Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

The compelling history of how Latino immigrants revitalized the nation’s cities after decades of disinvestment and white flight. As Sandoval-Strausz shows, Latinos made cities dynamic, stable, and safe by purchasing homes, opening businesses, and reviving street life. Barrio America uses vivid oral histories and detailed statistics to show how the great Latino migrations transformed America for the better.

Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. They do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was her sister Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident leaves Olga dead and Julia reassembling the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too.

When Javier Zamora was nine, he traveled unaccompanied by bus, boat, and foot from El Salvador to the United States to reunite with his parents. While Solito is Javier’s story, it’s also the story of millions of others who have risked so much to come to this country. A memoir that reads like a novel, rooted in precise and authentic detail, this story is destined to be a classic of the immigration experience.

Growing up, Esmeralda learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of the tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby’s soul to heaven. But just when Esmeralda seemed to have learned everything, she was taken to New York City, where the rules - and the language - were bewilderingly different.

A collection of poems remarkable for their surface clarity, precision of image, and emotional urgency. Rooted in her Chicana heritage, these poems illuminate the American experience of the last quarter century and, at a time when much of what is merely fashionable in American poetry is recondite and exclusive, Cervantes has the ability to speak to and for a large audience.

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle’s women’s dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery.

Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos - the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian.

An essential resource that addresses the unique experiences of trauma, healing, and mental health in Asian and Asian American communities.Where I Belong shows us how the cycle of trauma can play out in our relationships, placing Asian American experiences front and center to help us process and heal from racial and intergenerational trauma.

In 2008, the Chinese government cracked down on protests throughout Tibet, and journalist Amy Yee found herself covering a press conference with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, his exile home in India. She never imagined a personal encounter with the spiritual leader would spark a global, fourteen-year journey to spotlight the stories of Tibetans in exile. Weaving a sweeping travel narrative with intimate on-the-ground reportage, Far from the Rooftop of the World tells their stories and others against the backdrop of milestones and events in Tibet’s recent history.

Written in alternating chapters, a mother and daughter describe the accident that nearly killed the daughter and left her paralyzed, and their determination to allow her to live life to the fullest despite her physical limitations. Brooke Ellison was an alumna of Harvard Kennedy School.