After the inspection on Ellis Island comes a train going west; write the first hour of the ride.Fact: a railroad ticketing office was added to the main building on Ellis Island in 1904.
A child is told the family is moving to another country; write the conversation.Angle: the grown-up has practiced. The child asks about something small.
People leave places they love for different reasons; write three reasons as three one-paragraph stories.Angle: work, family, safety. Nobody in them is right or wrong.
A best friend gives you something for the journey to your new country; write what it is and the promise that goes with it.Angle: the gift is small. The promise is harder to keep.
A child is told the family is moving to another country; write the conversation.Angle: the grown-up has practiced. The child asks about something small.
At the door a grandmother says one thing to the emigrant and does not say another; write both.First line: Eat properly, she said, which was not what she meant.
Describe how your first language sounds in the last place you will hear it every day.Angle: the market, the schoolyard, the radio in the next room.
Describe the kitchen of the home you are leaving so exactly that you could find everything in the dark.Angle: you will want this page later. Put in the drawer that sticks.
Imagine your family moved to another country last month; write the goodbye you never got to say.Angle: a letter to a neighbor, a teacher or the dog next door.
Learn the first ten words of a new language before you emigrate; write which ten and why.First line: Hello, please, thank you, and then the word for bread.
Leave a letter for the family who will live in your house after you have gone abroad.First line: The third stair creaks, and the plum tree is better than it looks.
Make a list called Things I Will Not Miss about the country you are leaving, and let one item be untrue.Angle: the reader should be able to tell which.
People leave places they love for different reasons; write three reasons as three one-paragraph stories.Angle: work, family, safety. Nobody in them is right or wrong.
Spend the night before leaving for a new country awake, listening to the house.Angle: name each sound, and which ones you will not hear again.
There is room for six photographs in the bag; write which six go to the new country.Angle: say who is in the seventh, the one you put back.
Walk through a house that is almost empty for the last time, as the one who has to lock the door.First line: I checked every room twice, and not for anything I had forgotten.
Watch your street get smaller through the back window on the day you emigrate.Angle: say the last thing you could still make out.
You may take one bag to a new country; write about the thing you leave behind on purpose.Angle: say why it stays, and who you hope finds it.
The journey 15
A new coastline shows for the first time, and you are too short to see over the rail; write the moment.First line: Everyone said Look, and all I could see was coats.
A ship's list gives you one line; write what the line says about you and what it leaves out.Fact: from 1893 steamship companies had to ask passengers extra questions for their manifests.
Arrive in America through a port that is not the famous one.Fact: there were other ports of entry too, such as Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans.
Cross the ocean in steerage as a child who has never seen the sea; write one week.Fact: third class and steerage passengers were the largest group processed at Ellis Island.
Keep one page of a notebook on the way to a new country, with one line crossed out.Angle: let the reader see what was crossed out, and guess why.
Measure a long journey to a new country in meals instead of days.Angle: where each was eaten, who shared it, and the one that was skipped.
On the way to a new country a stranger becomes a friend for exactly three days; write the three days.Angle: you never learn their family name.
Ride a ferry across a harbor with everything you own on your lap.Fact: visitors today can reach Ellis Island only by ferry boat.
The same island was called an island of hope and an island of tears; write one hour of each.Fact: the National Park Service says Ellis Island was an Island of Hope for the vast majority.
Set an immigrant's journey of today beside a journey of 1907, one paragraph each.Fact: 1907 was the peak year at Ellis Island, when 1.2 million people were examined there.
Someone at a desk asks your name, and you answer in a new language for the first time; write the answer.Angle: you practiced it all night. Say what came out.
Stand in a line that will decide whether you may enter a country, and write the hours as they pass.Fact: on average the inspection at Ellis Island took about three to seven hours.
Tell an immigrant's journey of today: three airports, two time zones and a little brother asleep on the bags.Angle: start in the middle, at the second airport.
Two children cross on the same ship in different classes and never meet; write the same day for each.Fact: first and second class passengers were processed on board the steamship, not on Ellis Island.
You are seventeen and first in a line that millions will join; write the step off the boat.Fact: the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island, on January 1, 1892, was seventeen and from Ireland.
The first day 15
After the inspection on Ellis Island comes a train going west; write the first hour of the ride.Fact: a railroad ticketing office was added to the main building on Ellis Island in 1904.
Answer a question in class for the first time without planning the sentence in your new language.First line: It was out before I could check it.
Buy something small in a new country with coins you have never held before.Angle: hold out your hand and let the shopkeeper choose, or count it out yourself.
Describe the street you have just moved to by what is missing from it.Angle: a sound, a smell, a tree, a person who was always on the corner.
