For the last appointment of 2025 of this column I thought of a version a little different from the usual that, while remaining faithful to our theme of interculture, can offer readers and readers interesting ideas for a deepening. Today, in fact, I would like to talk to you about books, suggesting some titles that add new dowels to the mosaic of cultures that we are building. Reading books and writing books is another of my passions, and I hope these ideas can be a symbolic but sincere Christmas gift for you who have accompanied us in these months and a way to thank you for the participation and interest shown immediately for this project. From January we will return with the usual appointment to discover the city, a neighborhood at a time.
Then we come to the stories from the world that arrive in New York with their cultural luggage, emotional challenges and difficulties that accompany every integration path. Stories different from each other, yet united by the common thread of those looking for a place in the world and ideally ends up finding it in this constantly moving city.
Each book of this selection tells a different form of integration: from the life of European immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century, to Caribbean and Latin American communities, to African American stories of internal migration. Through the pages of these novels, we can perceive the difficulties, hopes, nostalgies and the small daily victories of those looking for a place in the world, a place in New York, which is always ready to welcome and transform those who cross it. Let’s start with one of my favorite books.
“A tree grows in Brooklyn” – Betty Smith
Set in the 1912 Brooklyn, the novel tells the childhood of Francie Nolan, daughter of Irish and Austro-Hungarian immigrants, in a popular neighborhood where every day represents a new challenge.
Along its way, the child absorbs the contradictions and stories of those around it: the beauty and fatigue of his mother, the defects and fragility of his father, the small scandalous freedom of relatives and neighbors. Each experience contributes to forging its character, preparing it to become a conscious and determined woman.
“A tree grows in Brooklyn” is not only the story of a difficult childhood, but a celebration of inner strength, hope and ability to find beauty even in the lives marked by difficulties. Betty Smith thus gives us a vivid and timeless portrait of the New York immigrants of Europe, showing how, even between cement and fatigue, it is possible to grow and aspire to something higher, just like the tree growing in the center of the Nolan courtyard.
Recommended for those who love training stories, family novels and resilience models.
“Dominicana” – Angie Cruz
Dominicana tells the story of Ana Canción, a fifteen-year-old from Santo Domingo who has never dreamed of America, yet finds himself catapulted in New York in a marriage combined with a man much larger than her. The decision is not born out of love, but from the expectations of his family, which sees in this union a way out of poverty and uncertainty of life in the countryside. In New York, Ana compares with the hospitality of the city and the hardness of the new house, a cold and insulating apartment where she struggles to set up. Far from the affections he faces violence and disappointment but, with time, he learns to move in the new world, to speak English, to build ties, and to find small spaces of freedom and happiness, while aware that the American dream is often full of contradictions. Angie Cruz’s novel is a vivid portrait of Caribbean migration in New York, the challenges of integration and female resilience. Through Ana’s voice, the contradictions and possibilities of a city that can be at the same time prison and land of opportunity, a mosaic of cultures and lives that intertwine, painful and luminous at the same time.
Recommended for those who love reading female emancipation stories and want to discover a very current aspect of migratory flows in New York.
“Danny the Elect” – Chaim Potok
Set in the Brooklyn of the years of World War II, Danny tells the encounter between two Jewish boys belonging to very different religious communities and always suspicious of each other. Their first encounter takes place on a baseball field, during a game that soon takes on the meaning of small symbolic war, where the conflict between tradition and modernity emerges very strongly. This clash, along with physical wounds and silences loaded with tension, becomes the narrative thread through which Potok explores fidelity to tradition, generational conflicts and relationships between fathers and children. Through a delicate and deep writing, the author shows how family silences can be more eloquent than words, revealing emotions, expectations and hidden affections. The novel is an intimate and universal portrait of personal growth in a context of strict cultural and religious rules, and together an immersion in the life of the Jewish community of Brooklyn. With sensitivity and precision, Potok makes us feel the tensions, doubts and choices of those who seek to reconcile cultural roots and personal aspirations, offering an authentic look on a world that, although far away in time and space, continues to talk about identity, friendship and growth.
Recommended for those who want to explore the Jewish community of Brooklyn, those who love deep reflections on faith, tradition, friendship and personal growth.
“In one house another home I find. Autobiography of a poet of two lands” – Joseph Tusiani
In this autobiography, Joseph Tusiani tells his experience of Italian immigrant in New York with an intense and reflective look. Arrived in the city at twenty-three years, without having yet known the emigrated father before his birth, Tusiani gently describes the emotion and expectation of that meeting, which becomes a symbol of all tensions, hopes and contradictions of migrant life. The book explores the different experiences of the Italian diaspora: from first-generation immigrants, often in difficulty in integrating into the new reality, to children born or raised in the United States, who speak English and are to all American effects, all divided between two worlds, two languages and perhaps “two souls”. This dual perspective allows Tusiani to offer a vivid portrait not only of the Italian American community, but also of the cultural and literary life of New York, through the encounter with characters and environments that interweave personal memory and collective history. More than just autobiography, In a house another home I find is an intimate and universal testimony on nostalgia, on the construction of roots and on the art of reconciling the past with life in a city that is always changing.
Very recommended for those interested in the Italian diaspora in the world and to all those who have lived or live this experience.
“Figlie di Brooklyn” – Jacqueline Woodson
With the Daughters of Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson brings us back to the 1970s Brooklyn through the memories of August and the girls he grows with. It is a story that speaks of friendship, formation and loss of innocence, but that fits fully into the broader issue of migration, the internal issue of the United States, which has brought many African American families from the South to the cities of the North looking for opportunities and security. The protagonists are daughters of this silent and deep shift, and live in a Brooklyn marked by expectations, tensions and fragility inherited.
For August and his friends, the neighborhood is a place of belonging and possibilities, where they feel strong, intelligent and full of promises. But next to this luminous dimension, a harsher city emerges, made of dangers, absences and family silences. In this context, the author tells with great sensitivity the passage from childhood to adulthood, showing how to grow in a city like New York also means to deal with a collective story of movements, broken roots and identity to rebuild.
Recommended to those looking for training novels set in New York who show with sensitivity the contrasts between beauty and difficulty of life in the city. Although the Italian translation of this novel is not easy to find, it is definitely the original English version with the same title.
New York, we know, is a city that is built and reinvented every day thanks to the stories of those who live there, of those who cross it and of those who dream from afar. The books I have proposed are windows on different worlds, on the strength and resilience of those who leave, on the art of reconciling roots and future, on the courage to grow and reinvent themselves. I hope this selection will accompany you these days of celebration and inspire you to discover new perspectives.
We find ourselves in January for another appointment with the “World Day in New York”!
Good reading, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!
L’articolo Five readings to discover the cultural mosaic of New York proviene da IlNewyorkese.
