Category Archives: immigrant stories

I’ll Be Right Here, by Amy Bloom***

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I’ve been a reader of Amy Bloom’s novels for decades, and so when I see a new one is coming out, I leap, usually without even checking out the synopsis. Just the author’s name is enough to get me moving. This time was a little different. I began reading, but had trouble engaging, and my mind wandered. I decided to get the audio from the library, once the publication date had come and gone, and that was how I eventually finished it.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

We start out in Europe during World War II. Gazala emigrates from Paris to New York, and becomes friends with a pair of sisters; later Samir, Gazala’s brother, joins her. Now here’s where it gets icky, (to use a highly literary term.) Gazala and Samir become a couple. They don’t tell people they meet that they are related, so they are accepted. Their friends also become involved in—to be charitable—unconventional relationships. In looking back at the synopsis, it’s all right there: “the lawlessness of love.” Hoo boy. It definitely is.

So, after forcing myself to finish listening to this thing, I nearly give it two stars, but the nugget that saves it for me is the concept that occurs when they are grieving a loved one, the notion of a “dead people’s party.” I love thinking about this! I have already started imagining my own such party, having lost too many people I cherished, when my sister dies. Her death is not altogether unexpected, as she was a great deal older than I am and has been in ill health for many years, but it still packs a punch. The thought of my sister’s dead people’s party—complete fantasy, as far as I am concerned, but who cares? Is what has helped me through a dark time.

So Bloom gets an extra star.

Nevertheless, I don’t recommend this thing unless the reader has carefully read the synopsis and is still interested. Yikes! I’ll probably read Bloom again, but this time I’ll be more careful before I commit.

This American Woman, by Zarna Garg*****

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Zarna Garg is an immigrant, born and raised in India. She was rich, except for when she was poor; more on that in a minute. Ultimately, she came here for the same reason many people do: she had to make a break for it.

My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book is available to the public now.

Garg works now as a stand up comic, but she has done many things, and worn many hats. First, of course, she was a runaway bride, more or less, bailing from India before her very wealthy father could marry her off as part of a business arrangement.

“If I hadn’t done that, right now I would be a Mumbai grandma in an arranged marriage to a much older, boring industrialist. I would be draped in brocade silk saris, but I would have a giant padlock on my big mouth.”

Garg’s immigration—fast and sneaky, which was the only possible way–was made easier by her older sister, who was already living in Ohio. Since then, Garg has finished law school and passed the bar, married another Indian immigrant, had three children, and done a number of other impressive things, but it was her own daughter that asked her mother whether she’d ever considered a career in comedy. It takes someone that’s mentally tough to succeed in that realm, but the streets of Mumbai, where she’d lived hand-to-mouth for two years as a runaway teen following her mother’s death, prepared her well, so she was ready for the gritty world she was entering. She explains,   

            “…I had played a show at a club on the Upper East Side and a cockroach fell on my head. The night before that, as I walked to the stage I had to step over a communal puddle of throw up from a bachelorette part who refused to leave. They just kept throwing up and laughing. So far my comedy career had been physically revolting—but it was still my dream! Now here I was in my very first New York City green room that smelled like air…I walked out on stage. Two thousand white ladies politely applauded. Oh my god. What was I doing? Would this audience even understand my humor? For them India is incense and chanting. Were they ready for a foul-mouthed real-life Indian auntie who hated meditation? “

I wondered, after watching some of Garg’s stand up work online, whether the book would be a duplication of her routine, more or less; it’s happened with other comic authors. But although there’s a small smattering of shared content, the memoir is mostly unique, and I never had the sense that I’d already seen this before.

Garg is funny enough that I’ve let her speak for herself here. Anyone that needs to laugh hard, and that enjoys reading about the disorientation and culture shock experienced by those new to America should read this book. Highly recommended!  

Everybody Says It’s Everything, by Xhenet Aliu**-***

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2.5 stars, rounded upwards.

Xhenet (pronounced similar to “Jeanette”) Aliu is the author of Brass, the award-winning debut novel that was one of my favorites of 2018. When I saw that she had a new book, Everybody Says It’s Everything, I was so excited that I bounced up and down in my desk chair. My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review; sadly, I found this book disappointing. The sophomore slump is real, friends.

Our story centers—to the extent that it has a center—on adopted twins, Drita and Pete, who’ve been leading quintessential American lives. Drita was a star student, and is in the midst of graduate studies when she is called home to care for her mother; Pete—actually Petrit—has been in various sorts of trouble, and now his girlfriend and son have landed with Drita looking for help, since they aren’t getting any from Pete. The story takes us through their native Albanian roots and heritage, through the war in Kosovo, and through Pete’s discouragement, hardship, and addiction.

