Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers reveals the burdens immigrant children face, including overcoming abuse, abandonment, loneliness and the temptation of gangs.
The book by Marina Budhos, author of The Professor of Light, is a probing look at the lives of 20 young people from Asia, Europe, Central America and Africa.
The stories describe the stress that drove a high-achieving Korean girl to contemplate suicide; three different strategies adopted by South Asian Muslim girls as they juggle family and tradition against the claims of American teen culture; the blur of identity of Guyanese students who immigrated there from India; the twilight world of Caribbean and Central American young people who arrive in America to join parents they hardly know; and the courage of displaced Cambodians and Hmong whose "home" culture is only a memory in their parents' minds.
"What interests me is letting people know the reality of these kids' lives," says the author. "Suddenly you leave everything you know and are plunked down in a new country, a new social climate, trying to find your place in a complicated racial map."
Designed for teens ages 14 and up, it costs $16.95. For more information, contact Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 115 W. 18th St., New York, NY 10011, or call (212) 886-1058.
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