Book review | Reader's Advisory | Diversity | Immigrants in the US
One
way to regard the refugees in the news these frenzied past few days is
as potential Americans, individuals and families escaping bad situations
who imagine themselves building new lives here. What these particular
refugees could become in this country, and how they could contribute to
our society and culture, is a question stuck in suspended animation. But
we do have the power to look to the past. And in the literary realm
it’s unquestionable that refugees, once here, often make major
contributions.
Through
the 20th century and into this one, those fleeing political persecution
or war have produced important works that we think of now as at least
partly American, from fiction about the harrowing experiences of exile
and dislocation to political treatises by thinkers who want to
understand why their homelands fell apart. This is a sampling of 25 of
those works.
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