I have a hard time connecting with any of these characters. The dialogue drags, and the poignant qualities that I found in Brass are nowhere to be found. Both are sad stories, but the protagonist in Brass had my whole heart and my full attention, whereas these characters left me feeling as if I was eavesdropping on one more group of depressed, underserved people, but also edging towards the door. I was just straight up bored, a word I rarely use in reviews. I continued all the way through because I was sure that it would turn brilliant any minute; it never did.

I look forward to seeing what this author writes next, because she has proven that she has the ability to connect with readers in general and me in particular, but I can’t recommend this book to you.

The Family Recipe, by Carolyn Huynh*****

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“We all need to feel needed. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?”

Carolyn Huynh made her authorial debut in 2022 with The Fortunes of Jaded Women. It was one of my favorite novels not only of that year, but of all the thousand-plus galleys I have read since I began reviewing. She’s back again with The Family Recipe, and it’s every bit as good as the first. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review, but make no mistake: I would have hunted this thing down and bought it with my Social Security check if it came down to it. I wouldn’t have been sorry, either.

This book is available to the public now.

Once again, our protagonists are Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans, mostly women, and once again, they are siblings and other family members that must come together; it isn’t a voluntary reunion. And that’s where the similarities between the first book and this one end.

Duc Tran, the patriarch, has laid out the terms by which his children may inherit his fortune. Once upon a time, he was the Vietnamese sandwich king, and in order to become his heir, each of his four daughters must relocate to a city she doesn’t want to live in, and revive a down-at-the-heels restaurant in a now undesirable end of town. It’s a contest; that is, unless Duc’s one son, Jude, succeeds in getting married within the one year’s time limit of the contest. If he can do that, he wins. (His sisters aren’t worried; who would marry Jude?)

The story is told from several points of view; these include the siblings, their uncle—a shady lawyer, and Duc’s best friend; their mother, who abandoned them when they were small, when her mental health collapsed, and never went back; Duc’s second wife; and briefly, Duc himself, who mostly serves as a mysterious figure that doesn’t even return to the States to lay out his children’s requirements, sending their uncle as his proxy.  As the story unfolds, we learn more about each sibling, and about the traumas they have experienced, as well as their successes.

The thing that makes it work so well is Huynh’s unerring sense of timing. It’s a dramatic tale, but it’s shot full of humor, as we see at the outset, when we learn the sisters’ names. Their father was a huge fan of the Beatles, and so the girls are named Jane, Paulina, Georgia, and (wait for it…) Bingo!

There are plenty of twists and turns, and the dialogue crackles. The internal monologues are mesmerizing. This book would make a fantastic movie.

Since I was reading this galley digitally, I highlighted quotes that I thought I’d like to use in this review, but there are 28 of them. Obviously, I cannot share them all here, but let that inform you, if nothing else here has, how much I love this book.

Highly recommended to anyone that has a beating heart, at least a passing interest in Vietnamese-American culture and/or family stories, and can use a few good laughs.

You’ll Never Believe Me, by Kari Ferrell**-***

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My thanks go to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public January 7, 2025.

The blurb for this book had me at hello. Korean baby girl adopted by Caucasian Americans, who then become Mormons; a childhood and adolescence rife with alienation, discrimination, and ultimately a life of crime; prison time, followed by social crusades, among them prison reform, which is hugely necessary. I was all in, but that was before I read this thing. My own daughter is half Japanese and has to listen to “Where you from?” a fair amount, so this is a sensitive area for me, too. Racial teachings within the LDS (Mormon) church are a veritable minefield, and indeed, I can see how Ferrell’s upbringing would have been fraught.

And yet, the memoir that I read was not what I expected. The memoir, the blurb said, would be laugh out loud funny; I chucked a few times at the outset, and then was mostly just horrified. I received both the digital and audio galleys, and halfway through I abandoned the audio, because Ferrell, who provides her own narration, sounds so ebullient, so proud of herself, that I couldn’t take it. Reverting to the digital made it doable, but I found myself finishing it from a sense of obligation rather than a desire to read more.

Ferrell’s friends during her adolescence are what most adults would consider to be the wrong crowd. Truancy, petty theft, lying, drinking, and drugs are hallmarks. But Ferrell neither stays there as an adult, nor reforms herself once she reaches adulthood, though her parents, even though they divorce, likely can provide her with psychiatric treatment or counseling. Instead, she escalates, and commences stealing and defrauding her friends, pretending to need an abortion, pretending to have cancer, receiving so-called loans and gifts from those that don’t have a lot of money but love her dearly, and then disappearing. Steal in Utah, move to New York City. Steal in New York, go home to the folks in Arizona. And it continues until, at long last, she is arrested, tried, and convicted.

