The Penguin Book of Migration Literature

by Dohra Ahmad

  * * *

  —

  “You’re dreaming. Our children will never leave this country.”

  Your thoughts are like a fairy tale; you weave light and air to make a tapestry of magic colors. Our sons have settled their lives in this country. They have found a place for themselves, and already they are piling the stones to build a home for their children. From their birth, they claimed this land as their own, and the thread that ties them to Egypt has become a thin sliver too invisible to follow back.

  * * *

  —

  “I want to live the rest of my life in peace without struggling.”

  To look out on the sea and own the world.

  * * *

  —

  “I came here, and I’m going to die here.”

  This life I have built, I will not let it go.

  About the Authors

  Mena Abdullah was born in Bundarra, Australia, in 1930 to a Punjabi immigrant family. Her best-known work is the short story collection The Time of the Peacock. As well as writing fiction, she has worked for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

  Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964, and currently divides her time among the United States, the UK, and Nigeria. Her novels include Everything Good Will Come, Swallow, and A Bit of Difference; she has also written a short story collection and several stage and radio plays.

  Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1962, Shauna Singh Baldwin holds degrees from universities in India, the United States, and Canada. She is the author of three novels, two short story collections, a nonfiction collection, and a play, and coauthor of A Foreign Visitor’s Survival Guide to America.

  E. R. Braithwaite was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1912. His writings include To Sir, With Love; Paid Servant; and A Kind of Homecoming. He taught high school in the UK and college in the United States, and served as Guyana’s ambassador to Venezuela. Braithwaite died in 2016 at the age of 104.

  Joseph Bruchac was born in 1942 in the United States. He is the author of several works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction depicting the life of Native Americans. He is also a storyteller and musician, and, with his sister and two sons, has been heavily involved in preserving and disseminating the language, culture, and music of the Abenaki people.

  Mehdi Charef was born in 1952 in Algeria and immigrated to France with his family in 1964. In addition to writing Tea in the Harem and two other novels, Charef has directed several films.

  David Dabydeen was born in 1955 in Berbice, Guyana, and moved to the UK as a teenager. The author of several novels, poetry collections, and works of nonfiction and criticism, he is director of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick, as well as Guyana’s ambassador-at-large.

  Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1969, and moved to Brooklyn, USA, at age twelve. She has written many novels and short story collections, a travel narrative, a memoir, and six books for children and young adults, and has edited three collections of stories and essays.

  Safia Elhillo was born in 1990 in the United States to Sudanese parents. Her poetry has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies; she also coedited the collection Halal If You Hear Me (The BreakBeat Poets, volume 3).

  Olaudah Equiano was born around 1745 in what is now Anambra State, Nigeria. As he recounts in his autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, he was enslaved as a child and transported to Barbados and then the United States. After earning his freedom in 1766, he became a writer and activist against transatlantic slavery. Equiano died in 1797 in London.

  Mohsin Hamid was born in 1971 in Lahore, Pakistan. He is the author of four novels, Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Exit West, and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London.

  Eva Hoffman was born in Kraków, Poland, in 1945, to parents who had recently survived the Holocaust. She emigrated to Canada with her family at age thirteen. The author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, Hoffman has taught literature and creative writing at various universities in the United States. She now lives in London.

  Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Djamila Ibrahim moved to Canada in 1990. She worked as an immigration and citizenship advisor for the Canadian government while also writing fiction. Her debut short story collection, Things Are Good Now, appeared in 2018.

  Francisco Jiménez was born in Tlaquepaque, Mexico, in 1943, and moved to the United States as a child for farmwork. A professor and former director of the Ethnic Studies program at Santa Clara University, he has written a memoir series in four installments, as well as several critical studies of Mexican and Mexican American literature.

  Pauline Kaldas, born in Egypt in 1961, emigrated to the United States as a child in 1969. She has taught at Rhode Island College, Rhode Island School of Design, and the American University in Cairo. The author of several books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, she is currently a professor of literature and creative writing at Hollins University.

