General Titles

1. Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska Fic Yezierska
This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates to the present day.

2. Harvey Wang's New York Wang, Harvey 974.71 W
Portrays in prose and photos venerable New Yorkers, usually an immigrant engaged in a dying occupation. The mannequin maker who originated the bald shaped head that displays hats, a rabbinical tailor, a baker who makes pasta the old way, an urban gardener, and a Gage & Tollner waiter are among its 50 subjects.

3. Brown Girl, Brownstones Marshall, Paule Fic Marshall
Set in Brooklyn during the Depression and World War II, Brown Girl, Brownstones is the enduring story of a most extraordinary young woman. Selina Boyce, the daughter of Barbadian immigrants, is caught between the struggles of her hard-working, ambitious mother, who wants to "buy house" and educate her daughters, and her father, who longs to return to the land in Barbados.

4. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America Ehrenreich, Barbara 305.569 E
Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort.

5. Eating Chinese Food Naked : A Novel Ng, Mei Fic Ng
In this contemporary novel, readers find Columbia University graduate Ruby Lee returning home to Queens, New York, to stay temporarily with her parents. Living in the four rooms behind Lee's Hand Laundry, which is owned and operated by her aging father, Ruby finds herself unable to escape issues past, present, and future as she battles with her identity as a Chinese-American woman, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a lover.

6. Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez Breslin, Jimmy 331.6272 B
In 1999, at the age of twenty-one, Eduardo Gutiérrez, an illegal immigrant, drowned in concrete at a Brooklyn building site. In this melancholy and sometimes angry book, Breslin traces Gutiérrez's life, from his birth to a brickmaker and his wife in a small, dusty Mexican town to his final days as "cheap labor" for a Williamsburg builder notorious for his shoddy standards.

7. West of Kabul, East of New York : An Afghan American Story Ansary, Mir Tamim/ Ansary, Tamim 973.04927 A
The day after Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an anguished e-mail to twenty friends, discussing the attack from his perspective as an Afghan American. That message, spreading via the Internet, reached and touched millions of people around the world." Now Ansary gives us West of Kabul, East of New York, an account of a life lived in two very different cultures, Islamic Afghanistan and the secular West.

8. Rise of David Levinsky Cahan, Abraham Fic Cahan
First published in 1917, Abraham Cahan's realistic novel tells the story of a young talmudic scholar who emigrates from a small town in Russia to the melting pot of turn-of-the-century New York City. As the Jewish "greenhorn" rises from the depths of poverty to become a millionaire garment merchant, he discovers the unbearably high price of assimilation.

9. Drown Diaz, Junot Fic Diaz
The 10 stories in "Drown" tell of his impoverished, fatherless youth in the Dominican Republic and his struggle with immigrant life in New Jersey

10. Call It Sleep Roth, Henry Fic Roth
First published in 1934, and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, this is a novel of Jewish life full of the pain and honesty of family relationships.

11. Men at Work Photographic Studies of Modern Men and Machines Hine, Lewis W. q779.9496 H
Originally published in 1932 Men at Work takes us into coal mines, heavy industry, tire and airplane factories. Contains many excellent photographs of workers constructing the Empire State Building.

12. Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II Freeman, Joshua B. 305.562 F
Working Class New York is an engrossing history of post-war New York and an incisive analysis of the rise and fall of labor power in post-war America. Joshua B. Freeman skillfully weaves together the story of the changing economy, neighborhoods, and labor and racial politics of the city... An invaluable guide to how a city we know today was made.

13. Ordinary People Extraordinary Lives : A Pictorial History of Working People in New York City Bernhardt, Debra E./ Bernstein, Rachel/ Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives (Cor) q305.562 B
This superb study glimpses the diverse traditions that immigrants brought with them from abroad, and the solidarity, diversity, struggles, and relief they found in their new homes and neighborhoods of New York.

14. Magical Urbanism : Latinos Reinvent the Us City Davis, Mike 305.868 D
The Latinization of the American urban landscape. Davis focuses on the great drama of how Latinos are attempting to translate their urban demographic ascendancy into effective social power.

15. Fortunate Pilgrim: Puzo, Mario FIC PUZO
A young girl comes to New York from Italy to marry a man she hardly knows, thus beginning the saga of Lucia Santa and her two marriages, her five children, and her struggle to raise her family in Hell's Kitchen in the early 1900s. Her strength sustains her through troubles, tragedies, and the onslaught of American culture pitted against traditional Italian life.