I tried to put my finger on what it is that makes me edgy here. Why do I not believe she’s all that sorry? Partly, it’s that other people appear only briefly and vaguely here. Of course it’s Ferrell’s life that’s the focus, but I would have expected some passages that flesh out the people that have loved her and tried to help her, even if it is necessary to conceal their identities as a matter of their own preferences. What happens to them later? What hardships, if any, do they suffer because of her actions? Instead, all of them come across as shadows, and as if they don’t really matter. I would have expected some emotion around reconnecting with some of these people, trying to make amends and financial restitution, even if they don’t want to see or hear from her. She talks a fair amount about the realization that her behavior is a form of self-sabotage, cutting herself off from positive relationships, but she doesn’t talk much about how she has sabotaged, or even completely blown up, the lives of others.

Lastly, I’m disturbed by some of her assumptions. The one that comes immediately to mind is when she reminds us—as if this is well known—that lying is fun. What??

In order for a memoir to be successful, the reader must be able to bond with the author. I have been unable to do that, either because Ferrell enjoys talking about her crimes and betrayals a little too much, or because she is unable to convey remorse in her writing; either way, I cannot recommend it to you.  

The Briar Club, by Kate Quinn*****

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I had never read a novel by Kate Quinn, but my friends on Goodreads raved about it and I was overcome by the fear of missing out. Happily, I was not too late to get a review copy; my thanks go to NetGalley and William Morrow, along with my apologies for lateness. From the get go, I could tell this book was too good to speed read, and so I set it aside for a time when I could sink into it and appreciate it. This fall I was able to get the audio version from the library to help me along; narrator Saskia Maarleveld is outstanding, and those that enjoy hearing their books should strongly consider ordering that format.

Our story takes place just after World War II, and it takes place almost entirely within the confines of Briarwood House, a women’s boarding house owned by the selfish, odious Mrs. Nilsson. The book’s prologue comes to us from the point of view of the house, and for a brief spell I wonder whether the house itself will become the main character. It doesn’t, and that’s probably just as well, because the women that rent its rooms, along with Pete and Lina, Nilsson’s two children, fill the story quite nicely, and all are beautifully developed, some more than others, with Nilsson herself being the only truly static character. In fact, I could argue that even the house’s character is developed somewhat.

I seldom do this, but the prologue is so juicy that I’m going to reprint a considerable chunk of it here, because Quinn’s voice—and okay, the house’s—provide a more convincing incentive to read on, than anything I can offer:

If these walls could talk. Well, they may not be talking, but they are certainly listening. And watching…Now its walls smell of turkey, pumpkin pie, and blood, and the house is shocked down to its foundations. Also, just a little bit thrilled. This is the most excitement Briarwood House has had in decades. Murder. Murder here in the heart of sleepy white picket fence Washington, D.C.! And on Thanksgiving, too. Not that the house is terribly surprised by that; it’s held enough holidays to know that when you throw all that family together and mix with too much rum punch and buried resentment, blood is bound to be shed sometimes…This was a very enthusiastic murder, the house muses. Not one moment’s hesitation from the hand swinging that blade…Briarwood House doesn’t like Mrs. Nilsson. Hasn’t liked her since she first crossed the threshold as a bride, complaining before she’d even shaken the rice out of her hair that the halls were too narrow (My halls! Too narrow!), and still doesn’t like her twenty years down the road. No one else in this kitchen does, either, the house knows perfectly well. It knows something the detective doesn’t. The killer is still very much in this room.

Now that the murder has been mentioned, I must caution you not to identify this story foremost as a murder mystery; it isn’t. The murder doesn’t come till nearly the very end, and the reason that it affects us so deeply is because of the author’s success in making every character here feel tangible and known to us. By the time anyone is enraged enough to swing anything, we know all of these women, or most of them at least, well enough to feel as if they are family. Boarder Grace March is revealed to us more slowly than the other women, but there are reasons for that, and by the end, I may love her best of all. No, this is first and foremost a stellar work of historical fiction.

At the outset, no one knows anyone else. Some are married, waiting for spouses to return from the conflict; some are single; some are professionals. Almost everybody has at least one serious secret. But as they grow to know one another, bonds are established that in some cases are stronger than those of blood relatives.

I won’t go through the plot or describe individual characters; as far as I’m concerned, that would be gilding the lily. Instead, I urge you to get a copy of this outstanding novel in whatever form is your favorite, with a slight nudge toward audio if you’re undecided. Highly recommended!

