denise Chong

This one was a little more satisfying, though you do get a real idea of the difficulty of immigration and family separation. 

In this case, Chong's grandfather came from China to Canada, leaving his first wife there to tend the home, and taking a concubine to help as he earned money. On one trip back to China he took his two elder daughters, and they remained in China with their half-brother. The third daughter born after remained in Canada. There was a separation between those children that lasted for decades, along with additional issues with their mother's disappointment in them all being girls.

Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang

This one almost went into the complicated parental relationships category. It is pretty entertaining, but there is a lot of anger and things to be disturbed about. I suspect that was less of a factor in the sitcom.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong 

Night Sky is poetry and On Earth is very poetic prose, and they are both powerful and very painful. 

I preferred the poems, as sometimes the fiction in On Earth feels too depressingly real.

The thing that might make sense to write about as well are the differences in being a refuge from other types of immigration, which can be very hard. Vuong seems to locate so much misery, often locally grown, that it's like it all flows together.

He declares himself a monster, along with his mother, but they are really only human.