14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

January 29 2018
Share 14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

Few things tempt me more than a well-curated museum gift shop. After walking through an eye-opening and fascinating exhibit, whether it’s art or historical, I’m always hungry to know more about the topic. And then, lo and behold, on my way out, there’s a whole shop full of books on exactly that! I rarely make it out without acquiring a new book . . . or four.

One of my favorite museums is the New York Tenement Museum, which explores the immigrant history of New York City’s Lower East Side between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. Housed in two original tenement buildings that were home to over 15,000 working-class immigrants from more than 20 countries, the museum allows visitors to walk through meticulously re-created apartments representing the different time periods of former inhabitants with historical accuracy. The book selection in their shop is richly diverse and has something for every reader, with fiction and nonfiction books on topics ranging from the immigrant experience to food and beyond. Here are 14 of my favorites from their shop.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
by Susan Jane Gilman

In 1913, Malka Treynovsky flees Russia with her family, but loses them upon arriving on the squalid Lower East Side of Manhattan. Taken in by an Italian ices peddler, she learns the secrets of his trade and reinvents herself into Lillian Dunkle, head of an empire of ice-cream franchises. But when her past begins to catch up with her, everything she has built is at stake.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
Susan Jane Gilman

Malka Treynovsky flees Russia with her family in 1913, only to be crippled and abandoned in the streets of New York shortly after she arrives. Taken in by an Italian ice peddler on the Lower East Side, she soon learns the tricks of his trade and sets off across the country in an ice cream truck. Along the way, she creates an empire and transforms into Lillian Dunkle, “The Ice Cream Queen.”

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Close
Up In The Old Hotel
by Joseph Mitchell

Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the characters that Joseph Mitchell—known for his precise, respectful observation, graveyard humor, and offhand perfection of style—immortalized in these essays, originally written for the New Yorker.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Up In The Old Hotel
Joseph Mitchell

Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a ninety-three-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the characters that Joseph Mitchell—known for his precise, respectful observation, graveyard humor, and offhand perfection of style—immortalized in his reportage for the magazine.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

8 Books We (Rightfully) Judged by Their Covers

By Off the Shelf Staff | August 15, 2017

11 Great Books from Our Favorite New Yorker Writers

By Off the Shelf Staff | July 16, 2015

Gypsies, Bearded Ladies, and Oysters: Joseph Mitchell’s Love Letters to New York

By Allison Tyler | April 15, 2014

Close
Rats
by Robert Sullivan

In this funny, compulsively readable book, Robert Sullivan chronicles his year spent investigating a rat-infested alley a few blocks from Wall Street. He gets to know not just the beast but its friends and foes: exterminators, sanitation workers, and agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war between human city dweller and wild city rat.

Amazon logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Rats
Robert Sullivan

Amazon logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

Close
Brooklyn
by Colm Tóibín

Eilis Lacey is a young woman who abandons small-town Ireland and the comfort of her mother’s home for the anonymous shores of New York City. In Brooklyn, she finds a city in flux—a city where immigrants from Ireland and Poland live amongst Jewish and black communities. Just as she is beginning to fall in love with a young man, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her new life.

Read the full review of BROOKLYN.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo Bookshop logo
Brooklyn
Colm Tóibín

Acclaimed character actress Saoirse Ronan takes center stage as Eilis Lacey, a young woman who abandons small-town Ireland and the comfort of her mother's home for the anonymous shores of New York City. In Brooklyn, she finds a city in flux—a city where immigrants from Ireland and Poland live amongst Jewish and black communities—and just as she is beginning to fall in love with a young man, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her new life.

Release Date: November 6, 2015

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo Bookshop logo

MENTIONED IN:

12 Influential Novels That Shifted the Reading Landscape

By Off the Shelf Staff | January 18, 2024

Read Around America: 14 Superb Books That Span the States

By Off the Shelf Staff | July 2, 2021

Hope and Heartbreak: 10 Books About Immigration and the Refugee Experience

By Carrie Cabral | March 19, 2020

12 Addictive Reads You Can Finish in a Single Flight

By Danielle Bucco | November 26, 2019

10 Books That Will Make You Feel At Home, No Matter Where You Are

By Alice Martin | November 20, 2019

14 Bold Novels About Women Everyone Should Read

By Off the Shelf Staff | August 26, 2019

Close
Girl in Translation
by Jean Kwok

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she begins a double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—like the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language, but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Girl in Translation
Jean Kwok

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, she quickly begins a secret double life: during the day, she is an exceptional student, and by night she works in a Chinatown sweatshop. As she struggles to move between the two worlds she occupies, Kimberly falls in love and tries to find a way to succeed against overwhelming odds.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Close
The Big Oyster
by Mark Kurlansky