The Chinese Question, by Mae M. Ngai****-*****

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Mae Ngai is an award-winning author and a professor at Columbia University. In her third book, The Chinese Question, she examines the race relations and to some degree, the economic underpinnings of the Chinese diaspora.

My thanks go to NetGalley and W.W. Norton and Company for the review copy. I am disgracefully late, but when I began reading this book I realized that if I were to absorb and retain anything here, I would need to take it in small bites. That said, this is an unusually well researched work, and it’s well worth the time and attention of anyone interested in the topic.

Usually when I see research having to do with Chinese immigration, it is within the context of immigration to the United States, or an examination of the push factors of emigration, examining why Chinese chose to leave their native land and embark upon an expensive, dangerous, and uncertain journey to a place they’d never visited—in most cases—and where they usually did not speak the language. Instead, Ngai examines it as a global diaspora that includes English speaking nations, namely South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States. In doing so she is able to highlight the similarities of treatment, to put it politely, and also to dismantle some of the stereotypes that have rooted themselves in English speakers’ knowledge of history.

For starters, she wants us to know that Chinese immigrants were not necessarily “coolies” or indentured workers, and they didn’t always face conflicts with Caucasian powerbrokers. But there certainly were a great many blood chilling abuses, sometimes brought about by White fear of the “other,” but oftener from greed and the desire to exploit the Chinese working class and eliminate competition from the businesses of better off Chinese.

This study is adjacent to my own graduate study topic of many years ago, when I examined the “Model Minority,” and the attempt to counter the demands of U.S. Civil Rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s with the suggestion that Black people quietly accept abuse and quietly climb the economic ladder, or not, as Asians of Chinese and Japanese descent had supposedly done. Ngai demonstrates that Chinese immigrants weren’t all that quiet, and they weren’t all that accepting of maltreatment at the hands of employers and local officials. This is interesting material indeed, and I wish I had known these things sooner.

As a general read for a wide audience, this may be a four star book because it is dense and has an academic approach that not all pleasure readers will appreciate; however, for those with a strong interest in the topic, whether for academic research or personal knowledge and growth, it is hands down the best work I’ve seen in decades.

Highly recommended to those passionate about the issue.

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, by Helen Simonson*****

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Helen Simonson is the author of the bestselling novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. With her new release, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, she is once more in her element, creating believable characters and using them to skewer the pervasive racism and class snobbery of Britain, and also, in a smaller way, that of the U.S.  With outstanding word smithery and an unflagging pace, this historical novel should be number one on your summer reading list.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The year is 1919; the place is England. Constance Haverhill has been ousted from her job running an estate; the Great War has ended, and now the women that have been gainfully employed and done a fine job are unceremoniously ejected so that their jobs may go to the men that have returned from the conflict. For the time being, she has a position as a traveling companion to a family friend who’s recuperating at the seashore; once this situation ends, she has no idea where she’ll go or what she’ll do.

Out of nowhere comes Poppy, a daring young woman from a wealthy family. Poppy wears trousers and drives a motorcycle; she befriends Constance and sweeps her into her motorcycle club. Things become even more interesting when Poppy purchases a used biplane to bring home to her brother Harris, a handsome but severely depressed young man who’s lost a leg in the war. At one point he laments, “They look at me as if my brain has gone missing along with the leg. Or rather they refuse to look at me at all.”

Poppy is utterly fearless, challenging local authority and promoting women’s rights. She doesn’t care about the opinions of others; her eye is set on the horizon. And she can do that, because she has a soft nest in which to land. At the same time, Constance is always aware of the stark class division that prevents her from behaving as Poppy does.

“Respectability was the currency in which Constance knew she just trade for the foreseeable future. She…did not have Poppy’s wealth and position from which to defend herself against notoriety.”

There are a number of amusing side characters whose less progressive attitudes contrast with Poppy’s. The two women—also very wealthy—on the adjoining estate sniff at her exploits and declare them to be unladylike. The class division is also highlighted when Constance is offered a position with the hotel where she and Mrs. Fox, the family friend she accompanies, are staying. However, she is told that once she accepts the offer, she can no longer be a guest at the hotel, nor may she use the restaurant, which is a frequent gathering place of Constance’s new friends. No hobnobbing with the clientele will be tolerated; she must use the back door. Constance reflects to herself that wherever she goes, her friend Poppy will use the front door.

Britain’s racist attitudes toward people of color is also featured here, but in a way that does not hijack the plot. There’s an Indian guest of the hotel that is snubbed left and right; at one point, an American visitor attempts to have him excluded from the social events to which he’s been invited. This is resolved in a deeply satisfying manner, as is the issue of taboo friendships formed by Mrs. Fox.

