Immigration Project Reflection
By: Meseret Ghirmai
The book that I read for literature circles is Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas. My experience with this book was great because I liked the book and it was very interesting. I’m glad that I chose to read this book because I learned a lot about immigration and I realized how lucky I was to be in America. The most important thing that I learned from this book is to not take being in America for granite because a lot of people struggle just to get a good education. People who live in other countries work hard and fight just to be in America. The only thing that I would suggest for the literature circles is to let the students choose whether they want to have meetings with their lit circle groups or do blogs because for this past lit circles a lot of people haven’t been doing their blogs because they don’t have access to internet. So, instead of losing points for not doing the homework because of internet problems you can do the same thing that you would write on blogs except it’s on paper. To me, I like written responses and blogging because I can do both and it doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t have any problems with blogging. I noticed that my other members in my group felt the same way I did about the book. I learned that only one person in my group was really connecting to the book like I was and she thought of meaningful quotes like I did.
I’m happy with my decision of painting because it really represents what the book was about. The novel that I read was about a girl from Iran who struggled a lot just to be in America and she was still able to pursue our dreams. There was a connection between the novel that I read and the art piece that I painted. They connected because the girl was proud to be in America and the painting had the girl in the middle with words that represent America as the border. I think that the final product of my painting came out perfect. It wasn’t exactly how my rough drafts looked like but I changed it up with a lot of suggestions so that it can turn out professional and neat. I believe that I enhanced the importance of the book so I just painted a visual to represent it. So it was my vivid imagination about the book into a painting. I learned that my lit circles helped me a lot with my visual painting because I got the chance to paint something important to me and others but it also matches the book. Other immigrants would agree with my painting because it says all positive strong reasons why immigrants come to America.
I think the interviews went well through email and in person. I’m ecstatic that I interviewed this Chinese lady named Alice Chan because I learned a lot about her lifestyle in Hong Kong and her new life in America. It wasn’t difficult at all because I felt like my interviewee was nice, calm and understanding. I also felt like we were friends because she was talking to me like I was. I felt good about doing 3 different interviews with my interviewee because I got the chance to know her more and I learned a lot about immigration back then. In each interview I learned something unique and interesting about my interviewee like; she came here when she was 19 and she came here for an education so now she is an electronic engineer, and she wishes that America would have more transportation. I still learned a lot about my interviewee’s home country. Interviewing Mrs. Chan was a great experience for me because I never had the chance to interview an immigrant especially from Hong Kong. I can really connect to what she is talking about because my family members immigrated to the U.S. and they came for the same reasons that my interviewee did; for opportunities and education. Interviewing Mrs. Chan gave me a good idea of what immigration is and why people immigrated to the U.S. Mrs. Chan made me realize how lucky I am to be born as an American citizen. I made a calendar for my interviewee because that’s what she wanted and she wanted to put that in her office. I think that it was hard for me because she was too busy to send me pictures of her so I can personalize her calendar but I guess that part didn’t work out. I am still satisfied with making her a calendar but I just wanted everything to be perfect with no mistakes.
