Catalog Search Results
Start the conversation in your choice of over 70 world languages and dialects through courses crafted using conversational methodology. Every self-paced language course introduces the learner to cultural insights and grammatical nuances specific to their language of choice, delivered through native speaker dialogue, and created with each individual learner in mind.
Author
Publisher
Riverhead Books
Pub. Date
2010
Language
English
Description
Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas, the son of Ethiopian immigrants, sets out to retrace his mother and father's trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to his life in the America of today.
Author
Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Description
"A stunning debut novel, from Rhodes Scholar and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Tope Folarin about a Nigerian family living in Utah and their uncomfortable assimilation to American life. Living in small-town Utah has always been an uneasy fit for Tunde Akinola's family, especially for his Nigeria-born parents. Though Tunde speaks English with a Midwestern accent, he can't escape the children who rub his skin and ask why the black won't...
5) You are life
Author
Publisher
Capstone Editions
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
Every child is bursting with amazing possibilities and poet Bao Phi celebrates the complex identity of the children of immigrants and refugees.
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"In present day New Orleans, Xuan Trung, former beauty queen turned refugee after the Fall of Saigon, is obsessed with divining her daughters' fates through their Vietnamese zodiac signs. But Trac, Nhi, and Trieu diverge completely from their immigrant parents expectations. Successful lawyer Trac hides her sexuality from her family; Nhi competes as the only woman of color on a Bachelor-esque reality TV show; and Trieu, a budding writer, is determined...
7) See me
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.5 - AR Pts: 22
Language
English
Description
Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. At 28, he's focused only on walking a straight line - getting his teaching degree, working out at the gym religiously, and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his earlier life. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when Maria Sanchez crosses paths with him on a rainswept night in North Carolina, his plans are upended in a way that will rattle...
8) The namesake
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.2 - AR Pts: 18
Language
English
Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations. Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity from "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." (The New York Times)
Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they...
Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they...
Author
Publisher
Blackstone Publishing
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Formats
Description
1950s. In the border town of La Frontera, young love blooms at first sight between Fulgencio Ramirez, the son of impoverished immigrants, and Carolina Mendelssohn, the local pharmacist's daughter. Their bonds will be undone by a force more powerful than they could have known. Thirty years later Fulgencio Ramirez, RPh, is conducting his daily ritual of reading the local obituaries in his pharmacy office. After nearly a quarter of a century of waiting,...
10) I am golden
Author
Publisher
Feiwel and Friends
Pub. Date
2022.
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 3.3 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Description
This moving ode to the immigrant experience, as well as a manifesto of self-love for Chinese American children, is a jubilant celebration of accepting who you are.
12) Housegirl
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
A moving and unexpectedly funny exploration of friendship and family, shame and forgiveness, Michael Donkor's debut novel follows three adolescent girls grappling with a shared experience: the joys and sorrows of growing up. Belinda knows how to follow the rules. As a housegirl, she has learned the right way to polish water glasses, to wash and fold a hundred handkerchiefs, and to keep a tight lid on memories of the village she left behind when she...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone--from the city's first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples--could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned...
Author
Publisher
Scribner
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Omer Aziz was born to working-class Pakistani-Canadian parents in Toronto and was educated through scholarships at Queen's University, the Paris Institute of Political Studies, the University of Cambridge, and Yale Law School. He worked for Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, and has written for the New York Times and the Atlantic. Through a powerful personal narrative, Omer Aziz delivers a memoir...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"From former White House aide to President Obama and Harvard graduate, Alejandra Campoverdi, comes a riveting and unflinching memoir on navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina, offering a broad examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer. To be a First and Only in America is a delicate balancing act of surviving where you come from while acting like you belong where you're going. Alejandra Campoverdi has been...
Publisher
HarperVia
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"Originally told on-stage and adapted here for the page, these 36 fascinating, unique, and celebratory stories of migration, culture shock, family, and life come from well-known voices including Sonia Manzano, Alexander Chee, André Aciman, Laura Gómez, Aparna Nancherla as well as regular people hailing from every corner of the world. The past and present of immigration in the United States springs to life in this anthology of stories compiled and...
17) Tiger daughter
Author
Publisher
Delacorte Press
Pub. Date
[2023]
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 6 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Description
"Wen Zhou is a first-generation daughter of Chinese migrant parents. She has high expectations from her parents to succeed in school, especially her father, whose strict rules leave her feeling trapped. She dreams of creating a future for herself more satisfying than the one her parents expect her to lead. Then she befriends a boy named Henry who is also a first generation immigrant. He is the smartest boy at school despite struggling with his English...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There's Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, and who grapples with the expectations of a first generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there's...
Author
Publisher
Make Me A World
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Description
"Nima doesn't feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself. Until she doesn't. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life...
Interlibrary Loan Request
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by Des Moines Public Library can be requested from other libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? If the item was published recently, submit a purchase suggestion. Submit Request