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Stories with a cultural perspective

Mostly fiction with a couple of autobiographical works added in. These stories explore different cultures and what happens when cultures collide.

New Zealand

Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff
Other Halves by Sue McCauley

America

Two suns in the sky by Miriam Bat-Ami
In 1944, an Upstate New York teenager named Christine meets and falls in love with Adam, a Yugoslavian Jew living in a refugee camp.
Ask me no questions by Marina Tamar Budhos
Fourteen-year-old Nadira, her sister, and their parents leave Bangladesh for New York City, but the expiration of their visas and the events of September 11, 2001, bring frustration, sorrow, and terror for the whole family.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 a novel by Christopher Paul Curtis
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
"Saddam Hussein has invaded Kuwait, and high school has become a lonely place for a "towelhead." When her father meets, and forbids her to see, her boyfriend, it becomes lonelier still." Conflict of generations - Lebanese in America.
Lipstick Jihad: a memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni
Non fiction
Monsoon summer by Mitali Perkins
U.S. girl spending summer in Pune, India. Secretly in love with her best friend and business partner Steve, fifteen-year-old Jazz must spend the summer away from him when her family goes to India during that country's rainy season to help set up a clinic.
Swimming to America by Alice Mead
Albanian and American cultures.
Girls for breakfast by David Yoo
As he reflects back on his life in upscale Renfield, Connecticut, on his high school graduation day, Nick Park wonders how much being the only Asian American in school affected his thwarted quest for popularity and a girlfriend.

African American

Paul Volponi
Black and white: Two star high school basketball players, one black and one white, experience the justice system differently after committing a crime together and getting caught.
Rooftop: Still reeling from seeing police shoot his unarmed cousin to death on the roof of a New York City housing project, seventeen-year-old Clay is dragged into the whirlwind of political manipulation that follows.
New boy by Julia Houston
As a new sophomore at an exclusive boarding school, a young black man is witness to the persecution of another student with bad acne.
145th Street; Short stories by Walter Dean Myers
Ten stories portray life on a block in Harlem.
The liberation of Gabriel King by Kelly Going
In Georgia during the summer of 1976, Gabriel, a white boy who is being bullied, and Frita, an African American girl who is facing prejudice, decide to overcome their many fears together as they enter fifth grade.
Witness by Karen Hesse
A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.
To kill a mockingbirdTo kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.
Roll of thunder (Hear my cry series) by Mildred D. Taylor
A black family living in the South during the 1930's are faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don't understand.
The color purple by Alice Walker
This book tells the story of Celie. Raped by the man she calls father, her two children taken from her and forced into an ugly marriage, she has no one to talk to but God, until she meets a woman who offers love and support.

Asia

Mao's last dancer coverMao's Last Dancer byLi Cunxin
Nonfiction. At the age of 10, Li Cunzin was chosen to train as a ballet dancer at Madam Mao's Peking Dance Academy. His selection was based purely on his physique and the fact that he came from a family that had been peasants for three generations - he knew nothing about the art form at all.
Spilled water by Sally Grindley
China
Chandra by Frances May Hendry
A story about a young Indian girl who is married at the age of eleven, but widowed almost immediately, and whose fate therefore is to be isolated for the rest of her life. She finds herself torn between the traditions of her culture, and her own sense of justice.
coverChinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah
The true story of a Chinese woman and how she suffered appalling emotional deprivation and rejection by her family as a child growing up in China and Hong Kong. She tells of the consequences in her adult life, above which she rose to make a happy marriage and become a successful doctor in the USA.
Koyal dark, mango sweet by Kashmira Sheth
Growing up with her family in Mumbai, India, sixteen-year-old Jeeta disagrees with much of her mother's traditional advice about how to live her life and tries to be more modern and independent.

