The Penguin Book of Migration Literature: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns

by Dohra Ahmad (Editor), Edwidge Danticat (Foreword)

The first global anthology of migration literature featuring works by Mohsin Hamid, Zadie Smith, Marjane Satrapi, Salman Rushdie, and Warsan Shire, with a foreword by Edwidge Danticat, author of Everything Inside

Every year, three to four million people move to a new country. From war refugees to corporate expats, migrants constantly reshape their places of origin and arrival. This selection of works collected together for the first time brings together the most compelling literary depictions of migration.

Organized in four parts (Departures, Arrivals, Generations, and Returns), The Penguin Book of Migration Literature conveys the intricacy of worldwide migration patterns, the diversity of immigrant experiences, and the commonalities among many of those diverse experiences. Ranging widely across the eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, across every continent of the earth, and across multiple literary genres, the anthology gives readers an understanding of our rapidly changing world, through the eyes of those at the center of that change. With thirty carefully selected poems, short stories, and excerpts spanning three hundred years and twenty-five countries, the collection brings together luminaries, emerging writers, and others who have earned a wide following in their home countries but have been less recognized in the Anglophone world. Editor of the volume Dohra Ahmad provides a contextual introduction, notes, and suggestions for further exploration.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Poetry, Anthologies, Classics, Essays, Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2019

About the author

Dohra Ahmad is Associate Professor of English St. John's University. She has been teaching at St. John’s since 2004, having received her Ph.D. from Columbia University that year. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in twentieth- and twenty-first century postcolonial and world Anglophone literature, postcolonial theory, World Literature pedagogy, U.S. literature, vernacular literature, and utopian fiction. In the broadest terms, her research aims to draw thematic, stylistic, and historical connections among various literary movements of the past century.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully solid and wide-ranging anthology of fiction, poetry, memoir, and personal essay on the subject of migration, whether voluntary or involuntary. The pieces are diverse geographically and chronologically (the earliest works are from eighteenth-century writers and enslaved persons Olaudah Equiano and Phyllis Wheatley and the more recent are migrations from the Middle East and mid-2000s green card worries). My only complaint is that for excerpts of longer pieces (like from Zadie Smith’s White Teeth) there isn’t much context to orient the reader. The Additional Reading/Watching section at the back is excellent.

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book for the introduction alone by the editor Dohra Ahmad. Wow. She clarifies the muddled language on immigrants, emigrants, and migrants and helps the reader open up to the diversity of experiences in departing, arriving, trying to stay in a new country, and trying to return to an old country. There are so many layers here that it is an adventure to follow the various writers as they move around in their travels.

This book should be required reading in the United States, a country allegedly based on these ideas yet so limited in understanding the challenges involved.

[Drew Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well curated selection. The stories represent not only a diversity of forms, but also a diversity of locales (movement to and from many different countries across the world). Highly recommended.

[Khulud Khamis · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book. This is a book to be read slowly, in segments. It's about departures, arrivals, journeys. What we leave behind and what we build when we arrive. Some of these stories are harrowing, like the journeys made by slave-ships. Some are full of hope, while others filled with nostalgia and sadness for the places and people left behind. This is an important book that should be read widely, as it expands and pushes the limits of what it means to be a migrant.

[Tanisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Stories I Enjoyed:
1. Come, Japanese -Julie Otsuka
2. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia -Mohsin Hamid
3. Children of the Sea -Edwidge Danticat
4. An Honest Exit -Dinaw Mengestu
5. Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies -Salman Rushdie
6. To Sir, With Love -E.R. Braithwaite
7. Heading Somewhere -Djamila Ibrahim
8. My Son The Fanatic -Hanif Kureishi
9. Green -Sefi Atta
10. A Conversation -Pauline Kaldas

[Christian Guaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being the son of an immigrant I have always wondered what my mothers written story would read as. This collection offered me little in answering my question, instead it granted me the opportunity to read the written story of other migrant parents, children, and lost souls. And that, for me, is invaluable.

Incredible book!!

[Mariyam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of novels, poems, graphic novels... This book includes different experiences of immigrants that had to leave their homelands whether voluntary or unvoluntary. It contains four parts : Departures, Arrivals, Generations and then Returns. The collection includes racism, white supremacy, intersectionality, social class and many more phenomenon that is related to migration.

From my point of view, I appreciated this book and I had the chance to read it to be aware of what immigrants have to deal with in order to have a better life. I recommend it !!!

[Ale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Några berättelser va ganska tråkiga, men de flesta va rätt så bra. Olika berättelser om hur det är att vara en invandrare och att bo i ett land som man inte tillhör. Kan relatera till några texter om hur det är att vara fast mellan två kulturer så det var intressant att läsa om.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine collection of short stories from all over the world depicting the often and absolute heartbreak of desperation and expectation when one must or chooses to emigrate from home.

