2. Group E--amackenzie26

In Trevor Noah's Born a Crime (my book), Trevor doesn’t actually go through the traditional immigration process, but his experiences with apartheid (a law system of segregation that's set in place where he is) mirror the struggles many immigrants face, particularly when it comes to separation and legal restrictions. His mother, Patricia, faces extreme challenges due to South Africa’s racial laws, which made her relationship with Trevor’s Swiss father illegal. Because of these laws, Trevor grows up without being able to openly acknowledge his father, similar to how Elizabeth Zion’s father is kept apart from his family due to immigration policies.

Though Trevor isn’t physically separated from his mother, there are many moments where systemic barriers try to force them apart. For example, when Patricia is arrested for minor infractions, Trevor sees firsthand how unjust laws disproportionately affect people based on race and status, much like how Jende Jonga in Behold the Dreamers struggles against an immigration system that refuses to recognize his reasons for staying in America. Both stories highlight how legal systems can control family dynamics and force individuals into difficult choices—whether it’s Noah’s mother risking arrest to give him a better future or Jende facing deportation and fearing for his child’s future. In both cases, the characters rely on resilience, adaptability, and resourcefulness to navigate these obstacles.

In my book “ Out of Nowhere” by Maria Padian, Tom is a senior in high school and captain of the soccer team. His season is changed when Somali immigrants join the team and they are very skilled and better than pretty much everyone else on the team. One of these players is named Saeed, who Tom quickly befriends and even helps him fill out the permission slip so that he's allowed to play. With the help of the new teammates the soccer team starts winning games however Tom makes a big mistake, he and his troublemaker friend Donnie decide to paint their rival highschools special rock. They get caught in the act and everyone is mad at Tom, his parents, his coach, his principal, everyone. Tom gets sentenced to 100 hours of community service and has to repaint the rock back to how it was. At school the immigrants have a hard time finding classes and navigating the school because they barely know English. The confusion leads to other kids making fun of and picking on them which creates a hostile environment in the school. What doesn't help is the rule that the school puts in that students are only allowed to speak English in classrooms which makes it very difficult for the immigrants to communicate. Tom has to start doing his community service at a learning center for immigrant children. Here he meets Myla, a college student who Tom likes, however Tom has a girlfriend which makes things complicated. Tom goes there everyday after school to get his hours in and to see Myla. The soccer team continues to go well with the help of Saeed and the other immigrants. However in the most important game of the year against their rivals Maquoit, Ramadan is happening, so none of the immigrant players can eat or drink anything all day or during the game. Against the odds they beat them and everyone is hyped. Tom eventually breaks up with his girlfriend and starts seeing Myla, and everything in his life starts going great.

How has the immigration process worked for characters in your story? Has a character in your book had troubles with their family or been separated from their family in the immigration process from their country to America? How have you seen them deal with this or start to deal with it?

For characters in my book immigration has affected Saeed the most probably, he has fled from war zones and made a journey all the way across the world because of the dangerous place he was living in before, "these are competent people who have survived civil war and a transatlantic migration."(Padian 250). So for Saeed, immigration has been a dangerous process that wasn't easy. Despite this Saeed still remains happy and cheerful through it all so he handles it very well.

My book "Born a crime" by Trevor Noah is about a mixed child named Trevor who was living under apartheid in South Africa, the majority of the book talks about his struggles with his racial identity and figuring out who he is and finding his place in the world. In the book Trevor describes the strong relationship with his mother, and spends most of his time with his mother and he side of the family. And this could be them going to church 5 nights a week together, sleeping in the same room, going on adventures and being each other's best friend. Trevor isn't actually a typical immigrant his mother is black and he father is a Swiss white man which was illegal in south Africa at the time which is where he was born and lived, although he was not a typical immigrant coming to a new place he had his fair share of troubles because he didn't know where he belonged, he felt like that because he was mixed he had to pick a side to stick with and he chose the African side. Trevor never had a relationship with his father because of the unjust laws in South Africa at the time, and there are many times where unjust laws and racism are trying to push them apart 

In my book Out of Nowhere by Maria Padian, it's about a high school student Tom Bouchard who lives in Maine. He goes to a school where Somalian immigrants are now attending. This school is known and being looked at for the immigrants. He's been trying to get to know Saeed. Tom has been getting into a little trouble, but he's trying to help Saeed on his team. Tom's making up for this behavior is spending community service hours at a center for kids and he's helping them. He is helping a little boy named Abdi. He's a Somali kid who's not the best in English. So Tom and Saeed's older sister Samira make a plan and make a book of the Somali-English Dictionary with letters a-z plus a drawing with words from both languages. Tom and Saeed had a conversation about immigrants and Tom learned that Saeed didn't know his birthday, most of them didn't know their birthdays, and Saeed said they didn't have one. Saeed didn't have a birth certificate, and how people identified him was his green card, and on those green cards, which lied about birthdays, and they were all January 1st, because most immigrants who moved at a young age didn't know. Saeed was explaining to Tom. The mayor in the town wrote a letter about the Somali immigrants encouraging them not to tell their friends or families to move to Ennistion because the immigrant population is maxing out and they don't have the space for them. Tom then finds out about Saeed's religion and how Ramadan was going on, so he starts fasting. He was going to try having him break it for a soccer game, but then Myla explains to him that his religion, being a Muslim, is his way of connecting to his home lifestyle, and that's all he might have left, so he shouldn't ask him to break it. So to answer the question, Saeed is the main immigrant we know from Kenya. He's a refugee who came to Maine and is living with his mom who doesn't know English well, and his older sister, Samira, and his younger siblings, but Samira is helping them with English. Saeed was staying at a camp with his uncle and was waiting for the UN to take him and get his green card. Saeed got separated from his family because he was at the camp with his uncle, while the UN took his family to leave and they went to Atlanta in the United States. A quote from my book is, “ Well not quite alone; he was with his uncle. But the rest of his family? Gone. With a ocean between him and them.”( Padian 174) i'm not sure how Saeed dealt with this because his sister Samira is telling all this information about there immigration and talked about how they are unsure of their birthdays so Saeed's side so far is not explained. 

