Blog Posts by Subject: Immigration and Emigration

The characters in these books grapple with two lives: life back home and life in New York.

Visiting New York City and want to look for records of your ancestors at The NYPL? With these fantastic online resources, you can start your research at home and continue after your trip - so, after your Library visit, you can spend more time seeing more our city!

In celebration of Immigrant Heritage Week (April 15-21), here are nine YA novels about characters who experience the differences between their old and new countries. Some need to escape their old lives, some are adjusting to a new country, and some discover their own version of the American Dream.

The New York Public Library provides resources, programs, and services that support those New Yorkers seeking to become American citizens.

Constitution Day and Citizenship Day is observed each year on September 17 to commemorate the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787, and to “recognize all who, by coming of age or by naturalization, have become citizens.”

On May 20, 2017 Mid-Manhattan Library will be hosting an all-day Citizenship Fair, which will feature local and government agencies, ready to assist new Americans with their citizenship applications.

Here are some vivid representations of the New York immigrant experience in fiction, as well as a few memoirs and biographies of New Yorkers past and present, who arrived here from all over the world and made their mark on our city.

In this letter to friends, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Julian Mayfield discusses his work on a play, world news in Ghana, and a discussion with Malcolm X.

Live from the Reading Room: Correspondence is a podcast series that aims to share interesting and engaging letters written by or to key historical figures from the African Diaspora.

This podcast episode recited by Carole Boyce Davies features a lively letter between friends and colleagues: Claudia Jones and Eslanda Robeson.

Edwidge Danticat is a MacArthur Fellow "Genius Grant" recipient and author, best known for her book Brother, I'm Dying. In 2010, she visited the Library to talk about her essay collection Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work.

On July 1, 2016, 225 individuals from 55 countries became United States citizens at the New York Public Library! We were one of one hundred naturalization ceremonies going on around the country as part of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' celebration of the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and our nation's birthday.

In the years after the Revolutionary War, about five thousand immigrants arrived in the U.S. annually; in 2014, one million people obtained lawful permanent residency.

Every year on the eve of the second Sunday of the month of June New York City holds the National Puerto Rican day parade. This is a celebration that takes over the entire city, fills it with beautiful events, festivals that display the beauty of the Puerto Rican culture.

Happy Immigrant Heritage Month! The Library is proud to be hosting a wide array of events throughout the month of June to celebrate.

If we take Esther Johnston's memories as a standard, it is the library that has stayed the same more than anything.

As a personal financial counselor for the Library’s Money Matters program, Steve Poppel encounters people from all walks of life.

Juan Cordero immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic in order to build a better life for himself and his family. When one of his children gave him a flyer about free English classes at the Library, it opened up a whole new world of opportunities.

As an immigrant who successfully climbed her way to the top of the corporate ladder, Lucy Chan is using her retirement as an opportunity to help younger immigrant women navigate their new lives in the city.