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fabulous anthology of literature written by migrants. It’s been on my shelf for a year, and I’m so happy that I eventually read it.
There are many different voices telling different stories of moving or not moving between countries and everything that comes with it - questions of choice, identity, adaptation to a new place, racism, loneliness. The pieces themselves are varied - there are short stories, excerpts from books, poems; new, centuries or decades old.
There is also a great list of authors and books for further reading at the back, enough for years of reading.

Highly recommended. I will be definitely including more migration literature into my reading schedule from now on.

[Loo Pee · Rating 5 out of 5]

[cries in diaspora]

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. Why surprised? I was expecting an academic compilation selected more for adherence to the topic of migration and expatriation than for literary value. I was proven wrong. The quality of writing in these short stories, novel excerpts, poems, and cartoons is consistently excellent. Writers from all over the world cover many aspects of the topic of migration, from the obvious (dangers, suffering, racism) to more intricate topics of identity and self-image.

What really makes this collection outstanding is, as the editor states in the introduction, that this is a book about migration rather than immigration. There's a difference. What's more, I was delighted to read the editor's statement: "the writings included here counter the primacy of the United States in the rhetorical landscape of global migration." These stories indicate clearly that, America's mythical self-regard notwithstanding, not every migrant goes to, or even aspires to go to, the USA. This collection is all the richer for carrying the reader to all corners of the world.

My only quibble with the collection is that it furthers the narrative that migrants are either economically disadvantaged or affected by conflict, seeking a more prosperous, stable life in richer countries. It skips the millions who leave those richer countries--for love or opportunity or curiosity or the promise of a more fulfilling life abroad. For example, nine million Americans live long-term outside the USA. A huge number of us (I include myself) are not short-term expatriates, but genuine emigrants from America, Europe, and elsewhere, all for a variety of reasons left unexplored in this book. I think of writers like Pico Iyer and Suzy Hansen, who might have contributed a wider perspective to this collection.

Nevertheless, this is a worthy read for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the motives, joys, and sorrows of people who leave their homelands. The writing is great. I discovered some authors whose works I will further explore.

[Alida · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-compiled collection of essays and stories exploring the full gamut of the migrant experience - beautiful and important. The biggest gift of this collection is that it spans across the eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, across every continent of the earth, and across multiple literary genres.

[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some extraordinary writers in here: Otsuka, Shire, Hoffman, Lewycka, Danticat, Ozdamar, especially stood out for me. Suggestions for further reading, at the back of the book, also look promising. I suppose the language is too honest for high school students, but certainly not those in college and this book is important reading.

[Awallens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Round up to 3.5 stars. I actually wish this book had been longer. I will definitely read more.

[Jean Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection. I’m happy this exists.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is fortunate that this book ends up being better than its foreword.  Edwige Danticat, one of the authors whose work is included here, views the subject of migration literature from the tedious and tiresome and quite frankly not very worthwhile perspective of intersectionalism, and this casts a pall over the work at its start.  That is not to say that every piece of literature here is necessarily good.  A lot of it is not particularly notable and simply is included here because someone wished to anthologize it somehow so that someone who might appreciate it might come across it.  Being a bit more critical about the point of view of those who fancy themselves victims of history than most be, a lot of this book struck me as containing the point of view of people who were whining about the way that life was tough for migrants, and that they were vulnerable to being taken advantage of, which is certainly the truth.  There is the usual attempt here on the part of some to dodge responsibility for their migration and its repercussions.  There is much to appreciate here, though, even for one who does not agree with the perspective of it entirely.

This book is about 250 pages or so and it is divided into four sections.  It begins with its worst part, a foreword and an introduction that attempt to frame this work into a leftist intersectionalist perspective.  After that, at least we get occasionally interesting texts.  The first part of the book looks at departures, be they Japanese mail order brides, slaves, people migrating from rural poverty to the city, or even people going to other planets.  After that there is an exportation of arrivals, including how difficult it is to blend in in home countries and find good professional work, on the perspective people have upon arriving and seeking some measure of acculturation, and the reasons why people may not want to go back to the places they knew before even if their arrival is not all they would have hoped.  The author explores the relationship between generations, including the efforts of parents who are poor of to encourage their children to do better, the struggle over Muslim fundamentalism in the West and how it divides families, and finally there is a brief discussion of returns as well as information about the author, suggestions for further reading and viewing, and acknowledgements.