Eat your first breakfast in a new country; write what is on the plate and what you wish was.First line: The bread was square.
Go to find something simple, bread or a bus stop or a mailbox, in a town where you cannot read the signs.Angle: write the trip there and the trip back. The trip back is shorter.
Make the first phone call back; write what you say about the new country in the first minute.Angle: then write the thing you saved for the end of the call.
Meet a kind of weather your first country never had: snow, or heat, or rain that falls sideways.Angle: what you wore, what you should have worn, who laughed.
Notice the first time the new country smells like the old one.Angle: a bakery, a rainstorm, someone else's kitchen through an open window.
On the first evening in a new country, a neighbor knocks with something on a plate; write the doorstep.Angle: neither of you has the words. Write what gets said anyway.
Pose for the first photograph taken in the new country: who stands where, and who is trying to smile?Angle: say what is behind the family, and why that spot was chosen.
Send a first letter home from a new country that makes one thing sound better than it is.Angle: the reader of the page should know. The reader of the letter should not.
Someone gets your name wrong on your first day in a new country; write what you decide to do about it.Angle: correct them, let it go, or choose a new answer. Give your reason.
Spend the first night after arriving in a room that does not know you yet.First line: The ceiling had a crack shaped like nothing at home.
Tell about the first joke you understood in a new language, and the week of not understanding before it.Angle: the joke does not have to be good.
Two homes 15
A building that was once a doorway into a country is now a museum; walk through it as a visitor.Fact: Ellis Island was reopened to the public in 1990 as a museum devoted to immigration.
A great-grandchild finds a name in an old ship's list; write the minute of finding it.Fact: the passenger lists for Ellis Island and the Port of New York, 1892 to 1924, can be searched.
A lullaby only works in the first language; write the night someone tries to translate it.Angle: the tune survives. Say which word does not.
A parcel goes back to the first country every winter; write what goes into the box this year.Angle: one thing they asked for, one thing they did not, and a drawing.
An object on the shelf came from the first home; let it tell what it has seen since.First line: I was wrapped in a sweater for the whole crossing.
Count in your head, and write which language the numbers come in and the day you noticed it had changed.Angle: prices, stairs, sheep at bedtime. One of them still counts the old way.
Describe the day the new country first felt like yours: what changed, and what did not.Angle: it is usually something small, like giving a stranger directions.
Dream in the new language for the first time, and write the morning after.Angle: say who was in the dream, and which language they spoke back.
Go back to visit the first country and discover you now have an accent in both places.First line: My cousin laughed at how I said the name of our own street.
Keep two clocks: the one on the wall and the one in your head that still runs on the other country's time.Angle: it is three in the afternoon here. Say who is asleep there.
The key to the old front door still hangs on a hook in the new one; write why nobody throws it away.First line: It opens nothing here, and everyone knows where it is.
Return to the old street after ten years abroad and find it has changed without you.Angle: one thing gone, one thing new, and one thing exactly where you left it.
Someone asks an immigrant where home is, and the answer takes too long; write the pause.Angle: put both places in the pause, and let the answer be honest.
Write a poem in two columns, there and here, with a last line that belongs to both.Angle: one thing to a line. Mornings, bread, rain, the way people say goodbye.
Your two countries play each other; write the evening of the match on the sofa.Angle: decide who you cheer for, and whether you tell anyone.
How it works
These immigration writing prompts are told from the inside: the writer imagines being the one who locks the door, crosses, arrives and learns a new street. None takes a side on policy or asks about the writer's family or papers.
Read the full guide
Writing prompts on immigration, then and now
Most can be set in any year: three airports and a sleeping brother, or a week below deck. Twelve carry a fact about Ellis Island from the National Park Service, such as an inspection that took about three to seven hours on average.
Two homes
The last group begins after the bags are unpacked: an accent in both countries, a clock in the head that still keeps the other time, a key that opens nothing here.
Pick one object and stay with it: a key, a coin, a square slice of bread.
Write the small question, not the big one. What did breakfast look like?
Questions and answers
What is a good writing prompt about immigration?
One small enough to hold. You may take one bag to a new country; write about the thing you leave behind on purpose. Or describe the street you have just moved to by what is missing from it.
Is there an immigration writing prompt set at Ellis Island?
Several. You are seventeen and first in a line that millions will join: the National Park Service says the first immigrant processed there was seventeen and from Ireland. Another follows the train west after the inspection.
When did Ellis Island open?
On January 1, 1892. The National Park Service counts over 12 million immigrants processed there. The island was left vacant in 1954 and reopened to the public in 1990 as a museum of immigration.