The Uprooted

The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People 
by Oscar Handlin

Awarded the 1952 Pulitzer Prize in history, The Uprooted chronicles the common experiences of the millions of European immigrants who came to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—their fears, their hopes, their expectations. The New Yorker called it "strong stuff, handled in a masterly and quite moving way," while the New York Times suggested that "The Uprooted is history with a difference—the difference being its concerns with hearts and souls no less than an event."

 The book inspired a generation of research in the history of American immigration, but because it emphasizes the depressing conditions faced by immigrants, focuses almost entirely on European peasants, and does not claim to provide a definitive answer to the causes of American immigration, its great value as a well-researched and readable description of the emotional experiences of immigrants, and its ability to evoke the time and place of America at the turn of a century, have sometimes been overlooked. Recognized today as a foundational text in immigration studies, this edition contains a new preface by the author.

Still Life With Rice

Still Life With Rice

by Helie Lee

In this radiant memoir of her grandmother's life, Helie Lee probes a history and a culture that are both seductively exotic and strangely familiar. And with wit and verve she claims her own Korean identity, illuminating the intricate experiences of Asian-American women.

Born in 1912 - "the year of the rat" - to aristocratic parents, Hongyong Baek came of age in a unified but socially repressive Korea, where she learned the roles that had been prescribed for her: obedient daughter, demure wife, efficient household manager. Ripped from her home first during the Japanese occupation and again during the bloody civil war that divided her country, Hongyong fought to save her family by drawing from her own talents and values. Over the years she provided for her husband and children by running a successful restaurant, building a profitable opium business, and eventually becoming adept at the healing art of Chiryo.

When she was pressured to leave her country, she moved with her family to California, where she reestablished her Chiryo practice. Writing in her grandmother's voice, Helie Lee depicts the concerns and conflicts that shaped one family's search for home. Evocative and keenly felt, Still Life with Rice interprets issues that touch all of us: the complex nature of family relations, the impact of social upheaval on an individual, and the rapidly changing lives of women in this century.

Quiet Odyssey

Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America
by Mary Paik Lee
edited by Sucheng Chan

Lee's indomitable spirit pervades this absorbing autobiography spanning much of the 20th century. Born in 1900, the author left Korea in 1905 with her family, as political refugees. Among the earliest Korean immigrants to America, they settled in California, where they faced a constant struggle for the bare necessities, living wherever Lee's father could find work, often as an agricultural laborer. In addition to economic adversity, Lee often encountered racism. Determined to attend high school, she endured lectures about "stinking Chinks and dirty Japs." After the attack on Pearl Harbor, she had to stop three teenagers from striking her child. Even such unreasoned hatred could not break Lee who, from the perspective of the 1980s, sees in her children's successes the triumph of a century of cultural change. Chan, author of This Bittersweet Soil and a professor of history and Asian American studies at UC Santa Barbara, supplements the memoir with historical background. Her notes help make this brief, accessible volume a worthwhile addition to the scholarship on Asian American culture.

Renegade History of the United States

A Renegade History of the United States

by Thaddeus Russell

In this groundbreaking book, noted historian Thaddeus Russell tells a new and surprising story about the origins of American freedom. Rather than crediting the standard textbook icons, Russell demonstrates that it was those on the fringes of society whose subversive lifestyles helped legitimize the taboo and made America the land of the free.

In vivid portraits of renegades and their “respectable” adversaries, Russell shows that the nation’s history has been driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires—insiders versus outsiders, good citizens versus bad. The more these accidental revolutionaries existed, resisted, and persevered, the more receptive society became to change.

Russell brilliantly and vibrantly argues that it was history’s iconoclasts who established many of our most cherished liberties. Russell finds these pioneers of personal freedom in the places that usually go unexamined—saloons and speakeasies, brothels and gambling halls, and even behind the Iron Curtain. He introduces a fascinating array of antiheroes: drunken workers who created the weekend; prostitutes who set the precedent for women’s liberation, including “Diamond Jessie” Hayman, a madam who owned her own land, used her own guns, provided her employees with clothes on the cutting-edge of fashion, and gave food and shelter to the thousands left homeless by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; there are also the criminals who pioneered racial integration, unassimilated immigrants who gave us birth control, and brazen homosexuals who broke open America’s sexual culture.

