By: Masha Rumer
ISBN: 978-0807007303
Beacon Press, 2022
2023 Sarton Winner: Nonfiction
A blend of on-the-ground reporting and personal anecdotes that weaves a tapestry of the immigrant experience, multicultural parenting, and identity in the US
Through her own stories and interviews with other immigrant families, award-winning journalist Masha Rumer paints a realistic and compassionate picture of what it’s like for immigrant parents raising a child in America while honoring their cultural identities. Parenting with an Accent speaks to immigrant and non-immigrant readers alike, incorporating a diverse collection of voices and experiences to provide an intimate look at the lives of many different immigrant families across the country.
With a compelling blend of empirical data, humor, and on-the-ground reportage, Rumer presents interviews with experts on various aspects of parenting as an immigrant, including the challenges of acculturation, bilingualism strategies, and childcare. She visits a children’s Amharic class at an Ethiopian church in New York, a California vegetable farm, a Persian immersion school, and more. Through these stories, she opens a window to a world of parenting unique to multicultural families. Immigrant readers will appreciate Rumer’s gentle message about the kind of ethnic and cultural ambivalence that is born of having roots planted in many different soils, while in these pages non-immigrants get a fly-on-the-wall view of the unique experiences of newcomers.
Deeply researched yet personal, Parenting with an Accent centers immigrants and their experiences in a new country—emphasizing how immigrants and their children remain an integral part of America’s story.
About the Author
Masha Rumer is an award-winning journalist and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Quartz, the Moscow Times, Parents.com, SFWeekly, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere, winning awards from the New York Press Association. She holds graduate degrees in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York Graduate Center and in Communications from Georgetown University and has taught English Composition, ESL, and journalism at colleges in California and New Jersey. She also specializes in developing communications strategies and content for nonprofits, technology companies working to combat climate change, and the government.
Masha was born in the former Soviet Union and now lives in California with her family and a buckwheat-loving dwarf hamster. She is represented by the Robin Straus Literary Agency.
To learn more about Masha Rumer and her work, please see www.masharumer.com
