Prologue

Creating Context

Cluster One: Who Were the Immigrants and Why Did They Come?

• The New Colossus (poem)Emma Lazarus
• General Considerations for the Plantation in New England (pamphlet)John Winthrop et al.
• A Slave Narrative (personal narrative)Gustavus Vassa
• Old Skibbereen (ballad)Anonymous
• Gold Mountain Poems (poems)Anonymous
• The Pogroms Were All Around Us (personal narrative)Shmuel Goldman, with Milton Meltzer

Cluster Two: What First Experiences Did Immigrants Have?

• Immigrant Kids (essay)Russell Freedman
• Going to America (autobiography)Nicholas Gage
• The Hardships of a Greenhorn (autobiography)Michael Pupin
• Yes, Your Honesty (autobiography)George and Helen Waite Papashvily

Cluster Three: Did Immigrant Expectations Match Reality?

• Bananas (autobiography)Michael Gold
• Beyond the Pale (essay)Ronald Takaki
• Tears of Autumn (short story)Yoshiko Uchida
• America (song)Stephen Sondheim

Cluster Four: What Is the Immigrant Experience Today?

• Von (oral history)As told to Janet Bode
• You Are Only a Boy (biography)Margaret Poynter
• The Tortilla Curtain (personal narrative)Michael Teague, as told to Al Santoli
• Between Two Worlds (article)Patricia Smith
• Tires Stacked in the Hallways of Civilization (poem)Martín Espada
• Amir (short story)Paul Fleischman

Cluster Five: Thinking on Your Own

• The Melting Pot Bubbles in Rego Park (essay)William E. Geist
• Looking North (essay)Roberto Suro
• Huddled Masses (article)Michael Satchell
• Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Undocumented Foreigners (commentary)Charles Osgood
• Immigrants (poem)Pat Mora
• “My Fellow Citizens . . .” (essay)Paul Greenberg