In my book How Dare The Sun Rise by Sandra Uwiringiyimana, it starts suddenly and fast with an attack on a camp in their home country. This ended with many people in Sandra’s family being severely injured or killed, most spoken about a relative who was taken in the attack was Deborah, she was the younger sibling of Sandra, whose life was taken in the shootings at her camp. Her mother was also wounded but was able to live, so from then on they moved around, they ended up living in three different places in three different countries in Africa, before the family was interviewed for immigrant placement, they were placed in Rochester New York, surrounded by unfamiliar people and systems the family struggled, many times Sandra had to act as her parents to call people for them, like calling credit card companies, etc, Sandra said she felts it was odd that she was now the one teaching her parents how things worked instead of the other way around, and as this happened Sandra still struggled with herself, trying to fit into this new environment and understand how things work, how people dress, pastimes people do. It was all a huge culture shock to Sandra and she struggled, between fitting in and trying to teach her mother and father how things worked. 

How has the immigration process worked for characters in your story? Has a character in your book had troubles with their family or been separated from their family in the immigration process from their country to America? How have you seen them deal with this or start to deal with it? 

The immigration system for Sandra did work fine, she is now with her entire Family in New York, they aren't struggling financially, but the family does struggle to fit in a bit after the process, “I began to understand a lot of things about being in America- about being black in America”(Uwiringiyimana 160), this quote showed how she was learning about the people around her and was slowly acclimating to the U.S.

In my book Born a Crime Trevor Noah doesn’t go through the traditional immigration process, but his experiences under apartheid an institutionalized system of racial seperation reflect the challenges many immigrants face, especially regarding separation and legal restrictions. His mother, Patricia, faces immense struggles due to South Africa’s racial laws, which made her relationship with Trevor’s Swiss father illegal, leading to Trevor growing up wihtout the ability acknowledge he has a father.This situation is almost exactly like the experience of Elizabeth Zion’s father, who is kept apart from his family due to theapartheid immigration policies.

While Trevor isn’t physically separated from his mother he his in some ways legally with systemic barriers often close to dividing them. A good point, when Patricia is arrested for minor infractions, Trevor witnesses firsthand how unjust laws disproportionately affect people based on race and status. This is the same struggles of Jende Jonga in Behold the Dreamers, who faces an immigration system that doesn’t recognize his real reasons for staying in the U.S. Both stories write and show how legal systems can disrupt family dynamics and force people into difficult choices—whether it’s Noah’s mother risking arrest for a better future or Jende fearing deportation and separation from his family. In both cases, the characters show incredible resilience, adaptability, and resourcefulness in navigating these obstacles.

In my book Out Nowhere by Maria Padian, Tom Bouchard a senior in high school and also the captain of the soccer team. His season is altered when there a lot of immigrants who join the team, the kids are really good probably the best on the team. One that stands out is named Saeed he is a immigrant from Somalia, and Tom and Saeed become very good friends and Tom even helps him fill out his paper for him to play soccer. But Tom and his friend Donnie did something very bad by going to there rival school Maquoit and painted there special rock. Tom gets sentenced to 100 community service hours and also has to paint the rock to how It was before. His parents, friends, principal and coach are all very dissapointed with him. In school the immigrants are struggling to find there classes and they cannot ask for help because they do not understand English well enough. The other kids start making fun of the immigrants by teasing them and making fun of them. The school also makes a rule that immigrants have to speak English and not there home countries language which makes it even harder for the immigrants.  

How has the immigration process worked for characters in your story? Has a character in your book had troubles with their family or been separated from their family in the immigration process from their country to America? How have you seen them deal with this or start to deal with it?

In my book the person who has dealt with it the most is Saeed he had to leave his home because of war and yet even though he left the place he grew up to save his and his family's life he comes to Maine where is safe and he is getting made fun of because he speaks a different language and or does not have the same religion as other people in the school

In my book Immigrant Odyssey: A French Canadian Habitant in New England by Félix Albert, the immigration process was significantly more relaxed than it is now, as the author and his family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts from L'Isle Verte, Quebec in 1881. Prior to 1952, in times of peace, you could travel in and out of the United States without a passport.

During Albert's time in The States, his relationship with his family was fairly stable, until towards the end of the book. As his kids were growing up, more and more of them were moving out until Albert only had two sons left with them to help on the farm. One son, Isadore, had left home because Albert had not given him as much responsibility for running the farm as Isadore had wanted. However, Isadore returned to the homestead after being clearly homesick in his letters. But not long after, "One fine day [Isadore] told his little sisters: 'If papa won't give me everything, I'm going to go away.'" (Albert 92). This time he was serious. Albert had turned down the prospect of giving up everything to his son, and he left for good. Shortly after, inspired by his brother, the last son on the farm had left as well.