Fans pick 100 books like The Penguin Book of Migration Literature

This is an amazing book that shows just how far we can go when it comes to changing the neural networks in our brains. It helped me understand the mechanisms involved in wanting to change some deep-rooted beliefs.

Doige writes about some of the most extraordinary cases of stroke patients rewiring their brains for functionality after their strokes. The brain is remarkable, and it can change if we so wish it to.

This book, the story of a Syrian refugee beekeeper, speaks volumes about what I believe in: the resiliency of human beings and the power of the mind.

The beekeeper’s journey reminds me of why I love working with people as a psychologist after 30+ years. I witnessed many times that hopes and dreams can carry people through the most difficult, dire situations. The title of the book also attracted me.

Being an amateur beekeeper, I have some understanding of beekeeper mentality. One has to be observant, patient, and persistent in order to befriend bees. This includes a willingness to learn, follow instinct, and trust what life can bring. These characteristics are reflected in the protagonist of this book.

His emotional journey is about surrendering to the unknown, working with what is in front of him, and trusting what the universe will bring him in the end. Warmth, kindness, and torments… show more.

This book is the fascinating story of a Sephardic Jewish emigrant in London who, in the 1660s, was permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi even though she was a woman. The narration flips between Esther Velasquez’s remarkable story and an ailing historian in the 21st century who is trying to determine the identity of the mysterious scribe known to scholars only as “aleph.”

I liked this story because it revealed a fascinating window on how women, and particularly Jewish women, were treated in 17th-century Europe. 

An important memoir on the topic of Third Culture Kids (TCK). This refers to people who grow up outside their own (or at least their parents') native countries and perhaps live in several countries throughout their childhood.

“Home”, as their parents call it, is a place thousands of kilometers away, which they may only visit for two weeks a year. Unlike immigrant children, they tend to not set down roots in the places they live. The author, who grew up in New Zealand, Australia, England, and Hong Kong, uses her experiences to excavate many issues accumulated while living from one country to another.

When parents decide to relocate internationally, children do not have a say, but their lives are impacted in a dramatic way that adults often fail to see or understand. I strongly recommend parents who plan to move abroad with children to get a deeper understanding on this… show more.

This is another book that addresses Europe’s 2015-2016 “refugee crisis.” While Miliband also offers some insights into the experience of refugees seeking asylum in Europe, the focus of his book is on how current European policy betrays the values at the core of Europe’s recent history and self-understanding. Miliband weaves analysis of the predicament of mostly Middle Eastern and African refugees attempting to reach Europe through irregular Mediterranean routes with reflection on his parents’ experience as Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and seeking protection in England in the 1940s. The strength of Rescue is that it provides the reader with multiple frames of reference for thinking about what ought to be Europe’s response toward contemporary refugees, a significant number of whom are Muslims from the Middle East. 

I personally enjoyed this book for the courage found by the Heroine in a world where women were considered 2nd class citizens, but she, through strength of character and love of a sister she loses due to illness and no monies to save her, gives her that impetus to forge ahead through unconventional, but effective ways and new friends of wealth in America. It could be called a Cinderella story with illegal immigrants as heroines.

A book of 1902, about a young woman who had been abused by her father to the point that a nun suggested she find refuge elsewhere. From Italy, she proceeds to save enough money to book passage with a ship for both herself and her younger sister who is already ill from similar abuse. She looks forward to Ellis Island, knowing she then will be on the safe harbor of America, until she learns that… show more.

I will remain forever astonished at the epic feat of world-building in The Arrival. It thoroughly pulls me into an immersive experience where I am learning along with the main character how to navigate the new world into which he has immigrated. As he learns, we learn. I find myself so emotionally involved with his success in his hopeful new reality. The art is amazingly detailed and conveys the complex and richly visual world, yet also sets a strong emotional tone that brings us into the action.

This book offers a great introduction to readers on the connection between race and immigration in the United States. Erika Lee shows how race has shaped understandings of identity, citizenship, and belonging from the colonial era to the present. She argues there is an often racialized definition of America and Americanness, which has led to the marginalization and exclusion of immigrants from all corners of the globe throughout United States history.

Perhaps the strongest argument against expanded migration rights is the fear that too many of the “wrong” kind of immigrants might kill the goose the laid the golden egg that makes a country attractive to migrants in the first place. If immigrants have harmful cultural values, vote for dangerous political leaders, or otherwise undermine the political and economic system, they could degrade the host nation’s institutions. In the extreme case, they might even replicate the same awful conditions that led them to flee their country of origin. Wretched Refuse is the most thorough analysis and refutation of such concerns. Nowrasteh and Powell use both historical and modern evidence to show that institutional concerns about immigration are largely misplaced and that migrants strengthen liberal democracy far more than they undermine it.

I learned from this story why families make the difficult decision to split up and send a father and a child on a dangerous journey for a better life. This family lives in Mexico, facing hunger and destitution. The father and his son became migrants. They walked to America, knowing that they could be split up or one of them die.

In this book, I learned about the Mexican-American War, and the atrocious US policy of splitting migrant children from their parents.