Children of Immigration, by Carola Suarez-Orozco and Marcello Suarez-Orozco,  Harvard University Press, 2002,  206 pp.

Children of Immigration raises many thoughts even before reading the first page. I wondered, for example, who are children of immigration? Well, if we were to break down the terms, technically we are all children [of parents], and most of us are probably children of immigrants as America is the land of immigrants. I am a child of immigrant parents. For this reason, I suspected that I would most definitely relate and in all likelihood know (because of my own experiences as a child of immigration) what the authors would be discussing. And, yes, I did relate, but I also realized after reading the book that my experience growing up as a child of immigrant parents is one experience of many.

The authors provide the reader with numerous anecdotes, vignettes of how other children of immigrants experience life in America. These unique and richly complex anecdotes were obtained from the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study and from more than twenty years of basic research and practice the authors have had with immigrants, refugees, and second-generation children. By providing these stories, the authors help the reader understand, beyond the data and numbers of immigration, how the child (who lives in one culture and originates from another) might experience life. In addition, how does the child integrate his cultural identities and help his family adjust to the new culture they have come to make their home? These stories helped me obtain a clearer sense of the broad spectrum of experiences that exist. It becomes apparent that although we cannot know all of