Cordelia Mai Yin and four other women with the middle name “Mai” find an apartment with the help of a mysterious man. As a second generation Vietnamese immigrant in 1959 Los Angeles, Cordi struggles to find a job and earn enough money to live off. So when the man who helped the Mais, as the roommates dub themselves, offers them a way to make all their dreams come true through magic, they jump on the chance. But, “nothing good comes for free" (pg. 69) and as the Mais dreams and wishes come true, so does the price they must pay for them.
Summary: Alan Gratz’s Refugee tells three riveting tales about 3 different children and their escape as refugees to freedom. The book jumps between the stories of these children, telling truly bone chilling tales of their escapes, sacrifices, and hardships to get to freedom.
Friends become enemies because one falls in love. That is the only happy part of this story. For Noor everything is hard. And for Salaudhin everything is wrong. The loss of one person changed the lives of two people. And now they both don’t know what to do.
Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also a Star details the relationship between teenagers Natasha Kingsley—a Jamaican American faced with the threat of deportation, and Daniel Bae—a Korean American struggling to live up to his parents’ expectations. Natasha hopes to stay in the United States; she spends her final day in New York City seeking legal help to avoid deportation. The two meet in New York, and Daniel decides to miss out on a potentially life changing interview to spend the day with Natasha.
Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan is a historical fiction book. Esperanza’s life seems perfect. She lives on a beautiful family ranch in Mexico with everything she could ever want. That is until one night her father does not return. Esperanza and her family escape to California with the hope of building a better life for themselves. The only problem is life at a Mexican farm camp during the Great Depression is nothing like Esperanza’s old life. She must
Love in English is written by Maria E. Andreu. It’s a young adult romance. The main character is Ana, a girl from Argentina in South America who loves writing poetry. Her family moved to the United States and Ana and her mother are struggling to adapt to the new place. Back home, she had plenty of true, laugh-until-you-cry friends but in her new school, finding friends is going to be a special kind of struggle. On top of that, Ana speaks Spanish and learning second languages doesn’t come easily.
Esperanza is a young girl whose father owns a ranch called El Rancho de las Rosas in Mexico. The night before her thirteenth birthday, something terrible happens. A series of events eventually forces Esperanza and her Mama to go to the United States in secret, where they hope to start a new life. In the United States, Esperanza’s life is changed forever. She must take care of babies, manage housework, and more. Will Esperanza be able to learn patience and strength as her new life unfolds before her and many things threaten to pull her down?
The Joy Luck Club follows the story of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their daughters. Tan does an excellent job in portraying an immigrant mother and her first generation daughter relationship. She also does a great job in representing generational and cultural differences as these mothers move to America, and their daughters learn to assimilate. Each chapter talks about a different person, their story, and what they have learned from it.
When Fabiola and her mother are trying to move from Haiti to Detroit to go live with their family there, her mother tragically gets detained. Fabiola is presented with an opportunity to get her mother back, but it results in a messy entanglement in crime and dirty family matters.
I enjoyed this book a lot because the character development and plot kept the story surprising. The main development shown is that Fabiola learns to cope with loss and I think the overall moral is to keep good company because she gets involved in things like drug dealing and gang violence.