  Hanif Kureishi was born in South London, UK, in 1954—like the protagonist of his novel The Buddha of Suburbia, to a South Asian father and a white English mother. Along with several novels, he has written short stories, plays, nonfiction, and screenplays, including the groundbreaking My Beautiful Laundrette.

  Tato Laviera was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1950, and moved to New York in 1960. He was a founder of the Nuyorican poetry movement and the author of several poetry collections and plays. Laviera died in 2013.

  Marina Lewycka was born in 1946 to a Ukrainian refugee family in Kiel, Germany, and moved to the UK as an infant. She has written five novels, as well as a nonfiction book on elder care.

  Claude McKay was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, in 1889. He began writing poetry as a young adult, and published two collections in 1912, the same year he moved to the United States. Until his death in 1948, McKay continued to write poetry, as well as fiction, memoir, and nonfiction.

  Dinaw Mengestu was born in 1978 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He and his family moved to the United States to escape civil war when he was two years old. He is the author of three novels, as well as nonfiction accounts of conflict in Uganda and Sudan. A MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Mengestu currently lives in New York.

  Dunya Mikhail was born in 1965 in Baghdad, Iraq. She worked as a journalist and translator before fleeing the country under government pressure, first to Jordan and then the United States. She writes poetry in Arabic and English, and teaches Arabic at Oakland University.

  Shani Mootoo was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1957, grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, and moved to Canada at age nineteen. She is a writer, painter, photographer, and video artist whose work includes the novels Cereus Blooms at Night and Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab.

  Julie Otsuka was born in Palo Alto, USA, in 1962. After studying art and pursuing a career as a painter, she began writing fiction at age thirty. Her novels The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine depict Japanese emigration to the United States and internment during World War II.

  Emine Sevgi Özdamar was born in Malatya, Turkey, in 1946. In 1965 she moved to West Germany, where, like the characters in her 1998 novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn, she worked in a factory and lived in a large residence for Turkish women. She returned to Turkey to study acting; she currently lives in Berlin, where she acts, directs, and writes fiction and poetry.

  M. NourbeSe Philip was born in Moriah, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1947, and moved to Canada as a young adult to study political science and law. After writing and practicing law for seven years, she became a full-time writer in 1983, and has since produced fiction for adults and children, three essay collections, two plays, and several poetry collections.

  Paulette Ramsay grew up in Hanover
Parish, Jamaica. She received her PhD in Spanish from the University of the West Indies and has also studied in the Dominican Republic, Spain, the United States, and Venezuela. She has published a novel, three poetry collections, and several academic studies on Afro-Mexican and other Afro-Latinx culture and history.

  Salman Rushdie was born in 1947 in Mumbai (then called Bombay), India. He moved to the UK at age fourteen and later worked in advertising while writing his first two novels, Grimus and Midnight’s Children. He is the author of many other novels, a short story collection, and two essay collections.

  Marjane Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1969. As portrayed in the second volume of her graphic memoir Persepolis, Satrapi attended boarding school in Austria. She returned to Iran for college and graduate school, and now resides in France.

  Sam Selvon was born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1923. He worked as a telegraph operator and newspaper reporter, while also writing fiction and poetry, before moving to London in 1950. There he wrote many novels set in Trinidad and London, including A Brighter Sun, The Lonely Londoners, and The Housing Lark (newly reissued as a Penguin Classic). Selvon relocated to Canada in 1978, and died during a trip to Trinidad in 1994.

  Warsan Shire was born in 1988 in Kenya to Somali parents, and moved to the UK at age one. London’s inaugural Young Poet Laureate, she has published widely and has read her poetry at venues around the world.

  Zadie Smith was born in London, UK, in 1975. She has written many works of fiction and nonfiction, several of which (such as her novels White Teeth, NW, and Swing Time) take place in the immigrant-rich NW area of London.

