Grades
1 - 10
25 Books About Immigration Experiences
Encourage students to explore the power and poignancy of the immigration experience through these affecting stories.
Books can be a pathway to understanding another person's life, culture, and experiences — and few things represent these powerful ideas more than stories about immigration and assimilation.
This curated collection of titles beautifully captures the immigrant and refugee experiences through both the fiction and nonfiction lens.
Younger students will love Muon Thi Van's Wishes, a powerful and touching picture book based on the author's experiences immigrating to the other side of the world with her family from Vietnam as a child. Packing up everything they can carry and boarding a crowded boat, the family's journey to find a better life is written in a poignant yet hopeful narrative children will understand.
Meanwhile, In the Spirit of a Dream presents thirteen beautiful and memorable stories of immigrants of color from all walks of life as they made their way to the United States to become local heroes, politicians, artists, athletes, and more.
Older readers will be mezmerized by Behind the Mountains, the captivating story of Celiane Espérance, who strives to be reunited with her father in Brooklyn as political unrest rips through her home of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Once in America, however, Celiane witnesses the struggles her family — her father, mother, and brother — have to endure in order to forge a new life.
Use these titles to supplement lessons on history and culture and to spark powerful conversations around what it means to leave home for a completely new land.
Shop the best books about immigration experiences below! You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store.
The biographies included feature engineer and astronaut Anousheh Ansari; Paralympic athlete and entrepreneur Alejandro Albor; surgeon Ayub Khan Ommaya; jazz musician Candido Camero; dancer Conceiçao Damasceno; Sriracha inventor and businessman David Tran; basketball player Dikembe Mutombo; author Edwidge Danticat; politician Ilhan Omar; comic artist Jim Lee; environmental activist Juana Guttierez; cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and the Undocupoets, a group of undocumented poets.
It's the Chinese Year of the Dog, and as Pacy celebrates with her family, she finds out that this is the year she is supposed to "find herself." Universal themes of friendship, family, and finding one's passion in life make this novel appealing to readers of all backgrounds.
Akim Aliu - also known as "Dreamer" - is a Ukrainian-Nigerian-Canadian professional hockey player whose career took him all around the world and who experienced systemic racism at every turn. Dreamer tells Akim's incredible story, from being the only Black child in his Ukrainian community, to his family struggling to make ends meet while living in Toronto, to confronting the racist violence he often experienced both on and off the ice. This is a gut-wrenching and riveting graphic novel memoir that reminds us to never stop dreaming, and is sure to inspire young readers everywhere.
Feng-Li can't wait to discover America with her family! But after an action-packed vacation, her parents deliver shocking news: They are returning to Taiwan and leaving Feng-Li and her older siblings in California on their own.
Inspired by the author's own childhood experience of fleeing Vietnam as a refugee and immigrating to Alabama, this Newbery Honor Book and National Book Award winner told in verse is sure to capture young readers' hearts and open their eyes.
Esperanza thought she'd always live with her family on their ranch in Mexico, and that she'd always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home, and servants. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California during the Great Depression, and to settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers.
Kek comes from Africa. In America, he sees the snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He's never walked on ice, and he falls. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like the winter—cold and unkind.
In a heartbreaking parting, a man gives his wife and daughter a last kiss and boards a steamship to cross the ocean. He's embarking on the most painful yet important journey of his life—he's leaving home to build a better future for his family.
When an openly queer Pakistani Muslim student encounters racism, her family faces an unexpected detour on the path to citizenship.
