Ain't that America

Last 9 weeks was a slow crawl for me through some books, but others flew by.  Contrary to popular belief, English teachers don't love everything they read, and they don't find everything "easy." I still am a glutton for fiction, and though I end up liking nonfiction, I have to force myself to weave it into my reading.  I also struggle sometimes with classics, but there are still so many I have yet to read that I "require" myself to read one every 9 weeks.  Luckily, the one I chose this time was faster than I expected it to be for a monster-sized text.  The books I read this 9 weeks, in order of difficulty, were:

1. If I Was Your Girl

2. Every Exquisite Thing

3. More Happy Than Not

4. The Impossible Knife of Memory

5. Enter Title Here

6. Those Who Wish Me Dead

7. And Then There Were None

8. Out of Easy

9. Between Shades of Gray

10. A Whole New Mind

11. Enrique's Journey

12. East of Eden

The hardest one was my favorite because it was such a slice of America. This classic by John Steinbeck captures the need men have to prove themselves TO themselves and to others, and while he never paints a very nice picture of women, his male characters are complex, troubled, and incredibly real.  Even at 601 pages, I read it in two weeks because I needed to know what happened to the brothers battling for the love of their father. Numbers 1-5 were all young adult fiction, and number 6 was a fun adult thriller that Lauren Meltzer loaned me. (Thanks!) Number 7 was a classic mystery, and numbers 8 and 9 were historical fiction by one of my favorite authors, Ruta Sepetys. Finally, 10 & 11 were my nonfiction reads, and as you can see, those rank as harder for me simply because real life doesn't always maintain the fast pace of a well-structured plot. And hey, in America, we like action, we like fast-paced, we like excitement.  You can see where I'm going with my theme for this week, I suppose.  Anyway, my goal is to continue to read an at least one book per week, and I'd like to tackle more multicultural fiction, so I'm starting with the book I'm currently reading, American Street.

I got this book at the NCTE conference because I loved the cover. Again, to correct a common misconception, sometimes you CAN judge a book by its cover. With all its colorful chaos within one lone silhouette, I imagined the book would be packed with internal conflict.  I'm 181 pages into Ibi Zoboi's book after a week, and the main character confronts a cacophony of internal and external challenges. Fabiola is a Haitian girl who has come to live with cousins in Detroit.  While she was born in America and is a legal citizen, her mother first came to America on a work visa and gave birth to her daughter in America because "she wanted to make sure [her daughter] was born American" before she returned with the child to Haiti (91). Unfortunately, in doing so, she overstayed her visa, so upon returning to America after 17 years, she is detained by immigration while Fabiola is left on her own to stay with her aunt and cousins and adapt to life in America. Flirting with boys, learning to wear makeup and short skirts, discovering the world of drug-dealing through her cousin's boyfriend, risking getting mugged in the Detroit streets, she learns that America is not all glamour and safety. Like Haiti, it presents dangers to navigate and tough choices to make, and without her mother, Fabiola does her best to be brave and to keep her Haitian customs alive.  She wonders if she and her mother are being punished for the "Vodou" they do and whether the "lwas [spirits]" are angry for "all the sinful things [she's] done" (76). Though Fabiola's customs seem strange, they are for her a link to home and to her mother, and she holds on to them as her faith and her guidance.  At the same time as she worries about her mother and the power the "lwas" have lover her fate, she has to decide if she will take her fate into her own hands.  When she realizes that her cousin's abusive boyfriend is a drug dealer thanks to a detective who approaches her with a deal, she considers her options, realizing that she "can get this terrible man out of [her] cousin's life for good and get my mother back" (132). For a simple exchange of information, the detective will help clear her mother's immigration case.

And maybe that's what America is to Fabiola - tough choices, difficult decisions, conflicting pressures.  Her cousins want her to learn to be a cool "street" girl; her aunt wants her to become a good student; she wants to fit in but hold on to her home; her mother just wants her to be American.  Like many immigrants, Fabiola's mother believes that America offers the promise a better life, and certainly, although they live in a difficult area of Detroit, her aunt and cousins have far more luxuries than she had in Haiti.  Indoor plumbing, televisions sets, furniture to fill a room - those are American luxuries.  And who can be surprised that people want to come to America to seek such luxury?  Now if you're thinking I'm going to relate all this to the immigration ban or the "wall," you're mistaken.  While those recent events are relevant, I'm more interested in how someone becomes legal.  If Fabiola's mother wants to come live with her daughter and her sister, what will it take? 

Many people don't realize that there are only three legal paths to immigration, as described on this website. Those three paths are employment-based, family-based, and humanitarian reasons.  Each of these is severely restricted both in terms of requirements for qualification and in terms of time.  For many family members, the wait time is anywhere from 5-25 years, and the wait time is constantly growing due to the numbers of people applying. Of course, the country can't allow a large number of people in at anytime, and in many ways, American immigration laws have loosened over time, providing easier access than some countries do, so for someone like Fabiola's mother, the wait is likely to be lengthy. Her daughter has a safe place to live, and she is already seen as a risk due to her previous visa infraction. Also, Haitians are a uniquely large group of people seeking refuge in the U.S. which makes her chances even more slim. This video specifically addresses the needs of Haitians who fled their country following earthquakes and who are now in Mexico waiting to apply for legal entry.  They have no hope in the country they left behind, and they have a long, complex road to legally move to America. They are likely to wait a long time, in limbo, unsure of what their future holds, much like Fabiola's mother. 

We rarely recognize the luxury we have and the reasons people long for our lifestyle.  Even those of us who live the simplest of lives have more than people who leave countries devastated by war, famine, or natural disasters.  So while America may be dangerous urban streets, drug dealers, and materialism, it's also a place other people long to call home. 

"Asylum Seekers Stuck in Mexico en route to U.S." Youtube, uploaded by Al Jazeera English, 30
      September 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43hWltwghPo

"Why Don't They Just Get in Line?" American Immigration Council, American Immigration
      Council, 12 August 2016, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/why-don
      %E2%80%99t-they-just-get-line

Zoboi, Ibi. American Street. Balzer and Bray, 2017.