The immigration project consisted of reading literature circle books, blog posts, artistic expression, and interviewing an immigrant. This cycle of lit. circles was different from the others, because this time we did all of the meetings on our blogs. The book I read was Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat. The book starts off in Haiti, and talks about how Edwidge's uncle and father dealt with their chronic illnesses as Haiti crumbled before their eyes. I enjoyed reading the book, because of how heart-warming the unconditional love that circulated in Edwidge's family was. Since the book was an autobiography, the elements of the book seemed to jump out more than those of a novel. This book greatly reminded me of my own family, and I believe that is the main reason why I enjoyed it so much; my parents would sacrifice the same for me as Edwidge's parents did for her. This book taught me that no family is problem-free and picture perfect. Every family has issues, whether they are big or small, and in order to survive they must count on each other. I like the new blogging system for literature circles, but it is not always convenient because not everybody has a functioning computer. Also, with the hand-out sheets you can do the homework wherever; with the blogging system, you can only do it where a computer is accessible. Most of my group members appeared to do their blog posts on time, but I believe one or two of them misunderstood the book. In their quotes, they would either ask completely irrevelant questions, or questions that were clearly answered in the section we were supposed to read. It made it made harder for me to do my second job (replying to blogs).
We also had to artistically express the book. The way I chose to express the book was by painting a theme from it. It was basically a red heart with Edwidge's family as bathroom figures surrounded by a black background, with blue teardrops that contained words that described major elements in the book. I also added a yellow lightning strike to symbolize the evil and anarchy that was striking Haiti in Edwidge's childhood. I think the words in the teardrops were what helped my classmates understand the theme of the book. It was supposed to be a loving family of six that is surrounded by darkness, prejudice, and violence. I believe I did an adequate job of reaching that goal, because at the in-class gallery walk, all of my classmates that looked at my painting said they loved my idea. This was my favorite part of the project simply because I got to put my artistic abilities to work.
I chose to interview my mom's friend Jenny, who is a Chinese immigrant. She owns her own workout business and it has been thriving for the past six years. Since I already knew Jenny, it was a lot easier to interview her. I didn't have introduce or talk about myself, because we already knew each other! I think the in-person was the most awkward for me, because I had to look at the person while I was interviewing them. On the phone you can do other things, but in person you have to sit there and intently listen to the person you are interviewing. A unique thing I learned about Jenny in our third interview is that when she and her family still lived in China, her father was a doctor and her mother was a housewife. Since I interviewed Jenny at my house, I had to spend the afternoon helping my mom clean the house and my room. That is another hassle on its own, because not only did I have to clean my room, I had to swiffer the entire house including underneath the couches (on top of my normal everyday chores). But it went smoothly and Jenny brought her dog Reba, who is a Sharpay/Pit puppy. So afterwards, I went in the backyard and played with Reba and my dog Rambo. I had to think a lot before I called Jenny for the first inteview, because I wanted to know what I was going to say ahead of time to avoid stuttering. An important fact from the first interview is that she has three brothers, which I did not know before. The second interview was a lot easier, because I already had a good idea of how the interview would go. Another interesting fact about Jenny is that all of her family lives in America. Normally, immigrants still have family members in their homeland. I got to know Jenny a lot better because of these interviews, and I now have a better understanding of what it is like to be an immigrant. My current understanding is that it is hard to adjust to the new cultures, but not nearly as hard as it is to fit in with the country's occupants. If I were to go to China right now, it would be hard for me to get used to the culture; even if I am already used to Chinese culture, I still would not fit in with the average Chinese person, because they are familiar with their territory. After we had completed all of our interviews with our immigrant, we had to make a final product as a gift to them. I chose to do a painting. The format is in the American flag, only altered. The blue rectangle with the stars was changed to the Chinese flag, and I wrote Shanghai Province because that is where Jenny had lived in China. The red and white stripes were changed to black and white stripes, and in two of the white lines I wrote "Land of the free...home of the brave" to symbolize the US. So I mostly just combined the Chinese and American flag. Although I did not give Jenny the painting yet, I know she'll love it when I do. I greatly enjoyed this project, because I got to paint and that is one of my stronger points. I would love to do more projects like this one.
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