Theme: Immigration

Immigration

Behind the Mountains

Book — Fiction. By Edwidge Danticat. 2004. 192 pages.
A riveting novel detailing the struggles of a young Haitian girl as she adjusts to life in New York.
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Journey of Dreams

Book — Fiction. By Marge Pellegrino. 2009. 250 pages.
Historical fiction for young adult readers about the experience of Central American refugees and the long journey north.
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Echando Raices/Taking Root

Film. By Rachael Kamel/JT Takagi. 2002. 60 minutes.
The struggles of immigrants through the personal stories of families in communities in California, Texas, and Iowa.
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Alligator Bayou

Book — Historical fiction. By Donna Jo Napoli. 2010. 288 pages.
Historical fiction for young adults based on the true story of the lynching of Italian Americans in late 19th century Louisiana.
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Made in L.A.

Film. By Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar. 2007. 70 minutes.
Emmy award-winning feature documentary follows the story of three Latina immigrants working in Los Angeles sweatshops on an odyssey to win basic labor protections from a clothing retailer.
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Brother, I’m Dying

Book — Non-fiction. By Edwidge Danticat. 2008. 288 pages.
A gripping autobiographical book, about one Haitian woman's experience as a young immigrant and her family's struggle to survive in the United States while fearing for those they left behind.
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Lewis Hine’s Photographs

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson. Rethinking Schools. 4 pages.
Using photographs to spark creative writing and critical thinking about child labor issues and social justice.
Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow
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Columbus resources | Zinn Education Project

It’s Columbus Day . . . Time to Break the Silence

By Bill Bigelow
This past January, almost exactly 20 years after its publication, Tucson schools banned the book I co-edited with Bob Peterson, Rethinking Columbus. It was one of a number of books adopted by Tucson’s celebrated Mexican American Studies program — a program long targeted by conservative Arizona politicians.

The school district sought to crush the Mexican American Studies program; our book itself was not the target, it just got caught in the crushing. Nonetheless, Tucson’s — and Arizona’s — attack on Mexican American Studies and Rethinking Columbus shares a common root: the attempt to silence stories that unsettle today’s unequal power arrangements.
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Sugar

Book — Fiction. By Jewell Parker Rhodes. 2013. 288 pages.
Historical fiction about Reconstruction-era Louisiana through the eyes of a young girl who bridges the divide between the long-time plantation workers and the Chinese indentured servants.
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‘Repeat After Me: The United States Is Not an Imperialist Country — Oh, and Don’t Get Emotional About War’

By Bill Bigelow
You may have seen that an administrative law judge in Arizona, Lewis Kowal, just upheld the decree by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction that Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program violates state law. Judge Kowal found that the Tucson program was teaching Latino history and culture “in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.” According to CNN, one lesson that the judge objected to taught that the historic treatment of Mexican Americans was “marked by the use of force, fraud and exploitation.”

Try this “history detective” experiment. Ask the next person you encounter to tell you what they know about the U.S. war with Mexico. More than likely, this will be a short conversation, because that war (1846-48) merits barely a footnote in U.S. history textbooks.
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