Honor liberty with immigrants’ works

Immigrants have left their mark on every part of the U.S., and literature is no exception. Their writings helped bring about American independence and have been responsible for bringing about social, and cultural, change.

In honor of immigrants’ contributions to our country, here are 17 books by Americans born abroad that have been significant to the nation’s history and culture. Thomas Paine, “Common Sense” (1776). Paine was born in England and moved to the American colonies in 1774 when he was 37. Just over a year after his arrival, he published “Common Sense,” which laid out the case for American independence from Great Britain, writing, “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, “The Federalist Papers” (1787-88). The United States as we know it likely wouldn’t exist without this series of 85 essays, initially published pseudonymously, urging lawmakers to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Hamilton, the author of 51 of the essays, was born in the Caribbean island of Nevis — he came to the U.S. as a teenager, fought in the Revolutionary War and was the nation’s first secretary of the Treasury. Jacob Riis, “How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York” (1890). Riis, an immigrant from Denmark and pioneering photojournalist, exposed the horrible conditions of the New York City tenements with his shocking book “How the Other Half Lives,” which led to great change in New York City. John Muir, “The Mountains of California” (1901). Muir, the conservationist who co-founded the Sierra Club, was born in Scotland and immigrated to America with his family when he was 11. Muir later spent a decade studying the Sierra Nevadas; this book is his love letter to the mountain range, where there’s now a 200-mile hiking trail named after him. Anzia Yezierska, “Bread Givers” (1925). Polish-born author Yezierska is widely credited with creating one of the best novels about the Jewish immigrant experience in America, “Bread Givers,” a coming-of-age story about an independent-minded girl living in 1920s New York. Henry Roth, “Call It Sleep” (1934). Roth was a child when he immigrated to the U.S. in 1908 with his family from what is now Ukraine. At 28 he published the modernist novel “Call It Sleep,“about an immigrant boy growing up in a New York slum. Out of print for decades, the book after found fans after its 1960 reiusse. Isaac Asimov, “The Foundation Trilogy” (1942-53). Born in Russia to Jewish parents, Asimov moved with his family to New York when he was a toddler. He would grow up to become one of America’s best-known science fiction writers, starting with “The Foundation Trilogy.” Vladimir Nabokov, “Lolita” (1955). The story of a professor who becomes sexually obsessed with his 12-year-old stepdaughter , Nabokov’s magnum opus has been controversial since it was published but remains one of the most enduring novels of the 20th century. A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Nabokov fled war-torn Europe for the U.S. in 1940. Louis Chu, “Eat a Bowl of Tea” (1961). A sadly out-of-print landmark of Asian American literature, Chu’s novel follows a young couple in New York City in the mid-20th century. A native of China, Chu came to America in 1924 as a boy. Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” (1963). Germanborn philosopher Arendt escaped Nazi-occupied France in 1940 and moved to New York in 1941.Her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” about the trial of the Nazi war criminal, remains one of her most well-known and most controversial for the way it takes on questions of morality. Isabel Allende, “The House of the Spirits” (1985). First published in Spanish and considered one of the best magical-realist novels, the book follows a Chilean family beset by political and cultural turmoil. Allende, a cousin of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2014. Art Spiegelman, “Maus” (1991). The son of a Polish Jewish couple, Spiegelman was born in Sweden and immigrated to the U.S. with his family at age 3. A legend in the underground comics scene, he published the graphic novel “Maus ,” a Holocaust story with the characters rendered as animals, in 1991. The book is now considered one of the best graphic novels in American history as well as a classic of Holocaust literature. Cristina García, “Dreaming in Cuban” (1992). García fled Communist Cuba as a young child with her family in 1961. She worked as a journalist before publishing “Dreaming in Cuban,” her first novel, to critical acclaim. The novel tells the story of a family whose lives are torn apart by the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s. Edwidge Danticat, “Breath, Eyes, Memory” (1994). A native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Danticat moved to New York when she was 12. Her debut novel, about a Haitian girl reunited with her mother in New York, is widely considered one of the best American novels of the 1990s. Jhumpa Lahiri, “Interpreter of Maladies” (1999). Lahiri’s debut book is a short-story collection that depicts the lives of people who cross between India and America. It was published to critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Lahiri was born in London and moved to the U.S. when she was 2; she spent most of her childhood in Rhode Island. Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War” (2016). Although it was published only two years ago, Nguyen’s nonfiction book is already considered by many to be one of the best about the Vietnam War. Nguyen, a Times critic at large, is a native of Vietnam who came to the U.S. as a refugee with his family after North Vietnamese forces retook Saigon. Masha Gessen, “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia” (2017). Gessen came to the U.S. from the then Soviet Union in the early 1980s. In her latest book, the winner of the 2017 National Book Award for nonfiction, she paints a chilling picture of the rise of authoritarianism in the country accused of tampering with the 2016 American presidential election.