Three for Thursday: Haiti On My Mind

I have been thinking about how books pair together for a while now. Often, a student will like X book and "want more like it." This level of reader's advisory forces a librarian to ask deeper questions: is it the theme that the reader likes? The setting? The characters? The author? I find myself asking a lot of questions and working through several Destiny searches in order to help students find the next great read. This inspired me to start a new feature, "Three for Thursday." I would like to regularly feature books that are related in some way. This week, it's books that feature Haiti and/or Haitian culture as part of the plot.

Untwine by Edwidge Danticat features identical twins Giselle and Isabelle. When their family gets into a car accident, one twin is mistaken for the other and the surviving twin faces difficult choices and a shattered family. With roots in Haiti, the family's cultural heritage is woven throughout this heart-wrenching story. This one flies out the door each time I do a booktalk.

American Street by Ibi Zoboi was part of Epic Reads First5 in February 2017. I was immediately sucked in: Fabiola and her mother are coming to the United States from Haiti and her mother is detained at immigration. Fabiola must continue to Detroit on her own to meet up with her cousins and aunt. What follows is the story of the struggle to create a life in Detroit, along with the story of how difficult it can be to assimilate into another culture while holding onto roots in another country.

Hold Tight Don't Let Go by Laura Rose Wagner follows Magdalie, a teenager in Haiti, whose life changes in the blink of an eye when the 2010 earthquake hits. The stark poverty Magdalie experiences as she tries to earn enough money to move to Miami is heartbreaking and will make the reader question the relief and aid work that is done in developing countries following a tragic event. The end is hopeful for a country that has seen disaster strike and is working toward recovery.

The Immigrant and Refugee Experience

I can't claim to know what being an immigrant or refugee is like. I don't have that experience--and I feel fortunate to live in a safe and stable country. However, my students come from various backgrounds, so I'm always looking for the opportunity to learn more about them, as well as provide resources for their use and to help their peers empathize with their experiences. I wanted to look at what their lives might be like had they not come to the United States, so I spoke with our ESL teacher and looked up photos of the cities they hailed from prior to the upheaval that brought them to us. I tried to imagine what it would be like to raise my children in a region at war. It seemed unreal . . . picture after picture showed cities in ruin with buildings reduced to rubble.

Reuters file photo of Daraa Syria

As the events of this weekend unfolded, with the new president signing an executive order to halt immigration from certain countries, I thought about what libraries can do to welcome children and families as they establish themselves in new communities. At the request of my curriculum director, I created a book list that identifies books that support the immigrant and refugee experience and added it to my Destiny home page. Though the list is certainly not comprehensive, it provides students a place to start and challenges me to find additional resources as I continue to purchase new books.

In addition, I'm working on ways to add books in different languages to our collection. We have always had books in Spanish--popular novels that students are reading in English, as well as some options of classics and basic nonfiction texts that support curricular areas. However, I have not purchased books in Arabic or any African languages. The ESL teacher has written a grant to purchase some books and I plan to follow up with her to find out how that has worked out and what resources I might add to support her program. I'm also following We Need Diverse Books through social media and their blog to learn more about resources to support learning about diversity and seeing oneself in books.


It's an ongoing process that will likely change as events within our country unfold. What have you done in your library to support immigrants and refugees?

We Need Diverse Books Because . . .

If someone had taken

that book out of my hand

said You're too old for this

maybe

I'd never have believed

that someone who looked like me

could be in the pages of the book

that someone who looked like me

had a story.

-Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

I have been following the We Need Diverse Books campaign and wanted to connect with my students regarding diversity in our library. I decided to create an activity for seventh graders that would allow us to talk a little about what being diverse means to us, as well as looking at some of the resources available in our collection.

In order to facilitate a discussion, I had the students start with a Circle Map. Each Thinking Map has a thinking process that students must go through when completing it. A Circle Map is meant to help define a word or concept. I created a map with "diverse" in the center and students were asked to define it using synonyms and/or words that remind them of diversity. After a short period, students shared their ideas with their shoulder partners and then we shared as a class, adding to our own maps and checking for words we already had written down.

Following the mapping process, I displayed a series of book covers and asked the students to decide if they thought each one was diverse or not and tell why. This was a fascinating look into how kids view book covers and diversity. We discussed how sometimes it is possible to discover diverse attributes from the cover alone and how we often have to look beyond the cover to find out more before we decide.

After our discussions, students wrote exit tickets that are now displayed on a bulletin board in the library answering the prompt, "#Weneeddiversebooks Because." The answers vary from not wanting to be "bored" by the same types of books, to wanting to read a variety of genres, to wanting to see myself, to wanting to learn about other cultures. In other words, the students viewed diversity through a variety of lenses and then responded with their personal viewpoint.

 I am planning to follow up this activity with a series of displays that will help the students see diversity in all of the forms they mentioned, as well as other views. As we continue through the year, I'm hoping that my students will have the opportunity to experience both windows and mirrors in the books they choose from our library.