In the Ted Talk titled “The Need for Family Reunification- to Make Families Whole Again," Elizabeth Zion reflects on her past and growing up without a dad because he wasn’t allowed entry into the country. She goes on to talk about how important it is for families to be together in times of need and need to be reunified. “We need governments to accelerate reunification applications, and we need them to address the bureaucratic and political barriers to reunification for families all over the world" (Zion 5). In this quote, Zion talks about how the system is flawed and slow and needs to be fixed so that people can be properly relocated with their families. In the book “Out of Nowhere” by Maria Padian, the character Saeed faced relocation at one point when he was misplaced in the system and originally from Somalia, but he got moved to Maine. “Sometimes he surprised me and came up with a string of English that made you think he could speak the language.” (Padian 96). This quote talks about Saeed’s English and how it’s not very good and can be hard to understand him a lot of the time because he’s still learning. In the Ted Talk titled “What Marrying an Immigrant Taught Me About Cultural Bias” Kyle Quinn talks about his experience marrying an immigrant, during which one of the things he came across was the language barrier at times. “And as soon as I typed in “XOXO” into the Portuguese keyboard and pressed send it autocorrected to “xixi e cocô”. The Brazilians know this means “piss and shit.” Took her a while to respond to that one as you can imagine. And she said when she did it was like “what is this sick American goodbye you have just given me?” (Quinn 1). In this quote, Quinn explains how he is using the Portuguese keyboard and typing what would be something normal for people who speak English, but in Portuguese it meant something different and was hard to understand. This relates to Saeed, as they both experienced issues with communication skills and understanding.
Based on a character in your book, is it tough for them to understand the deep struggles of people from different cultures or difficult life situations? What might make it hard to see things through their eyes?
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For participants:
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