Of all the baggage that an immigrant carries, there is one item in particular that he or she has in common with every single other immigrant.

According to associate professor of English Amitava Kumar, that item is a book — the book of the immigrant's passport.

Kumar, who is new to the Penn State faculty this year, recently wrote a book called Passport Photos, based on the premise a passport tells a story.

The chapters of his book mirror the categories on an actual passport: name, language, photograph, place of birth, nationality and so on. However, instead of just simple one-word answers, the book is "precisely the story that the state will not ask, or is not willing to listen to," Kumar said.

Kumar emigrated from India to the U.S. when he was 23 years old. He said that he discusses immigrant realities through the poetry, narration and photography in his book. In his reading and book signing Wednesday night at Webster's Bookstore Café, 128 S. Allen St., he used the example of a photograph of a sign near Tijuana, Mexico, by the U.S.-Mexico border.

The sign depicts a man, woman and child holding hands and running together. Above the picture the sign reads "CAUTION" and below, "PROHIBIDO."

However, these two words do not mean the same thing, Kumar said. Caution means to be careful, and is intended for English speakers driving on the road next to the sign, while prohibido means prohibited, and is the intended message for those who speak Spanish. The words address two separate, unequal worlds of people and are indicative of the racial and class divisions concerning the immigrant condition.

If the passport is a book, the immigration officer is its reader, Kumar said.

"In our classes we try to teach folks how to read," Kumar said, and in college, students are taught how to read in different ways. "My book is an attempt to make a different reader out of an immigration officer."

Passport Photos is not Kumar's first work about the immigrant condition. The experience of being an immigrant is also depicted in his "Poems For The I.N.S.," which he sarcastically called "my love letters for the border patrol."

Kumar will teach two English courses in the spring. Don Bialostosky, head of the English department, said he is very excited to have Kumar on the faculty and that Kumar "opens up new territory" in cultural studies.

Kumar's audience Wednesday night was both entertained and intrigued by his reading. Scott Wible (graduate-English) said he was very interested in the visual aspect of Kumar's work and "the way he's inserting stories from these photographs."

Kumar said he takes what is ordinary or given "and I turn it around and make it a question."

Passport Photos asks for the story of the person behind his or her international identification.