Among Russell’s most controversial points is his argument that the enemies of the renegade freedoms we now hold dear are the very heroes of our history books— he not only takes on traditional idols like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, but he also shows that some of the most famous and revered abolitionists, progressive activists, and leaders of the feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the vibrant energies of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the drag queens who founded Gay Liberation.

This is not history that can be found in textbooks— it is a highly original and provocative portrayal of the American past as it has never been written before.

Africa's Discovery of Europe

Africa's Discovery of Europe 1450-1850

by David Northrup

Brilliantly written and thoroughly engaging, this groundbreaking book examines the full range of African-European encounters from an unfamiliar African perspective rather than from the customary European one. Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850, concludes with an expanded epilogue that extends the themes of African-European commercial and cultural interaction to the present day. By featuring vivid life stories of individual Africans and drawing upon their many recorded sentiments, David Northrup presents African perspectives that persuasively challenge stereotypes about African-European relations as they unfolded in Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic world between 1450 and 1850.

Acclaimed by students in classroom settings ranging from secondary schools to graduate colloquia, the text features thematically organized chapters that explore first impressions, religion and politics, commerce and culture, imported goods and technology, the Middle Passage, and Africans in Europe. In addition, Northrup offers a thoughtful examination of Africans' relations—intellectual, commercial, cultural, and sexual—with Europeans, tracing how the patterns of behavior that emerged from these encounters shaped pre-colonial Africa. The book concludes with an examination of the roles of race, class, and culture in early modern times, pointing out which themes in Africa's continuing discovery of Europe after 1850 were similar to earlier patterns, and why other themes were different.

Becoming Mexican American

Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945

by George J. Sanchez
Twentieth-century Los Angeles has been the locus of one of the most profound and complex interactions between variant cultures in American history. Yet this study is among the first to examine the relationship between ethnicity and identity among the largest immigrant group to that city. By focusing on Mexican immigrants to Los Angeles from 1900 to 1945, George J. Sánchez explores the process by which temporary sojourners altered their orientation to that of permanent residents, thereby laying the foundation for a new Mexican-American culture. Analyzing not only formal programs aimed at these newcomers by the United States and Mexico, but also the world created by these immigrants through family networks, religious practice, musical entertainment, and work and consumption patterns, Sánchez uncovers the creative ways Mexicans adapted their culture to life in the United States. When a formal repatriation campaign pushed thousands to return to Mexico, those remaining in Los Angeles launched new campaigns to gain civil rights as ethnic Americans through labor unions and New Deal politics. The immigrant generation, therefore, laid the groundwork for the emerging Mexican-American identity of their children.

Migrations and Cultures

Migrations and Cultures: A World View

by Thomas Sowell

Migrations and Cultures goes beyond the political view of immigration and presents the whole phenomena of migration and immigration and the major role it plays in the general advancement of the human race.

Most commentators look at the issue of immigration from the viewpoint of immediate politics. In doing so, they focus on only a piece of the issue and lose touch with the larger picture. Now Thomas Sowell offers a sweeping historical and global look at a large number of migrations over a long period of time. Migrations and Cultures shows the persistence of cultural traits, in particular racial and ethnic groups, and the role these groups’ relocations play in redistributing skills, knowledge, and other forms of “human capital.” answers the question: What are the effects of disseminating the patterns of the particular set of skills, attitudes, and lifestyles each ethnic group has carried forth—both for the immigrants and for the host countries, in social as well as economic terms?

Thomas Sowell has taught economics at a number of colleges and universities, including Cornell, University of California Los Angeles, and Amherst. He has published both scholarly and popular articles and books on economics, and is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

I Like Being American

I Like Being American: Treasured Traditions, Symbols, and Stories

edited by Michael Leach

A stirring celebration of a nation rich in diversity and united by an indestructible belief in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A feast of heartwarming true stories, thought-provoking essays, and eye-opening observations, I Like Being American captures the love, loyalty, and gratitude that inspires and sustains Americans in good times and in bad. It is about what is beautiful, true, and lasting in our country, and it is sure to lift your spirit, and encourage all of us to live up to our deepest ideals.

