The Inside Story: Exploring American Identity Through Novels of Immigration

Embarrassing accents, blistered feet, and nightmares from war atrocities—political discourse about immigration issues has heated up; but literature offers a more direct language for understanding complexities of the immigrant experience. Our country has a long literary tradition portraying rewards and heartaches as people endure the long journey of resettlement. This presentation examined characters’ varied motivations for leaving their homelands, their myriad upsets over cultural confusion, and tensions as they cope with psychological trauma.