Immigrant Tales

A sampling of stories from the literary world in celebration of those who braved the unknown, left behind beloved homes in order to seek better opportunity or at least, to survive.

Kim Masters shared a terrific essay on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday about her family’s roots in Czechoslovakia and the influence one young British man had in assuring the survival of so many Czech children in the days leading up to the Holocaust. Read and listen to her essay Finding A Hero Amid Fading Memories.

Following this moving segment by Masters, Scott Simon sat down to speak with Romanian musician, Sanda Weigl to discuss moving to East Berlin days before the Berlin Wall, her time in a forced labor factory and finally finding home in New York City. The segment features Weigl’s music, rich in Gypsy influence, which she regularly performs in cabaret’s backed by a three piece all Japanese trio, dubbed, “the band” who, insists Wiegle, “play Romanian gypsy music better than most Romanian musicians today”.

Both stories got me thinking about my Grandparents, who immigrated to New York from Lithuania in 1949 following years of hiding throughout Germany, passing as Germans. My Grandparent’s versions of history always challenged my perceptions as in their experiences, it was the kindness of the Germans in the face of a Russian invasion which allowed for their safe departure from Lithuania and eventually to the U.S. I came across a terrifc documentary, Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness, which chronicles the bravery of a Japanese consul in Lithuania in during the war, who helped many Lithuanian-Jews obtain exit visas. William Kaplan’s , One More Border: the true story of one family’s escape from war torn Europe is a beautifully illustrated (Shelley Tanaka) account of his father’s esape from Lithuania is an excellent and historically accurate telling of the story for younger readers.

For a wide sampling of the immigrant experience try a few of the following.

Crossing into America: the new literature of immigration which I tracked down in order to read Li-Young Lee’s, The Cleaving which is featured in the collection. Lee will be the keynote speaker at the 2009 Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference and I’ve been eagerly devouring his unique brand of poetry.

In the July/August issue of Orion Magazine, Charles Bowdan and Julian Cardona’s, Exodus, a cross-border look at the latest wave of immigration from Mexico will leave you reeling in the unstoppable power of the current of this economics of survival situation.