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Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

the immigrant suite

hey xenophobe! who you calling foreigner?

by Hattie Gossett

Book cover for the immigrant suite
Book cover for the immigrant suiteBook cover for the immigrant suiteBook cover for the immigrant suite

Writing from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Harlem intersects with waves of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Korea, Cambodia, Ivory Coast, India, Native America, and from all over the globe, hattie gossett vividly invokes her neighborhood experience. With wit and candor, the immigrant suite questions why so many people are forced from their home countries, only to be despised as interlopers in the United States; why older immigrants see younger ones as the enemy; who gets paid a living wage, who gentrifies their neighborhood, and who sends their money back home. From the grocery store to the cleaners to the tenement walk-up and everywhere in between, gossett captures the voices overheard and imagined in this breathless immigrant suite.

Book cover for the immigrant suite
Book cover for the immigrant suiteBook cover for the immigrant suiteBook cover for the immigrant suite

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“Irreverent, iconoclastic, and witty, hattie gossett emerges again as an artistic arbiter of America's personal and political self. Who we are, where we're going: Ms. gossett's genius provides us with answers we may not want but deeply need. This book is a must read.”

“Every bittersweet page of this book astounds with its insight, humor, and broad humanity.”

“Sassy, ironic, hilarious, profound.”

“Like Billie Holiday, [gossett] taps into the vitality of the blues as a survival mechanism.”

“ "Speaks to societal-political issues through satire and humor while remaining free of rhetoric and didacticism. Alternately bitingly caustic, zanily funny, poignantly sad." ”

Hattie Gossett

HATTIE GOSSETT, author of Presenting Sister Noblues, the immigrant suite: hey xenophobe! who you calling foreigner?, and The Pussy & Cash Suite, is a co-founding editor of Essence magazine and Kitchen Table Press. She lives in New York City.