Summary hard to put down

Reviewer's Comments

Berger, Roni. (2004). Immigrant Women Tell Their Stories. The Haworth Press, Inc., New York. 263 pages, $23.95.

Reviewed for THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER by Janelle Bitikofer.

Born and raised in Israel, author Roni Berger is an immigrant to the United States. She is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Adelphi University, and also maintains a private counseling practice. Prior to leaving Israel to move to the United States in 1990, Ms. Berger worked in the fields of health, mental health, and academia. She relates her own story in this book, as well as the stories of 18 other immigrant women whom she interviewed.

Each woman has a different reason for emigrating, a different educational level, work history, family situation, and country of origin. The author does a good job of presenting the stories in an interesting and very readable fashion. Unlike many publications about research studies, some sections of this book read like a novel, which makes the book hard to put down once you begin reading.

Additionally, Ms. Berger interviewed women who immigrated to three different countries—the United States, Israel, and Australia—for this book. This strategy broadens the scope of her research and provides a refreshingly global look at immigration. The fact that there were only 18 participants interviewed for this study limits its ability to be generalized in some ways to all immigrant women. However, this book does a great job of giving an overview of the strengths immigrant women possess, and the stressors and needs they deal with on a daily basis. It would be an excellent resource for any social work or counseling professionals in the field who encounter immigrant clients in their work.

This book also sets aside an entire chapter on the author’s research methodology, and two chapters on the study’s general findings, with related implications for social work policy and practice. It describes the purpose and interviewing techniques used in qualitative research, and provides helpful background information on U.S. immigration law and historical immigration practices. Therefore, the book would be a good resource for social work educators at the college level who want their students to learn about qualitative research procedures, while also learning about issues of immigration, loss, and change.

With immigrants entering the United States at a rapid rate, this book would be an excellent addition to the libraries of all social work schools, as well as the personal collections of many practitioners in the field.

Reviewed by Janelle Bitikofer, MSW, LCSW, Wake County Mental Health, Raleigh, NC. Janelle has also worked with immigrants as an ESL teacher since 1996.

This review appeared in the Winter 2005 issue of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER magazine.