  Deepak Unnikrishnan was born in Kerala, India, in 1980, and moved to Abu Dhabi as an infant. His surreal multigenre novel Temporary People appeared in 2017. Unnikrishnan currently teaches creative writing in Abu Dhabi.

  Born in the Senegambia region of West Africa around 1753, Phillis Wheatley was enslaved and transported to Massachusetts around age eight. She began writing poetry as a teenager and published her first collection—also the first collection by an African American poet—in 1773. She became a spokesperson for both revolutionary and abolitionist causes before her death in 1784.

  Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing

  * = available from Penguin Classics

  FICTION AND DRAMA

  Chris Abani, Becoming Abigail (Nigeria → UK)

  Atia Abawi, A Land of Permanent Goodbyes (Syria → Turkey → Greece)

  Randa Abdel-Fattah, The Lines We Cross (Afghanistan → Australia); Ten Things I Hate About Me (Lebanon → Australia)

  Azhar Abidi, The House of Bilqis (Australia → Pakistan); Passarola Rising (multiple migrations)

  Leila Aboulela, Minaret (Sudan → UK); Lyrics Alley (Sudan → Egypt → UK); The Translator (Sudan → Scotland)

  Chantel Acevedo, The Living Infinite (Spain → Cuba → USA)

  Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X (first generation USA)

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (Nigeria → USA → Nigeria)

  Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy (Ghana → Germany → Ghana)

  Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Panic in a Suitcase (Ukraine → USA)

  Hanan al-Shaykh, Only in London (Iraq/Lebanon/Morocco → UK)

  *Shalom Aleichem, Motl the Cantor’s Son (Russian Empire → USA); Tevye the Dairyman (Russian Empire → Palestine)

  Meena Alexander, Nampally Road (India → UK → India)

  William Alexander, Ambassador (Mexico → USA)

  Monica Ali, Brick Lane (Bangladesh → UK)

  Sabahattin Ali, Madonna in a Fur Coat (Turkey → Germany)

  Julia Alvarez, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (Dominican Republic → USA)

  Hala Alyan, Salt Houses (Palestine → Kuwait and elsewhere)

  *Mary Antin, The Promised Land (Russian Empire [present-day Belarus] → USA)

  Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother (Czechoslovakia → Mauritius); Waiting for Tomorrow (Mauritius → France)

  Alexia Arthurs, How to Love a Jamaican: Stories (Jamaica → USA → Canada)

  Sefi Atta, A Bit of Difference (Nigeria → UK); News from Home (Nigeria → various destinations)

  Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, The Gurugu Pledge (various countries in Africa → Spain)

  Mariama Bâ, Scarlet Song (Senegal → France)

  Anita Rau Badami, The Hero’s Walk (India → Canada → India); Tamarind Woman (India → Canada)

  Sharon Bala, The Boat People (Sri Lanka → Canada)

  James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (USA → France)

  Shauna Singh Baldwin, English Lessons and Other Stories (India → Canada/USA)

  Azouz Begag, Shantytown Kid (Le Gone du Chaâba) (Algeria → France)

  *Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (West Africa → Surinam)

  Tahar Ben Jelloun, Leaving Tangier (Morocco → Spain)

  Benyamin, Goat Days (India → Saudi Arabia)

  David Bezmozgis, The Free World (Latvia → USA); Natasha and Other Stories (Latvia → Canada)

  Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road (Canadian First Nations → France → Belgium)

  Dionne Brand, At the Full and Change of the Moon; Sans Souci and Other Stories (Trinidad and Tobago, and other Caribbean → Canada); What We All Long For (Vietnam → Canada)

  Lily Brett, Things Could Be Worse (Poland → Australia); Too Many Men (USA → Poland)

  NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names (Zimbabwe → USA)

  *Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (India → UK)

  *Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (Russian Empire [present-day Lithuania] → USA)

  Rosa R. Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country (Italy → Australia)

