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.
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 […]
Heather Flanders, ELL Specialist at Gorham High School in Maine sent me two stories. She wrote, “I hope you are as moved as I was,” and I was. The stories were written by her students Amna and Megan, their own visions of the next chapter in […]
I started a new page on this site called Ubuntu and it’s about class projects in which students have responded to The Good Braider. I’ve seen extraordinary teachers work with their students to deeply imagine Viola’s life. I am posting some of the stories I hear of how […]
The Diversity Hiring Coalition of Maine has become the leading networking source for employers seeking to hire diverse candidates in Maine as well as candidates from diverse backgrounds seeking employment. Bowdoin College, Hannaford Supermarket, Maine Department of Health and Human Resources, Manpower, Mercy Hospital, and TD Bank are […]
Recorded Books will release The Good Braider read by Cherise Boothe in winter 2014. I know this audio version can be a boon for English language learners, enabling readers to read and listen simultaneously.
Portland, Maine celebrates nine books set in Maine’s “new arrival” communities with a 2013 city-wide read. Writers include South Sudanese memoirist, Aruna Kenyi in The Telling’s Room’s anthology I REMEMBER WARM RAIN. High school students who are named by the NAACP as Martin Luther King Jr. Fellows introduced each […]
On the road with The Good Braider, I experienced an event this month of Thanksgiving that I will never forget. I’m giving thanks here to all the pIayers who not only imagined, but pulled off a Global Voices […]
Here’s the cover of South Sudanese-American musician OD Bonny’s new CD. And here is OD singing, Kwo I Lobo Tek. OD will perform from the album at the University of Southern Maine in Portland for an event to launch The Good Braider. 7 p.m. in the university […]
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The Good Braider 