A remarkable story of New York told through one of its most fascinating inhabitants—the oyster, a shellfish famous in New York for centuries. Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight, this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the founding of New York to the oyster cellars of the Five Points slums to Manhattan’s Gilded Age dining rooms.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
The Big Oyster
Mark Kurlansky

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

Close
Triangle
by David von Drehle

TRIANGLE is a poignantly detailed account of the 1911 disaster that horrified the country and changed the course of twentieth-century politics and labor relations. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York’s Greenwich Village. The final toll was 146 people—123 of them women. At the time, it was the worst disaster in New York City history. TRIANGLE is a vibrant and immensely moving account that chronicles the fire as well as the social and political aftermath.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Triangle
David von Drehle

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

Close
When I Was Puerto Rican
by Esmeralda Santiago

Esmeralda Santiago’s story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be 11 children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
When I Was Puerto Rican
Esmeralda Santiago

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Close
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi

Ghana, eighteenth century: two half sisters are born into different villages. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured, imprisoned in the same castle, and sold into slavery. This novel follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem.

Read the full review of HOMEGOING.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters are separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. HOMEGOING traces the descendants who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and 300 years of history, each life indelibly drawn.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

8 Enlightening Books that Will Change Your Worldview

By Off the Shelf Staff | October 28, 2019

14 Bold Novels About Women Everyone Should Read

By Off the Shelf Staff | August 26, 2019

11 Historical Novels That Will Enlarge Your Worldview

By Sarah Jane Abbott | March 26, 2019

9 Groundbreaking Women in Fiction

By Carrie Cabral | March 21, 2019

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

6 Recommended Reads from a Small Town Library

By Allison Tyler | January 24, 2018

Close
My Notorious Life
by Kate Manning

Inspired by a real midwife who became one of the most controversial figures in Victorian New York City, this is the story of Axie Muldoon, the impoverished child of Irish immigrants who apprentices to a doctor and eventually builds a thriving midwifery business. Flouting convention and defying the law in the name of women’s rights, Axie rises from grim tenement rooms to the splendor of a mansion on Fifth Avenue.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo Bookshop logo
My Notorious Life
Kate Manning

A memorable novel inspired by a real midwife, Axie Muldoon, who became one of the most controversial figures of Victorian New York City by defying the law in the name of women’s reproductive rights. This story is sure to further conversations about women’s rights issues that have been the subject of debate for centuries.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo Bookshop logo
Close
Never Look an American in the Eye
by Okey Ndibe

Okey Ndibe’s funny, charming, and penetrating memoir depicts his move from Nigeria to America. It examines the differences between Nigerian and American etiquette and politics; details an incident of racial profiling just 13 days after he arrived in the US; and juxtaposes African folk tales with Wall Street trickery. All these stories and more come together in a generous, encompassing book about the making of a writer and a new American.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo iBooks logo
Never Look an American in the Eye
Okey Ndibe

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

Close
All-of-a-Kind Family
by Sydney Taylor

This beloved children’s series chronicles a Jewish immigrant family at the beginning of the twentieth century in New York City. Sydney Taylor, who was born in 1904 on New York’s Lower East Side, based the richly drawn characters on her own life. The series centers on five sisters—Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie—and their mischievous younger brother, Charlie, who share many adventures.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
All-of-a-Kind Family
Sydney Taylor

Five young sisters experience life in New York’s Lower East Side at the beginning of the twentieth century. The close-knit group encounters everyday realities such as boring chores, missing library books, and trips to the Rivington Street market, as well as those details that bring the early 1900’s to life—scarlet fever, peddlers, and bathing at Coney Island.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

Eloise and More Classic Children’s Books to Love

By Off the Shelf Staff | March 24, 2015

Close
Satan's Circus
by Mike Dash

At the turn of the twentieth century in New York City, a casino owner was gunned down, and the ambitious district attorney charged decorated policeman Charley Becker with ordering the murder. Was he a bad cop leading a double life, or a pawn felled by the rogues who ran Manhattan’s underworld? Chronicling Charley Becker’s rise and fall, this true account describes the raucous, gaudy, and utterly corrupt city that made him.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Google Play logo iBooks logo
Satan's Circus
Mike Dash

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Google Play logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

Close
Eight Flavors
by Sarah Lohman

The United States has a culturally and ethnically diverse population that makes for a continually changing culinary landscape. But Sarah Lohman discovered that American food is united by eight flavors: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. In this well-researched exploration of American culinary history, Lohman sets out to explore how these influential ingredients made their way to the American table.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo Bookshop logo
Eight Flavors
Sarah Lohman

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo Google Play logo iBooks logo Bookshop logo

MENTIONED IN:

14 Remarkable Immigrant Stories You Can Find in a Favorite Museum’s Gift Shop

By Sarah Jane Abbott | January 29, 2018

Close

You must be logged in to add books to your shelf.

Please log in or sign up now.