The American Immigration Council blog, “Teaching Immigration” includes a review of The Good Braider. The review offers a link to a lesson plan for educators teaching about the immigration and refugee experience. Here it is: A Land of Refuge or Refusal? Perspectives on the Refugee Experience in the United […]
The people still wait for that day Emmanuel Jal of South Sudan and Canada sings about. That day of unity for the people of South Sudan. The world still craves that today, the country’s 4th anniversary. “[South] Sudan’s future shall be promising./Children will go to school./ I hope […]
The Guardian tells the story of the continuing violence in South Sudan. The fighting broke out in this newest of nations between President Salva Kiir’s Dinka tribe and his former deputy, Riek Machar’s Nuer tribe. The Guardian features a Saferworld photo exhibition that tells part of the story […]
While I was researching The Good Braider, I met many teens and elders, but I met a lot of children, too. They were experiencing lives brand new to them in American cities. Then, when I was visiting Kakuma refugee camp on the Kenyan/South Sudanese border, I saw a […]
South Sudanese-American writer Nyuol Lueth Tong is editor of this new short story collection, There Is a New Country: New Fiction from the New Nation of South Sudan published by McSweeneys. Nyuol Lueth Tong is attending Duke University on a Reginaldo Howard Memorial Scholarship. He also runs a nonprofit, SELFSudan.
I’ve been following a story in Texas about a woman, Isis Brantley, who teaches hair braiding at her Dallas Institute for Ancestral Braiding. Texas officials said her school’s graduates could not be certified because her school didn’t comply with barber school standards. Brantley sued in federal court, saying […]
Children in the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan recreate their experience of war in this short documentary by Andrew Berends for the New York Times. They have made tiny clay sculptures to show what they had to leave behind […]
Ms. Punwani’s 8th grade students have studied the detention of children crossing the border into Texas, displacement of refugees, and investigative journalism to explore issues of District of Columbia schools. An Open Book Foundation is a nonprofit literacy organization with a mission “to promote literacy among disadvantaged […]
I spoke today to a group of staff members at the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services. I was invited by the Diversity Committee that seeks to introduce its staff to some background on the cultures of the people they serve. We listened to the Tcha Tcho music […]
The story of THE GOOD BRAIDER has been welcomed in Lowell, Massachusetts, a city that has many refugees and will soon bring 500 newcomers from Congo. Through a University of Massachusetts Lowell grant, the book has been made available to many who are preparing for the Congolese along with […]