The contributors range from such well-known figures as novelist Anna Quindlen, who celebrates our unity in diversity, to Dinesh D’Souza who learned that in America he could write the story of his own life, to immigrants from every corner of the earth who express profound gratitude for their new homeland. Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American senator, and Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, share their pride in how far America has come in its brief history. The values Americans treasure come to life in the first-person stories of “ordinary people” such as Dan O’Neill, who founded Mercy Corps to help share America’s abundance with those less fortunate throughout the world. A guest list of celebrities as diverse as Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Marianne Williamson, Paul Simon, Bill O’Reilly, and Yogi Berra reveals a nation built on foundations of freedom, equality, and compassion.

The spiritual foundations of the nation come to life in historic documents and inspiring speeches–including the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham jail.

A book of great spirit and generosity, just like the land it portrays, I Like Being American showcases in words and pictures why 300 million people of every age, religion, ethnicity, and race are proud to say with one voice: “I like being American!”

Italians Then, Mexicans Now

Italians Then, Mexicans Now: Immigrant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890 To 2000

by Joel Perlmann

Joel Perlmann offers a sustained comparison of immigrant and second-generation wellbeing over the past hundred years. Using the latest immigration data from the census and other recent studies - as well as a century of census data - Perlmann paints a more optimistic picture of immigrant prospects than is envisioned by many other scholars of immigration.

Rich with historical data, Italians Then, Mexicans Now persuasively argues that today's Mexican immigrants are making slow but steady socioeconomic progress and may one day reach parity with earlier immigrant groups who moved up into the heart of American middle-class society.

Chicano!

Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement
by F. Arturo Rosales

Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement designates four major episodes of the Mexican civil rights struggle in the United States. Chapter One features efforts of the "lost-land" generation (southwest Mexican natives) to stem property losses, maintain their culture and assert civil rights given them by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the US takeover of the Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. The second portion, Chapters Two to Five, views immigrant attempts in the early part of this century to protect themselves from a hostile American public. In the effort to safeguard their civil rights, an elaborate Mexico Lindo (Pretty Mexico) nationalism emerged that immigrants used to rally around issues of repression. Chapters Six and Seven look at the optimistic Mexican American generation made up primarily of children of immigrants who did not have ties to Mexico. Not only did this generation demand the civil rights to which they were entitled, but they also strove to acculturate to Anglo American culture without turning their backs on their Mexican heritage. In addition, Mexican Americans in this era made the greatest attempts to empower themselves as workers. The final and most lengthy section of the book traces the evolution of the Chicano Movement and assesses its legacy. It takes the reader through the most turbulent days of civil unrest and grass-roots organizing in Mexican American history.

Filipinos in Los Angeles

Images of America: Filipinos in Los Angeles

by Mae Respicio Koerner

The year 2006 marked the centennial of Filipino migration to the United States, when 15 migrant workers called sakadas arrived in Hawaii to work on the islands’ sugar plantations. Today the largest concentration of Filipinos outside of the Philippines exists in Southern California. In the 1920s, the first substantial wave of newcomers settled in downtown Los Angeles, eventually migrating to areas just northwest of downtown, a district now designated by the city as Historic Filipinotown. The majority of early Filipino settlers were males who found employment in service-oriented industries, including work as janitors, dishwashers, and houseboys. Filipino Americans now contribute to all aspects of life and culture and live in virtually every Los Angeles neighborhood and suburb, including Eagle Rock, Cerritos, Glendale, Carson, and West Covina.

Tunes From a Tuscan Guitar

Tunes from a Tuscan Guitar: The Life and Times of an Italian Immigrant

by Roland R. Bianchi

In 1906 Ottorino Bianchi emigrated to the United States from the small town of Bientina in Italy's Tuscany region. The hardy farmer arrived in San Francisco, CA, just in time from the momentous 1906 earthquake. He helped rebuild the city, particularly the Italian enclave in North Beach, became a commercial crab fisherman, and watched Fisherman's Wharf evolve into a thriving commercial center.

Ottorino was also a passable guitarist, and through music he recounted the legacy of his Italian culture to his children and grandchildren -- including the author of this book.

