Alvarez, Julia, Before We Were Free,  Knopf, 2002. Twelve-year-old Anita isn't aware of the growing menace in the Dominican Republic until her relatives have fled to America and a fleet of black Volkswagens brings the secret police to the family compound to search their houses.

Budhos, Marina, Ask Me No Questions,  Atheneum, 2006. Nadira, 14, leaves Bangladesh with her family on a tourist visa to America, and they stay long after the visa expires. Their illegal status is discovered, however, following 9/11, when immigration regulations are tightened.

Carlson, Lori, American Eyes: New Asian American Short Stories for Young Adults, Econo-Clad, 1999. Ten young Asian-Americans re-create the conflicts that all young people feel living in two distinct worlds.

Chambers, Veronica, Marisol and Magdelena: The Sound of Our Sisterhood, Hyperion, 2001. When Marisol's mother sends her to live in Panama with her abuela, the move puts Marisol's American values to the test, and also tests her friendship with Magdalena.

Clarke, Judith, Kalpana's Dream, Front Street 2005. Neema, half Indian, half Australian, is  dealing with a visit from her great-grandmother, Nani, who speaks only Hindi, and her unsettling feelings for a skateboarder named Gull Owens, with whom Nani has her own relationship.

Crew, Linda, Children of the River, Random House, 1994. Sundara flees Cambodia with her aunt's family, leaving her own family behind for Oregon. As a Khmer, she's not allowed to date or even be alone with a boy; her marriage will be arranged.

Danticat, Edwidge, Behind the Mountains, Scholastic First Person Fiction, 2003. Leaving her home in rural Haiti, Celiane Espérance and her mother are reunited with her father in Brooklyn.

De La Cruz, Melissa, Fresh Off The Boat, HarperCollins, 2005. Vicenza Arambullo, 14, is a recent immigrant to San Francisco from Manila, where her family was wealthy. On scholarship, she now attends a private girls' school where she is an outcast.

Deng, Alphonsion, Deng, Benson, Ajak, Benjamin, Berstein, Judy, They Poured Fire On Us From The Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys From Sudan,  PublicAffairs, 2005. The Deng brothers and their cousin Benjamin were not yet seven when they fled their Dinka villages for Kenya during the Sudanese civil war, and moved to American in 2001.

Desai Hidier, Tanuja, Born Confused, Push/Scholastic, 2002. Dimple Lala, an aspiring 17-year-old Indian-American photographer living in New Jersey, struggles to balance two cultures at home and in the South Asian club scene without falling apart.

Gallo, Don, First Crossing: Stories About Teen Immigrants, Candlewick, 2004. The teen immigrants featured in this short story collection come from  countries like Cambodia, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Palestine, and South Korea.

Gaskins, Pearl Fuyo, What Are You? Voices of Mixed-Race Young People, Henry Holt and Co., 1999. In essay, interview, and poetry, 45 mixed-race young people between the ages of 14 and 26, from all over the U.S., speak about their growing up.

Guy, Rosa, The Friends, 1973. Rejected by her classmates because she "talks funny," Phyllisia Cathy, a West Indian girl, is forced to become friends with poor, frazzled Edith, the only one who will accept her.

Ho, Minfong, The Stone Goddess, Orchard, 2003. Nakri Sokha suffers under the Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia. After the Vietnamese army liberates Cambodia, Nakri returns to her mother's village, where they decide to seek refuge in America.

Kadohata, Cynthia, Kira-Kira, Atheneum, 2004. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's her sister Lynn who teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering -- kira-kira -- in the future.

Laird, Elizabeth, Kiss the Dust, Puffin, 1994. Tara, a Kurdish girl, has to flee with her family, first from a northern Iraqi city to the mountains, then to an internment camp, then on to Iran, and finally to England

Lee, Marie G., Necessary Roughness, HarperCollins, 1998. Chan and his sister Young move from Los Angeles to a small Minnesota town. Entering their junior year of high school, Chan must cope not only with racism on the football team but also with the tensions in his relationship with his strict father.

Lee, Marie G., Finding My Voice, HarperCollins, 2001. Pressured by her strict Korean immigrant parents to get into Harvard, high school senior Ellen Sung tries to find some time for romance, friendship and fun in her small Minnesota town; but the racism she encounters becomes impossible to ignore.

Min, Katherine, Secondhand World, Knopf, 2006. Isa repudiates her Korean parents' values and runs away with an albino boy, Hero. At the same time, she suspects that despite her mother's strict adherence to Korean traditional values, she is involved with another man, and Isa determines to make the affair known. What begins as a child's unthinking fury at her mother soon leads to more deadly consequences.

