Over the past year, several fiction and nonfiction books have been published that address the challenge of immigration in the United States. Here is our selection of the best: 

Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness

Edited by Anjanette Delgado, out now

This is a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry featuring renowned and award-winning contemporary Latinx writers who capture the diversity of immigrant experiences in Florida.

Delgado characterizes the work in this collection as literature of uprootedness, 'literatura del desarraigo,' a Spanish literary tradition and term used by Reinaldo Arenas. With the heart-changing, here-and-there perspective of attempting life in environments not their own, these writers portray many different responses to displacement, each occupying their own unique place on what Delgado calls a spectrum of belonging.

Together, these writers explore what exactly makes Florida home for those struggling between memory and presence. In these works, as it is for many people seeking to make a new life in the U.S., Florida is the place where the uprooted stop to catch their breath long enough to wonder: “What if I stayed? What if here could one day be my home?”

Parenting with an Accent: How Immigrants Honor Their Heritage, Navigate Setbacks, and Chart New Paths for Their Children

This is an exploration of multicultural parenting and identity in the U.S., through real stories, research, and on-the-ground reporting.

Through her own stories and interviews with other immigrant families, award-winning journalist Masha Rumer paints a realistic and compassionate picture of what it’s like for immigrant parents raising a child in America while honoring their cultural identities. 

Parenting with an Accent incorporates a diverse collection of voices and experiences, giving readers an intimate look at the lives of many different immigrant families across the country. Using empirical data, humor, and on-the-ground reporting, Rumer offers interviews with experts on various aspects of parenting as an immigrant, including the challenges of acculturation, bilingual strategies, and childcare. She visits a children’s Amharic class at an Ethiopian church in New York, a California vegetable farm, a Persian immersion school, and more.

Church at the Wall: Stories of Hope along the San Diego-Tijuana Border

By Seth David Clark,  On sale Feb. 22

Seth David Clark tells the powerful story of how the Border Church, founded and pastored by John Fanestil, worships on the San Diego–Tijuana border without a building. Every Sunday afternoon the author, who serves as the U.S.-side pastoral coordinator of the church, gathers with people of good will from both sides of the border at Friendship Park to build the kingdom of God. Their love of Christ is exhibited through celebrating communion, singing, and using their pinkies to pass the peace through the mesh metal walls separating the U.S. and Mexico. Readers will get to know this remarkable international church community — and its distinct expressions of theology, justice, righteousness, and love — through the eyes of active participants.

If We Want to Win: A Latine Vision for a New American Democracy

Edited by Diana Campoamor, out now

This collection of essays offers the stories of the vast Latine community, drawing on their experience and expertise in areas ranging from the arts, juvenile justice, women’s rights, and education, to environmental justice, racism, human rights, immigration, technology, and philanthropy.

Each contributor tells his or her own story alongside stories of the resilience and hope they have encountered over the course of their careers, debunking the stereotyping and scapegoating that continue to plague the Latinx community and seek a more accurate portrayal of themselves and their communities. While questioning what it means to be Latinx and what it means to be American in the 21st century, this inspiring, visionary collection offers a blueprint for moving the United States toward a more inclusive and just democracy.

Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions, and Strategies for a Progressive Future

Edited by Ruth Milkman, Deepak Bhargava, and Penny Lewis, out now

This provocative, strategic, and actionable vision for immigration policy brings together leading activists and academics like U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, Cecilia Muñoz, D. Taylor, Marielena Hincapié, and others to share cutting-edge approaches to the urgent issues facing the immigrant community, along with fresh solutions to vexing questions of so-called “future flows” that have bedeviled policy makers for decades.

The book also explores the contributions of immigrants to the nation’s identity, its economy, and progressive movements for social change. Immigration Matters delves into a variety of topics, including new ways to frame immigration issues, fresh thinking on key aspects of policy, challenges of integration, workers’ rights, family reunification, legalization, paths to citizenship, and humane immigration enforcement.

It is the perfect handbook for immigration activists, scholars, policy makers, and anyone who cares about one of the most contentious issues of our time.

Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration

This collection of 36 immigrant stories originally told on stage, spans comedy and tragedy, and features work by writers, entertainers, and thinkers illuminating what it’s like to be an immigrant in America.

Sofija Stefanovic is a Serbian-Australian writer in New York City. Through this book, she will take you from the Central Park playground where “tattle-tales” among nannies inspire Christine Lewis’s activism to an Alexandrian garden half a century ago courtesy of writer André Aciman. Visit a refugee camp in Gaza as described by actress and comedian Maysoon Zayid, and follow intersex activist Tatenda Ngwaru as she flees Zimbabwe with dreams of meeting Oprah. Witness efforts of comedian Aparna Nancherla's mother to make Aparna less shy, and Orange is the New Black's Laura Gómez makes an unlikely connection at a bed-and-breakfast.