Roland Bianchi's biography of his revered "Nonno" is an affectionate portrait of a man who loved life, cherished his family, and enriched the lives of many friends.

Mexifornia

Mexifornia: A State of Becoming

by Victor Davis Hanson

This book is part history, part political analysis and part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in California over the last quarter century.

Hanson's primary worry is steadily rising illegal immigration into a welfare state with expanding entitlements and waning commitment to the history and virtues of Western civilization, an admittedly imperfect, coercive consensus that nonetheless held together a uniquely successful, multiethnic nation. The emerging Mexifornia is becoming "not quite Mexico and not quite America either."

Journey to Ellis Island

Journey to Ellis Island: How My Father Came to America
by Carol Bierman

As the huge ship pulled into New York Harbor, Jehuda and his family quickly gathered their few belongings. Looming ahead of them was a giant green statue, and beyond lay the huge city. Jehuda thought to himself, So this is America! Jehuda and his family have struggled through hunger, poverty, and war in their Russian homeland. They even lost their beloved father and a sister to the fighting. Thankfully, Jehuda's brother moved to America, and was able to send his mother and siblings money for passage on a ship. Now, armed with a few bags of clothing and a traditional teapot, the family is grateful to be heading toward their new life in New York.

An account of the ocean voyage and arrival at Ellis Island of twelve-year-old Julius Weinstein who, along with his mother and younger sister, immigrated from Russia in 1922.

The Filipino Americans

The Filipino Americans
The People of North America Seriesby Jennifer Stern

The earliest Filipino Americans to arrive in the New World landed in 1763 and created a settlement in Saint Malo, Louisiana. They were pressed sailors escaping from the cruelty of Spanish galleons and were "discovered" in America in 1883 by a Harper's Weekly journalist. Other Filipino American settlements appeared throughout the bayous of Louisiana with the Manila Village in Barataria Bay being the largest. Some immigration occurred with the need for menial rural labor in the late 1800s, with Filipino Americans settling primarily in Hawaii and California. Roughly another two hundred years would pass before significant numbers arrived in the Americas in the last half of the 20th century starting in the 1970s, mostly settling in California and the South. Some came looking for political freedom, but most arrived looking for employment and a better life for their families.

Immigrant Voices

Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America 1773-1986
edited by Thomas Dublin

Dublin here offers a collection of first-person immigrant accounts of life in the United States. This book grew out of Dublin's desire to provide his undergraduates (he teaches history at SUNY-Binghamton) with a reader showing how immigrants saw and understood their own experiences. Dublin draws from a wide range of already published classic immigrant recollections, ranging from "The Diary of John Harrower" to "The Nguyen Family: From Vietnam to Chicago." There is a balance between accounts by men and women; two of the ten chapters are written by the children of immigrants. The selected bibliography is a particularly useful list of book-length first-person accounts. Although all the readings are available elsewhere, the editing of this work warrants its inclusion in most undergraduate collections.

A Nation of Immigrants

A Nation of Immigrants
by John F. Kennedy

Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, people who deserve the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland. This modern edition of his posthumously published, timeless work—with a new introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy and a foreword by Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League—offers the late president's inspiring suggestions for immigration policy and presents a chronology of the main events in the history of immigration in America.

Immigrant Kids

Immigrant Kids
by Russell Freedman

Text and contemporary photographs chronicle the life of immigrant children at home, school, work, and play during the late 1800's and early 1900's.

As Flip As I Want To Be

As Flip As I Want To Be
by George Estrada

As Flip As I Want to Be is a collection of columns from Estrada’s work with the Philippine Times of Las Vegas. Here you will hear the pounding rains of Quezon City, feel the mass exultation of a U.S. citizenship ceremony, ponder the beauty of fake Rolex watches, listen to Tom Cruise speaking in Russian, and meet a Filipino NFL quarterback. You will rock out with a Filipino heavy-metal god, meet a Filipino rapper, and go all-in in a high stakes poker tournament. Saddle up and take another wild ride through the Filipino American experience.

When I Was Puerto Rican

When I Was Puerto Rican
by Esmeralda Santiago

Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.