Miró, Asha, Daughter of the Ganges: A Memoir, Atria 2006. When Asha was six, a Catalan family was in the process of adopting twins but one of the children suddenly fell ill and died, leading the family to adopt Asha instead. Twenty-one years later, Asha takes a heart-wrenching trip back to India to uncover her native roots.

Mosher, Richard, Zazoo, Clarion, 2001. 13-year-old Zazoo lives with her loving adoptive grandfather, who brought her from Vietnam to his French village when she was just 2 years old. A meeting with a Parisian boy incites her to learn more about the Nazi invasion of France.

Na, An, A Step from Heaven, Front Street, 2002. Young Ju grows from a toddler in Korea to a high-school graduate in California, desperately trying to be a 'true' American while her immigrant parents try to make her stay close to her Korean heritage.

Namioka, Lensey, Mismatch, Delacorte, 2006. When Suzanne Hua, a Chinese American, and Andy Suzuki, a Japanese American, meet in their high-school orchestra, their white classmates see them as a good match. But Suzanne's beloved grandmother can't forget the brutality of the Japanese who invaded China, and Andy's father talks about the "dirty, backward" Chinese.

Osa, Nancy, Cuba 15, Random House/Delacorte, 2003. Violet unleashes conflicted feelings within her family when she explores her Cuban roots.

Perkins, Mitali, Monsoon Summer, Random House, 2004.  Fifteen-year-old biracial Jasmine ("Jazz") is conflicted about spending the summer in Pune, India, where her mother has received a grant to work at the orphanage where she had lived as a child.

Placide, Jaira, Fresh Girl, Random House/Wendy Lamb Books, 2002. 14-year-old Mardi isn't allowed to stray from her Brooklyn apartment but harbors a terrible secret about what she suffered  in Haiti during the 1991 coup.

Santiago, Esmeralda, When I Was A Puerto Rican, Perseus Books, 1993. Santiago and her ten siblings lived in a corrugated metal shack in Puerto Rico. When they head to New York, where her grandmother lives, she must rely on her intelligence and talents to help her survive.

Soto, Gary, Help Wanted: Stories, Harcourt, 2005. Ten original short stories about Mexican-American teens in central California, tied together by a theme of “needing help.”

Stine, Catherine, Refugees, Delacorte, 2005. Dawn is a runaway from California with a foster mother who is a doctor helping in a refugee camp near Pakistan. Johar, 15, lives in Afghanistan. His aunt, a teacher, has disappeared, the Taliban has taken his brother, and Johar is left to care for his three-year-old cousin.

Son, John, First Person Fiction: Finding My Hat, Scholastic, 2003. Set in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jin-Han grows from a Korean 2-year-old into an American teen whose mother dies.

Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club, 1990. Chinese American daughters find conflict, love and connection with their mothers, who are haunted by their early lives in China.

Veciana-Suarez, Ana, The Flight To Freedom, Scholastic First Person Fiction, 2003. Yara Garcia and her family are forced to flee from Cuba to Miami, Florida. Tension develops between her parents, as Mami grows more independent and Papi joins a militant anti-Castro organization.

Williams-Garcia, Rita, No Laughter Here, Harper Collins, 2004. Akilah can't wait to start fifth grade with her best friend, Victoria, who has been in Nigeria for the summer. But Victoria has survived female circumcision, and Akilah is furious but sworn to secrecy.

Yang, Gene, American Born Chinese, First Second Books, 2006. A series of three linked tales in graphic novel form about Jin Wang, a teen who meets with ridicule and social isolation when his family moves from San Francisco's Chinatown to an exclusively white suburb, Danny, a popular blond, blue-eyed high school jock whose social status is jeopardized when his goofy, embarrassing Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee, enrolls at his high school, and the Monkey King who, unsatisfied with his current sovereign, desperately longs to be elevated to the status of a god.

Yoo, David, Girls For Breakfast, Delacorte, 2005. Nick Park, a Korean American, describes himself as “the only non-Anglo-Saxon student in suburban Connecticut,” and blames his Korean looks for his lack of popularity and girlfriends.

Zephaniah, Benjamin, Refugee Boy, Bloomsbury, 2001. Alem's father is Ethiopian and his mother Eritrean. With both countries at war, he is welcome in neither place, so Alem begins a new life in the United Kingdom.

To submit more books to this list, please send an e-mail to bestbooks@mitaliperkins.com