Are there any aspects of migrant culture that shine through here?  To be sure, this book presents a wide variety of perspectives of those who have migrated from one place to another.  Some of them focus on the experience of the migrant, seeking a good life and dealing with the various shady people who help illegal immigrants move from one place to another as well as the dangers and risks, including death, that can result from the attempt to migrate to another country.  Still other perspectives focus on the experience of those in new places seeking to determine who they are, and wrestle with the choices of identity that others make.  Still others focus on those left behind, for whom the absence of the exile is akin to death.  Whatever elements are focused on, though, there are broad similarities here, as migrants face a lot of struggles in terms of being able to get along in an area, are vulnerable to harsh treatment by the places that they migrate to, and there is often a difficulty that they face in being able to find a secure life and home wherever they may wander.  And the book inspired me to want to read a few other volumes, which is always a good sign.

[Nicolas Levy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compiling stories of migration from across the planet, at all stages of the migration process, makes for an intriguing book, and it's surprising that no book has done that until this anthology put together by Dohra Ahmad. Though a slim volume at less than 250 pages, this compilation packages a dizzying array of migration experiences - from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to imagined migration from Earth into space. There is also an impressive diversity of formats, including self-contained short stories, selections from larger novels, poems, and even one graphic novel. In juxtaposing such different contributions, this compilation effectively underscores how starkly different the process of migration can be, experienced by people of different identities, at different stages of their lives, across starkly different migration channels.

Several contributions of this anthology left lingering impressions. Julie Otsuka's "Come, Japanese!" conveys the combination of excitement and stoic fatalism with which scores of Japanese women faced trans-Pacific migration to the United States at the turn of the 20th century to marry Japanese men whom they had never met in person. Edwidge Danticat, Dinaw Mengestu, and Djamila Ibrhaim all convey the searing heartbreak of leaving one's loved ones in the midst of violent conflict, and the promises that one must make while knowing they will eventually be broken. Shauna Singh Baldwin's writing oozes with defiance in the face of ignorance and prejudice faced in her new North American home. Lest one fall into a false belief that there is a "typical" immigrant story, Mohsin Hamid, Salman Rushdie, Shani Mootoo and Hanif Kureishi all weave tales of departures, arrivals, and persistence in new homelands that end in surprising twists: some gleeful, some not so much.

For all the great and varied stories in this volume, the abridged nature of a compilation doesn't quite suit the richness of these stories. In some cases, this limitation is quite literal - some contributions are snippets of longer novels, and the excerpts are sometimes awkwardly handled, without enough context to fully understand what we are reading. More broadly, one feels like we are just scratching the surface of all the varied migration experiences: most (though not all) of the stories are of migration from the Global South to Global North, whereas much of global migration takes place within countries, or between countries in the Global South. And while I appreciate that this book provides a more critical view of migration than the rags-to-riches, immigration success story trope, it does seem to constantly veer into the depressing, dark aspects of migration. Still, this is a valuable first attempt at putting global migration literature in comparative perspective, and left me with a long list of authors to follow up on.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology like this is difficult to judge. It's never going to be your favourite book; by their nature a complitation on a certain theme is going to be inconsistent and is going to cater to all styles and tastes. What shows it as a success is the ability of the collection to address a theme and present it effectively and clearly. This Penguin Book of Migration Literature does that fairly well, the subtitle saying it all. It is neatly divided into subsections with a thematic focus, beginning naturally with Depatures and ending with Returns. There is a satisfaction about the consciencious way the book has been but together and the choices are generally intriguing, fresh and suprising. There are a few massive names in here (Rushdie, Satrapi, Zadie Smith, Danticat, Kureishi) as well as a lot of unknowns, however well read you are. The forms are also varied - novel extracts, short stories, poetry, even a comic strip. The whole world is represented and the collection wants to present these stories as stories of humankind, the universal truths and reality of migration. It is a topic often portrayed as a fresh, new threat in hyperbolic, fearmongering modern media. Here we see migration for what it really is - an ordinary, traumatic, exploratory and fulfilling part of human existence.

The overall tone of the book is one of the misery of migration. That is perhaps an exaggeration, but certainly the first three parts of the book focus on the negative aspects of migration and, logically, the often terrible reasons for migration - war, famine, the search for a better life, job opportunities. One can see how this hardly changes through history - Julia Otsuka's excellent "Come Japanese!" shows a similar story of female explotation to Ibrahim's "Heading Somewhere" and Lewycka's disturbing account of youthful naivity and optimism extracted from "Strawberry Fields". This precarity is demonstrated throughout. Unnikrishnan's list like prose taken from "Temporary People" is a powerful attempt to consolation and identify the persona of the migrant, ending tellingly with the repetitive "Cog. Cog? Cog.". Naturally, these precarious tales of searching for a place, for a somewhere to be safe, are edged with fear, trouble and trauma. Even the settled stories show the uncertainty of migrant existence. Too of the best look at the troubles of the older generation with their children - Mengestu's "An Honest Exit" has a young teacher making up stories for his students about his Ethiopian father, and Hanif Kureishi's "My Son the Fanatic" is an incredibly direct and relevant short story about a second generation son who turns to extremism to deal with his migrant background, the shadow of prejudice and the difficulties of integration.

