Immigration Project Reflection
The very first thing that we did during the immigration project was we all read books about people that immigrated to America and the things they had to overcome. The book that I chose was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah and I basically chose it because after reading the descriptions and synopsis, it sounded interesting. I am very happy that I chose this book because I absolutely loved it and it made my reading experience so much better than it has been in the past. I'm the type of person that if the book takes a long time to get interesting, I just get board with it and don't want to read it. I am glad that didn't happen and not only was it interesting in the beginning, but it was very interesting all throughout the book. I even asked my fellow classmates if they enjoyed there book and most of them said that it was either okay or they didn't like it at all so that made me appreciate my decision to read this book. I loved this book so much that I didn't even realize how much I learned from it and when you truly learn things, I don't think you even know until you take the time to think about it. I never even knew that there was a big war in Sierra Leone I've always heard about the war in Uganda but not in Sierra Leone. The person that I interviewed for the immigration project stated that when he came to America, he was surprised how little Americans knew about the rest of the world, and this book made it so that I knew more about another part of the world. I learned about things that the rebels did to the Sierra Leoneans that I never thought humans would be able to do to another human. Such as forcing sons to have sexual intercourse with their mothers. I learned all about the life of Ishmael Beah and how him and his friends were forced to become soldiers at the age of 12. Most importantly, I learned how good things are in America and how I should really be thankful that I don't even have to worry about being forced to become a soldier. Reading this book made my learning experience so wonderful and unforgeable. The only problems that I faced during this section of the project were the blog posts and the responses. I got my book after two blog posts were already due so that made me even more behind and also I would forget to do the responses so that made my grade even lower. Its hard to say why I did so bad and it wasn't even about not reading the book I think I was just being lazy about the blog posts and responses. I think that I liked the format of meeting in person better because it made it harder to not do the written assignment. I think this is because when you showed up to class with nothing done, it makes you feel bad but when you don't do your posts only your group knows.
The second aspect of this project was creating an art piece that has to do with our Lit. Circles novel. I decided to create a different book cover for the book. I knew that I'm not good at drawing people so I had to do something that did not include people. At first it was kind of hard to think an idea but Mrs. G suggested that I draw the country with some type of design and that is what I did. In my book, the first gun that Ishmael got when he became a soldier was and AK 47 and I knew that was something that I should definitely include in my drawing. I wanted to draw blood on the country to signify all of the people that were being killed during the war but I couldn't really make it look good so I decided not to do that. I included all of this in my book cover along with the colors of the Sierra Leonean flag. I was very happy with the way my final sketch turned out and I thought that it was very nice. My final painted product however, didn't turn out as good as I hoped it would and it kind of looked different from my final sketch because the colors were darker. Once I think about it, I think that I should have put the American flag colors inside of Sierra Leone to show how Ishmael went from Sierra Leone to America. I think I would also try to use something other than paint to color my final product because I'm not very good at painting.
The last thing that we had to do was interview a person that immigrated to the U.S. That has a different ethnic background as you. We also have to give our interviewees a gift to thank them for there time and participation in this project. I got the honor of interviewing Meseret's dad, Mr. Ghirmai, and he was great throughout this whole project. He made it so that it was very easy for me to get in contact with him and get all of the information that I needed. He answered all of my questions in detail so that I really didn't even have the need to ask any follow up questions and I thought that it was such an amazing experience to hear what he has been through and the stories he told me. The best story was when he told me that someone actually asked him if there are cars in Africa and he said that he told them, “No we ride Lions and Tigers to school and work every day”. I liked it because it was very funny. Another thing that I liked about our in- person interview was that he made it so that everything wasn't all serious and told funny stories about his experiences. In my first interview I learned that Mr. Ghirmai had to choose whether he wanted to live around Boston or California and he chose California because he visited both of those places during the winter and California had better weather. At first I thought that it was crazy that his decision was based on a thing as simple as whether and then I realized that's how a lot of people make their decision. He also said that he dislikes when people consider him and his children less American than them just because he was born in Eritrea, people considered them Africans when they are as much American as us and this really opened my eyes because with out even noticing it, in the back of my mind I really didn't see them as Americans until he said that. I am so glad I had the chance to interview Mr. Ghirmai because if I didn't, I think the image of why people came to America in my mind would have still been blurry but the interview with him cleared it up more. I think the only way for the image to become more clear is if I immigrated myself and I don't think that will happen. I am aware that some people didn't have the same experience with the interview as me and I think that next time Mrs. G should thoroughly talk to the interviewees to make sure that they are fully committed to the project. That way there won't be the issue of not being able to get in touch with people.
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