Three Books by Dinaw Mengestu to Explore the Immigration Experience with Students

As educators, one of the great joys is introducing students to fiction that allows students to see themselves in characters they thought were nothing like them and which they shared little in common. It is one of the most effective ways to teach empathy, broaden understanding, and disprove stereotypes. It is the stuff of “a-ha” moments, meaningful connections that transcend the classroom, and Dinaw Mengestu’s novels are ripe with these potential moments for high school students. His character-driven narratives highlight the universal tensions between home and displacement, loss and renewal, as explored in the migration experience.

The award-winning novelist and Mac Arthur Fellow has published three novels The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Penguin 2007), How to Read Air (Penguin 2010), and All Our Names (Knopf 2014).  An Ethiopian-American, his family left Addis Ababa when he was two-years-old during a violent period in Ethiopia known as “Red Terror.” He was raised in Peoria, Illinois, the setting used in his second novel.

Multi-Dimensional Character-Driven Narratives

Of his characters Mengestu said, in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), they are “driven for a sort of home…what I think is a pretty universal and pretty common feeling.” Never does a character seem to fully understand his or her place, what they have lost in leaving and what they hope to find in a new home.

Mengestu’s debut novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, explores the isolation and frustration of immigrant life through the eyes of the Ethiopian immigrant storekeeper Sepha Stephanos in a rapidly-gentrifying Washington D.C. How can Stephanos ever make a home in America that he feels a part of if he has never truly left Ethiopia?

 

In How to Read Air, we encounter the narrator Jonas Woldemariam, a second-generation Ethiopian-American struggling with his failed marriage as he takes a road trip to understand the complicated relationship of his parents, Yusef and Mariam, who emigrated from eastern Africa. The result is four skillfully-woven narratives, Yusef, Mariam, Jonas, and his estranged wife, Angela, each telling a similar but particular story of home and loss and the struggle to belong.

The most recent novel All Our Names is set after the Ugandan independence and alternates point of view between Helen, a social worker in the Midwest, and her lover who calls himself “Isaac.” Through flashbacks, we learn of Isaac’s troubled past – an Ethiopian who travelled to Uganda via Kenya who becomes, along with a boyhood friend, drawn into military activity. While a love story, it is also a war story exploring how violent leaders rise to power and how names and identity can change with perspective and time.

Universal Themes

While the themes in Mengestu’s novels explore the immigrant experience through unforgettable characters, they also convey universal themes. Mengestu said in an interview with German media, Deutsche Welle, “We often think that the immigrant story is unique to people who have left their homes. But for me it has increasingly become a story of people who have lost something essential to who they are and have to reinvent themselves and decide who they are in the wake of that loss.”  What student (or person) hasn’t questioned who they are or lost someone or something dear to them? 

These novels give students the opportunity to explore the immigrant experience through the fresh eyes of complex characters dealing with familiar struggles. In an effort to get students to think beyond media headlines, more than anything these novels portray the human experience of immigration.

Additional Resources

·       The National Education Teachers Association (NEA) has a free downloadable lesson plan to use with high school students along with capstone ideas and essay topics.

·       Our free lesson plan on Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” pairs well with Mengestu’s novels and lends itself to a discussion on the benefits of diversity.

Stay Connected!

The American Immigration Council offers free lesson plans, resources, book/film reviews, and grants to teach immigration. We also welcome teacher and student book reviews and contributions to our blog. Email us at teacher@immcouncil.org and follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration.

The Immigration and Nationality Act Is Worth Remembering With Students

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Immigration Act of 1965 at the foot of the Statue of Liberty on October 3, 1965. Photo Credit: Yoichi Okamoto/LBJ Library

Fifty years ago, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed on October 3, 1965 at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Though at the time, Johnson stated the act was “not a revolutionary bill,” hindsight has proven otherwise. The 1965 act marked a significant shift in U.S. immigration policy away from selecting immigrants by national origin and has had a lasting impact in shaping America today as a richly diverse nation.

Why is this act important to know about?

Before 1965, immigrants to the U.S. largely came from Northern European countries based on numerical limits first enacted in the 1920s. In fact, just prior to the law’s passage, Ireland, Germany, and the United Kingdom received nearly 70% of the quota visas available to enter the U.S. After the bill passed, the demographics of the U.S. shifted as the U.S. implemented an immigration policy that favored family reunification, skilled immigrants, and the elimination of the race-based quota system. As a result, immigrants from other parts of the world – notably Latin America and Asia – began to come to the U.S.

According to a recent report released by Pew Research, “among immigrants who have arrived since 1965, half (51%) are from Latin America and one-quarter are from Asia.” The report further shows that without the 1965 act, our nation would be incredibly less diverse today. Comparatively, U.S. ethnic and racial composition would be: 75% white, 14% black, 8% Hispanic and less than 1% Asian. We’d also be slightly older without the arrival of so many immigrants.

What prompted such a significant change?

Scholars often cite the social reforms of the civil rights movement as well as World War II and Cold War era national security concerns as reasons that prompted this significant immigration reform. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) notes that “the Allies in World War II and the West during the Cold War risked losing support from Third World countries whose peoples were excluded by openly racist immigration laws.” More recent scholarship by Thomas Gjelten in his book Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story offers an in-depth account of the congressional process, specifically the emphasis on family reunification, and the act’s unintended consequences.

What does this mean for the future?

Pew Research also projected immigration trends fifty years from now.  By 2065, no racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority of the U.S. population.  We will increasingly become more diverse with a growing multiracial population. Notably, the share of the foreign born Hispanic population is estimated to fall to 31% while the share of Asian immigrants will rise to 38%.

What does this mean for the classroom?

By 2050, one in three children under the age of 18 will be either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. As the U.S. immigrant student population grows, the need to cultivate positive, diverse classrooms and libraries, ones that are reflective of all students and various immigration experiences is ever more prescient. Important also, will be the need to actively weed out hate from the immigration debate , welcome immigrant students into the classroom, and value how immigrant students strengthen American schools.

Additional Resources

We offer many resources including lesson plans and grants to teach about immigration past and present, but we are especially pleased this week to release a short lesson created by ESL and Human Rights teacher at Newcomers High School, Julie Mann.  “Lessons on Acceptance and Forgiveness: A Tale of Two Americas” focuses on changing negative perceptions of immigrants based on the story of Rais Bhuiyan and the Ted Talk by Anand Giridharadas, “A Tale of Two Americas.” The lesson is appropriate for high school students and adaptable for many reading levels.