A lot of the entries are written in English, with a few translations, but they present a wide range of the English tongue - language and the adaptation of language in migrant situations is a huge topic here. Some of the pieces are very difficult and obscure - Philip's patterned sound poem "Zong! #5" is a scattered, sparse and broken expression of linguistic intent, Shani Mootoo's "Out on Main Street" is very hard to read as it is written in thick dialectal English. Others are contain clearer narratives; Sefi Atta writes a concise and moving family trip to get a green card in "Green" and Rushdie's bureaucratic comedy "Green Advice is Rarer than Rubies" also wears it's intent on its sleeve. The bredth is actually staggering and just goes to show the artistic and creative potential of our world in movement. The final stories in the collection salvage a bit more positivity, stories of integration, of being settled, of compromise, of returning, of finding a home. But they are stories rarely without an edge of trouble because migrant existence is never stable. The final story, "A Conversation" by Pauline Kaldas, is very well chosen - questions and answers put to an old migrant. It addresses and redresses many of the themes presented here, reaffirms so many of the issues that are part of our human world. There is a wealth of great material here, although one would struggle to like every piece. Thematically it's a success, carefully, thoughtful and lovingly put together with a strong sense of purpose. 6

[yangkhama · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a chance purchase after having read the table of contents after which i felt it to be essential reading for immigrants & non-immigrants alike. Undoubtedly it moved up in my list of top reads this year.
Being the first global anthology of migration literature, this read certainly delivered.
Very practically organised starting with 'Departures', 'Arrivals', 'Generations' & ending with 'Returns', this is an indispensable collection of intimate literature in the form of memoirs, prose, short stories & poems.
Dedicated to migrants everywhere, it explores what home is & can become.
"We are seeds in one soil & weeds in another."
It also discusses stereotypes that include prevailing notions that all migrants are eager to leave their home countries, that migration is optional, permanent, unidirectional, that it automatically leads to a better life, & that the ultimate goal is to assimilate to a new place.
An intricate, complex picture of migration is presented where there are not only 'pull factors' that western media tends to focus on but also 'push factors' for e.g. perpetual war.
In reality, migration would be better understood as effect rather than cause.
Essential reading!!

[Liz Nieters · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays, poems, and other literature about migration broken into four parts: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, and Returns. I loved many of the essays! My favorites were An Honest Exit by Dinaw Mengestu and Children of the Sea by Edwidge Danticat. I went into this book expecting to learn about a completely different life experience than my own, but I actually found many of the stories very relatable. As someone who lives in a different place than where I grew up, I really related to this quote from The Bridge of the Golden Horn by Emine Sevgi Özdamar: “I began to cry even more and was cross, as if I hadn’t left my mother, but my mother had left me”. Overall, a 4 out of 5 book! Only reason it’s a 4 instead of 5 is because I’m not personally a big poetry reader, so I didn’t find the poems as engaging as the essays, but the book is still well worth reading!

[Sydney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably would've liked this better if not for the handful of pieces that felt like they had gratuitious sex (maybe I'm just more uninterested than most but yeah, it just felt uncomfortable to read. cw incest and mention of assault too). Felt like many of the authors didn't really explicitly mention/name the historical events that may have been happening concurrently which could've helped a little with context, but that might be a matter of my personal taste too. But I do appreciate this for not just parroting the stereotypical narratives about migration.

[Tamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent anthology with the added bonus of a list of suggested reading/viewing. Well-organized into sections entitled Departures, Arrivals, Generations, and Returns. I can't wait to read more of some of the authors featured in this book.

[Breana]

One my favorite professors of all time edited this book, so you know I had to pre-order it.

[Kushal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like any anthology, some great segments. But overall, the collection is of middling quality

[Andrew Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this anthology. Took me a while to finish, but I'm glad I read every piece. Turns out people don't really treat immigrants well a lot of the time.

I'll probably add more later.

[Michael Givens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A worthwhile read, with a variety of different experiences from all over the world. Was happy to see that queer stories were also present

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stimulating, eclectic, moving collection of short pieces on migrants by migrants.

[Madi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"America welcomes you into its land so you can mop its floors."

[yasmine viola · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*