First to Go

After going away for college, Grant Wiggins returns to his small Cajun hometown to teach at the local school for poor black children. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt persuades Grant to visit another black male youth who has been accused of murder and sentenced to die.

Peter Keller, first college grad from a working-class Yonkers family, thought he was on the road to success. Until no law school wanted him and life plagues him with every possible challenge imaginable. In order to find his place in the world, he’s going to have to work hard to change the pattern of self-sabotage that has defined most of his life.

Danny is a working-class youth from New Jersey. This book spans his freshman year at Yale University as he straddles between the upper class culture at school and the demands back home.

It is 1968 in Seattle, Washington, and Bobby Vincente is struggling with the deaths of his mother (cancer) and his older brother (Vietnam War), as he aspires to make a better life for himself and his aging Filipino American stepfather. This novel chronicles his journey to attend community college and to break away from the violence in his neighborhood.

This novel describes the loneliness and isolation of a closet lesbian in a tight-knit and often suffocating Chicano family. Veronica Melendez, a 22-year-old graduate student in English at UCLA, survives a car accident in which her longtime friend and lover, Joanna, is killed. Through trials and tributulations, her friends help Roni rediscover her Mexican heritage and infuse her with the courage to tell the truth about her sexuality to her family.

Casey Han's four years at Princeton have given her many things that Casey's parents, Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, could not offer in her childhood. Post-graduation, Casey struggles to find a job while balance the friendships of friends who now experience the success she dreams of having; her journey offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. The novel mainly examines maintaining identity within changing communities.

At eighteen, Soledad couldn't get away fast enough from her contentious family with their endless tragedies and petty fights. Two years later, she's an art student at Cooper Union with a gallery job and a hip East Village walk-up. But when Tía Gorda calls with the news that Soledad's mother has lapsed into an emotional coma, she insists that Soledad's return is the only cure. This novel is a wondrous story of culture and chaos, family and integrity, myth and mysticism, from a Latina literary light.

Set during the 1920s in New York City, this novel is told from the perspective of Sarah, the youngest child of a Jewish Polish immigrant family who is ruled by an overbearing father, a religious zealot. She defies her parents by leaving home, going to college and becoming a teacher.

Narrative of a 35 year old housewife from suburban San Francisco who decides to enroll in a local community college during the Vietnam War. The story captures Ella’s concerns and anxiety about being a re-entry student, including how to balance schoolwork with family and domestic responsibilities.

Semi-autobiographical tale of the protagonist’s journey from community college to UCLA. Told in a comedic, episodic format.

Sequel to Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility (2004). Protagonist Yolanda Sahagún is now a student at the University of California at San Diego; however, she is facing many struggles within her family, including death of a parent.

A novel about four Indian-American friends, three of whom are the first in their families to attend college, who reunite in Southern California. Major themes include immigration and the costs of immigration.

This novel spans four decades in the life of Robert Vishniak who was raised in a working-class Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia during the 1960s. He enters Tufts College where he worries about paying for expenses when he goes out with wealthy roommate and friends.

Twenty-eight-year-old protagonist Tommy Lee Tyson steps off the Greyhound bus in his hometown of Swamp Creek, Arkansas- a place he vowed never to return to. Fate and a Ph.D. in black studies force him back to his rural origins as he seeks to understand himself and the black community that raised him. Over the course of a one-week visit, riddled with tension, heartache, and revelation, Tommy discovers truths about his family, his community, and his undeniable connection to rural Southern black folk and their way of life.

Assistant professor Nan Weaver, an outspoken feminist, is working toward tenure at Berkeley. Nan's blue-collar family left her with a legacy of endurance and hard work, and she is dedicated to her ideals and her students. When an infamously chauvinistic male English professor turns up dead in his office, everyone suspects activist Nan. But she is innocent. And she knows who the murderer is. This novel is a fast-paced, nontraditional mystery that places a strong woman in a battle for her innocence and principles.

After leaving the college, Iliana, a first-generation Dominican-American woman, returns home to Brooklyn to find that her family is falling apart. This story features dislocating urban environment Iliana reluctantly confronts the anger and desperation that seem to seep through every crack of her family's small house, and experiences all the contradictions, superstitions, joys, and pains that come from a life caught between two cultures. A debut novel, filled with graceful prose and searing detail that offers a penetrating portrait of the American immigrant experience as she explores the true meanings of identity, family--and home.

Story of a 68-year-old retired teacher Anna Giardino who wakes up in a hospital after having been found lying unconscious in front of Camino Real High School, where she taught for 40 years. She cannot remember what has happened and is unsure even of who she is. In the week that follows, Anna Giardino slowly regains her memory, and the events of her past gradually unfold in a series of flashbacks. Only when she recalls and confronts the events surrounding her mysterious "accident" does Anna reach an understanding of her experiences and feelings and a real acceptance and affirmation of her life.

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agriculture, he instead falls in love with English literature. As the years pass, Stoner encounters hard-faced disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents, his career is stymied, his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner confronts an essential solitude.

A collection of forty new poems about the mixed joys of adolescence and the transition into adulthood. The work of America's foremost Chicano poet Gary Soto resonates relatability with all readers, and with a rare understanding that transcends the ordinary while remaining true to the heart.

A uniquely written book broken down into four parts. In the first two chapters, we meet the participants of author Sandria Rodriguez's questions about self-perception. In the following chapters, Rodriguez examines how the participants as children perceived themselves within their families, schools, and communities. Then focus moves on the campus life and the participants' activist experiences. Finally are Rodriguez's recommendations for mentoring disadvantaged children, so that they can successfully "switch the track" and aim to better their lives.