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In 1889, while upholding the latest in a series of exclusionary laws targeting Chinese immigrants, the Supreme Court Justice Stephen Johnson Field characterized the Chinese as “impossible to assimilate with our people” and “strangers in the land.” Today, there are twenty-four million people of Asian descent in the United States, and yet, as Luo observes in his riveting, sorrowful narrative, the question of belonging still trails them. Strangers in the Land tells the story of a people who migrated by the tens of thousands to a distant land they called Gum Shan­—Gold Mountain.

In this visionary Shortest History of Migration, Ian Goldin uncovers key moments of cultural exchange while carefully examining empire, slavery, and war. Throughout, we meet famous explorers (Zheng He), exiles (Pablo Neruda), and everyday people in extraordinary circumstances: a Jewish man saved by the Kindertransport, a Japanese gardener who blossomed in Mexico City.

Hard Neighbors follows the people who came to be known as Scotch-Irish and traces their relations with Native Americans, examines their experiences as marginalized people, and demonstrates their roles as protective and disruptive forces on the edge of colonialism. The Scotch-Irish fought Indian wars and shaped the frontier, and their experiences living near and fighting against Indians shaped their identity and their attitudes towards government. They influenced national attitudes and policies, and they transformed Indian people into racial others as they transformed themselves into Americans.

A vibrant, moving memoir of prizewinning journalist and New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito and her departure from Cuba in the Mariel boatlift—an enduring story of a family caught up in the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century.

Hispanics have moved materially to the political right in recent years—but why? What explains this marked and sustained shift? Bad Hombres details the radicalism of the modern Democratic Party, which has turned so many outcasts into political orphans.

An inhumane math pervades this country: even as our government extracts labor and often taxes from undocumented workers, it excludes these same workers from its social safety net. As a result, these essential workers struggle to get their own basic needs met, from healthcare to education, from freedom of association to the ability to drive to work without looking for ICE in the rearview mirror. An undocumented activist and a social scientist come together to tally of the structural costs of undocumented life.

A MacArthur “Genius” shares her inspiring story, from undocumented newcomer to leader in a powerful immigrant youth movement. Dreaming of Home is a coming-of-age story both for a young woman finding her true self and for a social movement of immigrant youth trailblazers who inspired the world and changed the lives of millions.

The Crossing is a revelatory new history of El Paso that recasts the city as the unacknowledged cradle of American history, where cultures have encountered each other for centuries and forged a thriving multi-ethnic community far ahead of the rest of the nation.

Like many immigrants before him, Torres Medina sets out to do the job American-born citizens won’t: make the US immigration process accessible, relatable, and, hey, a little bit funny. With an outsider’s eye, an insider’s affection, and a biting, humorous flair, Torres Medina invites listeners from all passport lines to explore the multiple paths and potholes of moving to America, and experience just how many choices it takes to choose a new home.

One of the most potent issues on the Right has been the chaos and lawlessness on America’s southern border. In Biden’s Border Crisis, Mark Morgan assesses the crisis from a law enforcement perspective. We’ve been looking at the problem all wrong, he argues—this isn’t a cultural or a political issue—it’s about national security. Either we run the border, or cartels will. There’s no in-between, Morgan emphasizes.

Anywhere But Here is a powerful exposé of Britain’s broken asylum system and how it fails us all. Each year tens of thousands of people risk their lives to cross the Channel in small boats hoping to find safety in Britain. Yet the very system designed to protect them has all but collapsed. With unique and unparalleled access, award-winning journalist and former Home Office insider Nicola Kelly takes us behind the scenes of the small boats crisis for the first time.

It was during a trip to the Ashmolean Museum in 2012 that Daisy first recalls being incorrectly labelled as a tourist – a trend that has continued since she settled in the UK, regardless of the documents she has gathered. From answering her daughters’ questions over whether they were ‘yellow’ or ‘Black’, to hearing the continued use of racist and culturally insensitive terms, such as ‘oriental’ and ‘Chinese whispers’, she has consistently felt othered, despite being a commonwealth citizen and having only once visited Hong Kong.

Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC-Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans. The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing?

“You were dead, Sarah, you were dead.” In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza’s crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begin in the hospital cafeteria, when a mysterious incident summons the familiar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother.

D Esperanza was just thirteen years old when he lost his caregivers, his beloved grandmother and uncle. Since both of his parents were working and living in the United States, D was left on his own in a small town in Honduras. He quickly realized he simply could not make enough money to survive so he made the difficult decision to head north with his cousins and hopefully reunite with his parents in el norte. Together, the boys struggled to survive a long and treacherous journey through Central America and Mexico.

Esta frase resume la mezcla de estallido sensorial y derrumbe psicológico que desbordó al periodista Abraham Jiménez Enoa después de exiliarse en 2022 en Barcelona. Todo era confuso, acelerado, de una voluptuosidad material demente («Bienvenido, aquí se satisface el síndrome de la compulsión», leyó a la entrada de una tienda) y, además, el racismo estructural que había conocido en la isla se transformaba ahora en una xenofobia explícita y hostil de miradas, insultos y desconfianzas.

1993. Shortly after his father’s death, six-year-old Kayo is smuggled out of Zambia onto a plane bound for Newcastle. Soon he learns that his father died from an HIV-related illness, a fate suffered by many Zambians, and later, he becomes a young carer to his mother as the virus takes her, too. 2017. Now a celebrated young poet, Kayo receives a message from a cousin in Zambia he has not heard from in almost 25 years. He realises it is time to go back.

Lifeboat at the End of the World is an astonishing lyrical and literary book about the experience of being a lifeboat volunteer, migration, the sea, Dungeness and more. Rather than offering a political opinion, Dominic Gregory writes about the reality of the RNLI, of saving lives. He details the smells of the station, the emotions when the call to ‘a shout’ comes, how they are trained, the ethos of the service, and what it’s really like to sail out in the middle of the night.

Essential has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.