Immigration

Writer and director Cherien Dabis talks about her feature film Amreeka, and the immigrant childhood that inspired it.

In remote places along the southwest border of the U.S., the consequences of recent immigration crackdown have become evident. Journalist Tom Barry says that prisons here hold both legal and illegal immigrants for deportation, many far away from their homes and families.

Journalist Howard Fischer has been covering Arizona state government since 1982. He joins Fresh Air to discuss Arizona's controversial immigration law and other recent bills passed in the state, including one that allows Arizona's citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

Drinking didn't stop in the United States from 1920 to 1933 -- it just went underground. Author Daniel Okrent discusses the lasting cultural and political impact of Prohibition in his new book, Last Call.

Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air is an unsentimental meditation on the immigrant experience and the illusory idea of asylum. With lyrical prose, he reassesses the by-your-bootstraps mythology associated with American mobility.

The director's latest film follows a Mexican immigrant living illegally in Los Angeles who tries to evade immigration officials and the city's pervasive gang culture. It's a far cry from Weitz's earlier films, the blockbusters The Golden Compass and New Moon.

Junot Diaz's electric new collection of short stories centers around Yunior, a macho yet mournful Dominican-American man. In these stories about love, lust and infidelity, a good man is hard to find — and when he is found, he's always in bed with someone else.

Wolfe tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that what makes Miami exceptional is the story of how an immigrant community rose to dominate its political landscape in just over a generation. His new novel deals with racial and ethnic conflict among the city's diverse inhabitants.

When it was released 32 years ago, Michael Cimino's revisionist Western was considered one of the most colossal flops in Hollywood history. Critic John Powers takes a second look at the film and concludes that it's clearly the work of one man --- he wanted you to remember it forever."

The new book from Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a knockout of a novel about immigration that transcends genre. It's everything from a coming-of-age novel to a romance to a comic novel of social manners to an up-to-the-minute meditation on race.

Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel, The Lowland, is on the long list for the National Book Award and the shortlist for the Man Booker. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Lahiri should start making room in her trophy cabinet; The Lowland is a beautiful tale of a family transformed by political violence.

In Little Failure, the novelist recounts his emigration from the USSR to the U.S. when he was 7. For the first few years, he says, he would sit alone in the school cafeteria, talking to himself in Russian "in this gigantic fur hat and fur coat." It wasn't long before a teacher advised, "Children won't play with you if you have that much fur on."

Critic Maureen Corrigan recommends two graphic novels -- one about a Yiddish advice column in the early 1900s and another about a regiment of African-American soldiers who fought during World War I.

In the director's latest film, Marion Cotillard plays a Polish woman trying to free her sister from the island's infirmary and Joaquin Phoenix co-stars as a shady businessman.

In China's Second Continent, Howard French explores the Chinese presence in 15 African countries. The relationship goes beyond economics: more than a million Chinese citizens have migrated to Africa.

Congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman gives his take on the 113th Congress, including how House Speaker John Boehner has little sway, and business in the Senate has virtually ground to a halt.

The Daily Show correspondent was born in India, raised in England and moved to Florida as a teen. His new essay collection reflects on his acting career and his life as an immigrant.

Growing up, comics Nadia Manzoor and Radhika Vaz never dreamed that they would one day co-star in a sketch-comedy series about two immigrant Muslim women in Brooklyn. But Manzoor who grew up in a Pakistani-Muslim community in London, and Vaz who grew up in India now star in the web series Shugs & Fats. The series won a Gotham Award for breakthru short form series.

Seth Freed Wessler reported on substandard medical care in privately-run prisons in the federal corrections system for The Nation, which may have led the Justice Department to phase out their use.