Australia

The full story - coverThe full story by Brian Caswell
Cultural conflict - Australia / Vietnam.
Strange objects by Gary Crew
Walk in my Shoes by Alwyn Evans
Refugees in Australia.
Does my head look big in this? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Muslim girls in Australia.
The Dons by Archimdede Fusillo
Italian / Australian.
Borderland: a trilogy by Rosanne Hawke
Australia / Pakistan / Afghanistan.
Melina Marchetta
Looking for Alibrandi: Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen, illegitimate and in her final year at a wealthy Catholic school. This year her father comes into her life, she falls in love and discovers her family's secret.
Saving Francesca: Australia/ Italian cultures.
Boyz r us by Scott Monk
Race tensions
Wogaluccis by Josie Montano
How can Angela discover herself when she feels as if she is smothered in spaghetti sauce and drowning in olive oil? Australia / Italian cultures.
Sweet tea by Brian Ridden
Sky legs coverIrini Savvides
Sky legs After her mother's death, Eleni tries to get away from it all in Byron Bay, hoping to deal with the loss and rebuild her confidence. On her return the family leave Sydney for a small mountain community and Eleni finds more difficulties fitting in with the attitudes of the locals.
Willow tree and Olive: cultural conflict - Greek/Australia
Orphans of the Queen by Ruth Starke
British children sent to Australia during the war.

Australia - Aborigines

Phillip Gwynne
Nukkin Ya
Deadly Unna
Meme McDonald
The binna binna man
My Girragundji
Njunjul the sun

England

Noughts & CrossesThe Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman
Blackman tackles the issues of racism and prejudice in a world set in an alternate historical reality.
Read our interview with Malorie Blackman.
Bali Rai
Rani and Sukh: relationships. East Indians/Great Britain
(Un)Arranged Marriage: Panjabis/England - arranged marriage
How I live now by Meg Rosoff
Award winner. To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

Historical

Catherine Jinks
Pagan series
Susan Price
A Sterkarm kiss
The Sterkarm handshake

Wars

Vinnie Moran, regularKen Catran
Red Leader Down: WW2 fighter pilot - read an excerpt here.
Moran series: Follows generations of soldiers from the Moran family from the First World War to the 2003 Iraq conflict.
Scarecrow army: the Anzacs at Gallipoli by Leon Davidson
On 25 April 1915, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders landed at an unnamed cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula to fight the Turks. They thought the battle would be over in three days. Months later they were still in the trenches they'd dug at the landing.
Generals die in bed by Charles Yale Harrison
A young soldier with the Canadian forces questions the meaning of heroism, of truth, and of good and evil as he describes life in the trenches during World War I.
Boys of blood and bone by Boys of Blood and Bone David Metzenthen
See also If you like... War stories

Vietnam conflict

Hey Joe by Michael Hyde
Vietnamese conflict / father and son.

Others

Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah
Divided City by Theresa Breslin
Catholic/Protestant church, divided city, Glasgow, soccer.
A taste of cockroach Aby llan Baille
"This streetwise collection from master storyteller Allan Baillie spans centuries of cross-cultural relationships, civil wars and expeditions."
First crossing: stories about teen immigrants ed. Donald R Gallo
Stories of recent Mexican, Venezuelan, Kazakh, Chinese, Romanian, Palestinian, Swedish, Korean, Haitian, and Cambodian immigrants reveal what it is like to face prejudice, language barriers, and homesickness along with common teenage feelings and needs. Short stories - young adult fiction.
Shabanu: the daughter of the wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples
When eleven-year old Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of present-day Pakistan, is pledged in marriage to an older man whose money will bring prestige to the family, she must either accept the decision, as is the custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father's wishes.
A Stone in my hand by Cathryn Clinton
Eleven-year-old Malaak and her family are touched by the violence in Gaza between Jews and Palestinians when first her father disappears and then her older brother is drawn to the Islamic Jihad.
Fattening Hut by Pat Lowery Collins
A teenage girl living on a tropical island runs away to escape her tribe's customs of arranged marriages and female genital mutilation.