If I could change one thing, it would be to add a bit more nuance. The bad characters are oh so bad; and while the good characters make the occasional mistake, we never doubt their complete goodness. However, this is a minor bone to pick, and overall this is a delightful book.

Highly recommended.

Rednecks, by Taylor Brown*****

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“Law only serves them that’s in power. Ain’t no different than always…’Tis the victor who writes the history—and counts the dead.”

I’ve been an enthusiastic fan of author Taylor Brown since reading Gods of Howl Mountain, which was published in 2018. His new novel, Rednecks, is out now, and as with his earlier work, it is outstanding. My great thanks go to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review.

Brown tells the story of the Battle of Blair Mountain, a very real large scale battle, complete with machine guns, helicopters, tens of thousands of angry, armed miners, and the U.S. Army, an event which really did take place in the Appalachian Mountains in 1921. Over a million rounds were fired, and then the story was suppressed by the government, bosses, and big business media.

 In his author’s note, Brown tells us that the character of Dr. Muhanna, a heroic individual sympathetic to the cause of the miners, is based on his own great-grandfather. There is a meaty explanation of what parts of the story are based on the actual historical record, and what parts—small ones, to be sure—he has changed.

Apart from his skill as a writer and researcher, the thing that I have always loved best about Brown is his deep respect for the working class. It shines through every page of this novel. Mother Jones, the fiery Socialist labor organizer, is here as well, and she is possibly my favorite figure in American history. Unfortunately, she is not at her best here. Past ninety years of age and in poor health, she attempts to deceive the miners into quitting their struggle early once she learns that Washington, D.C. intends to send troops. It’s a pity that her many years of inspirational organizing and leadership are not on display here, but the facts are the facts, and this story is not, after all, chiefly about Mother, but about the miners, so I suppose that Brown has written it in the only honest way that it could be written. There are indeed passages that demonstrate her eloquence and loyalty to workers of every race and ethnicity.

As I read, I like to highlight passages to include as quotes in my review. This time, I came away with 53 quotes. Reluctantly, I am setting most of them aside; you will have to find them yourself. They’re better within the context of the story, anyway.

As a personal aside, I will mention that my own grandfather—“Papaw”—died of Black Lung disease in 1978 after having worked in a nonunion mine in South Dakota beginning in the eighth grade. He had to leave school and work fulltime, as there was not a social net back then, and he and his family would have starved if he had done otherwise. World War II brought him better fortunes, but coal dust, once lodged in the lungs, never leaves.

This is a gritty tale to be sure, one full of bloodshed and suffering, but also of immense courage and inspirational leadership. I read it in small bites lest it work its way into my dreams, until I reached the climax, at which point I had no choice in the matter, and was unable to put it down. This book is one of the year’s best. I highly recommend it to those that love labor history, historical fiction, or that just love a well-told story.

Like the Appearance of Horses, by Andrew Krivak****

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I first read Andrew Krivak in 2017, when The Signal Flame was published. His glorious prose is something few authors can match. Here we have another novel involving many of the same characters and to an extent, the same setting. I am happy to get back to it.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Highbridge Audio, and Bellevue Literary Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

One of the things that initially drew me to Krivak’s writing is that he occupies a sparsely populated niche with his historical fiction. Who else writes about the Romani Resistance of World War II? Who writes about Romani refugees? Most authors are as susceptible as anyone else to trend following and bandwagonism. Krivak is not. He sets his own course, and he does it with spellbinding prose and sterling self-discipline.  

Here we see three generations of men that go to war, starting with World War II, then to a P.O.W. camp during the Vietnam War, and finally, to Iraq. This is a rough read, friends. There’s just about every possible trigger, so if you’re protecting the more tender parts of your mind, you may need to pass on this one. On the other hand, if you are looking for a catharsis to bring about a good ugly cry, rush out and get this book right this minute.

Krivak doesn’t write page turners; instead, he draws me in and makes me forget where I am and what I was doing a minute ago. His work is deeply absorbing and at times, moving.

Narrator Jamie Renell gives a flawless performance here. The book is tightly plotted enough, however, that the listener needs to pay careful attention. I had both the audio and ebook formats, and I still got confused once in awhile and had to backtrack.

If I could add one more thing to ice Krivak’s literary cake, it would be a well developed female character. The women that appear here seem to have been planted for the purpose of developing the male characters. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and Krivak has crafted this story around a set of actual people and events, though he says it’s a loose representation, and so I can see why he chooses to focus on the men that go to war; yet, since he is taking a few liberties anyway, would it hurt so very much to send off a soldier girl?

This complaint is a minor one. Krivak is a badass, and I do recommend this book to you.