Alba, Richard, Albert J. Raboteau, and Josh DeWind, eds. Immigration and Religion in America. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.
I began my search for my Shelfie book on the Lafayette Library website. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted my paper to be about, so I started off with broad terms in the search engine, in hopes that I would read a title that interested me, and then I would be able to narrow my search. My first search was “religion in America”. As I scrolled through the books and articles that related to religion in America, I came across a book called, “Immigration and Religion in America”. I have always been interested in stories of immigrants and their experiences while traveling into America, and also their stories pertaining to their experiences adjusting to American society, so I decided that this would be the book I would use.
When I went to find this book in the library, I was happy to find that on the front cover of the book, it said right underneath the title, “Comparative and Historical Perspectives”. In my mind, having both comparative and historical perspectives about immigration and religion in American is a big plus, because it gives some background on the past of these issues, it also shows how the issues have progressed over time, and it explains many different views on how religion and immigration relate.
As I flipped through the first few pages of the book, I stopped and read the contents page. Part I of the book is about the “integration of Italian and Mexican Immigrants into an American Religion”, Part II is the “religious conversion among Japanese and Korean immigrants”, Part III is incorporation if new religions into American society by European Jews and Arab Muslims, and lastly Part IV is “religious diversification among African American and Haitian migrants,”. Because it seems that this book covers several of the religions we have discussed in this course, and may possibly get to, I thought it would be a good book and topic for my final paper of the year, in a way concluding this course.