  Jennifer Davis Carey, Near the Hope (Barbados → USA)

  Gianrico Carofiglio, Involuntary Witness (Senegal → Italy)

  Ana Castillo, The Guardians (USA → Mexico)

  Elaine Castillo, America Is Not the Heart (Philippines → USA)

  *Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (Sweden → USA)

  May-lee Chai, Tiger Girl (Cambodia → USA); Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories (China → USA)

  Myriam J. A. Chancy, The Loneliness of Angels (multiple migrations); The Scorpion’s Claw (Haiti → Canada)

  David Chariandy, Brother; Soucouyant (Trinidad and Tobago → Canada)

  Kirstin Chen, Bury What We Cannot Take (China → USA)

  Melanie Cheng, Australia Day (multiple migrations)

  Wayson Choy, All That Matters (China → Canada)

  Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo; The House on Mango Street; Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Mexico → USA)

  Austin Clarke, Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke; More; The Origin of Waves; There Are No Elders (Barbados → Canada)

  Maxine Beneba Clarke, Carrying the World; Foreign Soil and Other Stories (multiple migrations)

  Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven (Jamaica → USA → UK → Jamaica)

  Teju Cole, Every Day Is for the Thief; Open City (Nigeria → USA → Nigeria)

  Maryse Condé, Heremakhonon (Guadeloupe → France → West Africa); I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (Barbados → North America); Segu (Mali → Morocco/Brazil)

  *Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and The Congo Diary (Belgium → Belgian Congo); Victory: An Island Tale (Sweden → Indonesia)

  Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory; Brother, I’m Dying; The Dew Breaker; The Farming of Bones (Haiti → USA)

  Michelle de Kretser, The Life to Come (Sri Lanka → Australia → France); Questions of Travel (Sri Lanka → Australia)

  Nicole Dennis-Benn, Patsy (Jamaica → USA)

  Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Nepal → India and India → USA)

  Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Drown (Dominican Republic → USA)

  Chitra Banerjee Div
akaruni, Oleander Girl; Sister of My Heart; Before We Visit the Goddess; The Vine of Desire (India → USA)

  Négar Djavadi, Disoriental (Iran → France)

  Michael Donkor, Housegirl (Ghana → UK)

  Marguerite Duras, The Lover (Vietnam → France)

  Edith Eaton / Sui Sin Far, A Chinese Ishmael and Other Stories (China → USA); Mrs. Spring Fragrance (China → UK → Canada → USA)

  Winnifred Eaton, Me: A Book of Remembrance (Canada → Jamaica → USA)

  Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues (USA/Germany → France); The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (Ghana → UK → Canada); Washington Black (Barbados → USA → Arctic)

  Buchi Emecheta, In the Ditch; Second Class Citizen (Nigeria → UK)

  Ramabai Espinet, The Swinging Bridge (Trinidad and Tobago → Canada)

  Diana Evans, 26a (Nigeria → UK)

  Bernardine Evaristo, Mr. Loverman (Antigua → UK)

  Nuruddin Farah, Hiding in Plain Sight (Italy → Kenya)

  Brenda Flanagan, In Praise of Island Women & Other Crimes (Trinidad and Tobago → USA)

  Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (USA → Ukraine → Poland)

  Aminatta Forna, Ancestor Stones (UK → fictional West African country); Happiness (Ghana → UK)

  Cecil Foster, No Man in the House (Barbados → UK); Slammin’ Tar (Barbados → Canada); Sleep On, Beloved (Jamaica → Canada)

  Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban; King of Cuba (Cuba → USA); Monkey Hunting (China → Cuba → USA)

  Roxane Gay, An Untamed State (USA → Haiti → USA)

  Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace (India → Burma); Sea of Poppies (India → Mauritius); The Shadow Lines (India → UK)

  Yasmine Gooneratne, A Change of Skies (Sri Lanka → Australia)

  Reyna Grande, Across a Hundred Mountains (Mexico → USA)