From the Bookshelves: Macarthur Grant Winners Vuong and Luiseli Write About Immigration

In the search for top talent, Macarthur chose two immigrant writers who write about the migration experience. The poet and fiction writer Ocean Vuong, 30, wrote his first novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” as a Vietnamese immigrant son’s letter to his illiterate mother.

Valeria Luiseli wrote a nonfiction memoir of her time as a translator in NYC immigration courts “Tell Me How It Ends” (2017) (previously profiled on ImmigrationProf blog). She also wrote about similar themes in the “Lost Children Archive” (2019), a fictionalized account of her own family’s road trip from New York to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, with stories of the unfolding Central American migration crisis woven into the narrative.

Explore their stories on social media with the hashtag #MacFellow, and check out all of the 2019 MacArthur Fellows.

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