Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing

Ilan Stavans has compiled a comprehensive and amazingly diverse collection of stories and poetry in "Becoming Americans." A look at the table of contents is daunting. It includes entries from many internationally famous writers such as John James Audubon, Charles Chaplin, Isaac Bashevis Singer, W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, Frank McCourt and Jhumpa Lahiri.

The most surprising thing about this collection of prose and poetry isn't the famous writers' work but the unknown writers whose stories are riveting, frightening and wonderful. It includes writers who warn people away from coming to America.

An example is Gottlieb Mittelberger's warning in 1750 to other Germans not to "Journey to Pennsylvania." Mittelberger warns them not to come because of the cost and hardship and the "Dutch trafficking." He warns that things are not much better in Pennsylvania and, if all one's money is depleted by the time a "Newlander" reaches America, the only option is to become an indentured servant for "freethinkers and unbelievers