Presents a collection of poems that relate a fictional story, inspired by actual events, where a young girl struggles with the difficulty of growing up in America as an immigrant from Kosova, Yugoslavia.
Follows the experiences of Nicole, a teenaged French Jew, from 1943 to 1948, as she loses her parents and sister to the concentration camps and then leaves her native France to make a new life for herself in New York City.
Forced to drop out of school at the age of fourteen to help support her family, Angela, an Italian immigrant, works long hours for low wages in a garment factory, and becomes a participant in the shirtwaist worker strikes of 1909.
In 1897, Nate Tanner, the hot-tempered twelve-year-old son of wealthy Pennsylvania mine owners, goes against his father's wishes by befriending some of the boys who work in the mines and gets caught up in a disastrous clash between mine workers and the law.
Contains transcripts of interviews with over one hundred of the last surviving immigrants who came through Ellis Island to America, and includes conversations with six employees of the island in which they discuss their duties and experiences.
Reviews the reasons why millions of Italians have immigrated to America, what their passage was like, the kind of jobs most found, communities they formed, and the prejudice they faced.
In the security-obsessed, elitist United States of the near future, where a standardized test determines each person's entire future, a powerful man runs a corrupt empire until seventeen-year-old Ann and other students take the lead in boycotting the test.
Discusses various issues associated with immigration to the United States during the early part of the twentieth century including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Ellis Island, tenements and sweatshops, and the rise of anti-Semitism.
Discusses the diverse ethnicity of Russian-Americans, their immigration, Jewish community, social, cultural and political customs, employment, experiences with discrimination, and integration into American society.
