Who Can Stay Here?

 

    

Who Can Stay Here?

Grace Cornell Gonzalez starts with a chilling antedate of I.C.E. officers enacting scare tactics at the bilingual elementary school in East Oakland. She recalls "It was almost impossible to assuage that fear - to tell them that they were safe here and no none would take them away (especially because I didn't really know if that was true). Like many good teachers, Gonzalez decided to reflect the experiences of the youth in front of her. And like many other oppressed voices, the. history and experience of Immigrants were told to protect those in power, losing the voice of the oppressed. 

She then research children's literature, focussing on the first grade, and found that most children's books on immigration could be categorized three times.

Creating the image that US citizenship is equally available to all.	Someone else’s  problem.	Tackling the Subject.
Example Titles: “A Very Important Day” by Maggie Rugg,  “ How Many Days to America? A Thanksgiving Story” by Eve Bunting They falsely imply that every person gets the same fair chance at US citizenship. They omit the oppression immigrants go through or imply that it always works out. **Page 75 she writes “Unless a teacher is willing to engage with these issues and discuss the author’s underlying assumptions with the students, this book could do more hard than goo in a classroom setting.”	Example Titles: “My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aqui hasta alla” by Amanda Irma Perez,  “Super Cilantro Girl/La supernina de cilantro” by Juan Felipe Herrera These books shed light on the terror the main characters experience, but make it someone else’s problem Someone Else’s problem makes it unrelatable to us in this moment, its an issue that happens over there. **“If they are real dangers, they exist only in the lives of others.” (Gonzalez, 77).	Examples Titles: “Hannah Is My Name” by Belle Yang, “America Is Her Name/La LLaman america” by Luis J. Rodriguez Even though there are still happy endings, the realities of immigrant families were displayed in authentic diverse ways. They discuss deportations, and it happens to characters in the story  (adjacent to the main character), as well as the barriers and fears around documentation. ** “ I found that do deal with issues of documentation and unequal access to citizenship head on.”

In her writing she emphasizes the importance to include immigrant stories in your teaching, centering it around the voice of immigrants. She also urges us to discuss a wider range of immigrant stories including cultures that often get overlooked completely in the discussion, like people from Africa and the Middle East. "None of these books stands alone-- read them aloud and make them the subject of group discussions."