Immigration Narratives in Young Adult Literature: Crossing Borders (review)

The rich parallels that exist between the transitional nature of adolescence and the often unstable and bifurcated status of the first- or second-generation immigrant (or the colonized other) have not been lost on many writers of children's and adolescent literature. Indeed, characters caught between childhood/ adulthood and between old country/ new (or colonial/subaltern) can be seen throughout literature in general, perhaps because adolescence can serve as a powerful metaphor for the transition between cultures and geographic locations, or because the liminal site of adolescence provides a unique insight into the constructedness of what we call "the nation."

Joanne Brown's Immigration Narratives in Young Adult Literature examines contemporary young adult novels that feature children or teens who have immigrated to the United States. Part of the Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature series, Brown's work provides an overview and historical contextualization of fifteen young adult novels that focus on different aspects of the immigration story. Although, for this reader, it leaves a number of questions unanswered, this brief study is a useful tool for teachers who are organizing a course on the subject of immigration or a good starting point for scholars who are pursuing further research in this pervasive but largely undertheorized area of children's literature.

Though Brown offers some preliminary discussion of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century texts, including an interesting glimpse of turn-of-the-century textbook discussions of immigration, she largely concerns herself with contemporary young adult novels, arguing that, in fact, the first young adult novel about immigrants was Laurence Yep's 1975 title Dragonwings. The bulk of Brown's analysis is oriented around five questions she contends are central to young adult narratives about immigration: "What prompted peoples of various nations to leave their native lands and travel to the United States?" "How did they come?" "What challenges met them as they settled into their new country?" "What effect did their immigrant status have upon families, children in particular?" "What conclusions about young immigrants and immigration to the United States can we draw from the literature discussed?" (17-18). Brown provides plot summaries of fifteen novels that she identifies with each of these broader topics. The summaries are supplemented with references to a number of historical works on immigrants and immigration that help contextualize each novel.

Chapter two, "The Beckoning Shores," which addresses the first question about what prompted immigrants to travel to the United States, provides a summary of Patricia Reilly Giff 's Nory Ryan's Song (2000), Linda Glazer's Bridge to America (2005), and Laurence Yep's The Serpent's Children (1984). This chapter is framed with a reference to Roger Daniel's "push-pull" theory of immigration from Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (2002), which Brown uses as a heuristic to discuss the motivating factors of the protagonists of each of the novels. Each summary is supplemented with additional historical information, such as background on the Irish potato famine for Nory Ryan's Song and information about the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States for Bridge to America.

Chapter three, "The Journey," is framed by Oscar Handlin's well-known—and quite controversial—work, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (1973), which Brown uses as a way of identifying the various phases of the journey that exist beyond the border crossing itself. Brown summarizes four different novels that focus on different aspects of the journey to America: Maggie's Door (2003), Double Crossing: A Jewish Immigration Story for Young Adults (2005), The Dragon's Child (2008), and Red Midnight (2002).

Chapter four, "Strangers in a Strange Land," summarizes four novels that focus on adjusting to the new country, while chapter six, "Immigrant Children: Rebels with a Cause" focuses on three novels that feature second-generation immigrant experiences. Brown also provides a brief look at illustrated young adult texts about immigration in chapter 5...