In Out Of Nowhere by Maria Padison a kid named Tom Bouchard is a senior at Chamberlain high school in Enniston Maine he's the star soccer player on his team and a very popular kid in his school with a narcissistic girlfriend and his not so liked brother donnie. One day a Somali kid named Saeed shows up and is a phenomenal soccer player. While in Enniston Saeed faced a lot of discrimination because of 9/11. Somalis were told to tell other Somalis that they couldn't live in this town because there were too many, and that the town cannot cope with it. With the Somalians Tom thinks they can beat their rivalry team Maquoit high school. Which in the end didn't happen but they did score a couple goals. Tom's brother Donnie got him and Tom in trouble with the school by vandalizing it. So Tom had to work community service hours to pay for their actions and it's in the heart of Saeed's home and he starts to realize how difficult refugees' lives were before they came to America and how much they still struggle living in a place where they get called terrorists for being muslims. Tom has accepted the muslim culture and learned that their cultures don't mix well and he has to face the struggles of being friends with them. This girl says “Somali people don't call the cops,” (Padian 250). She's implying that they don't know what that is or that they wouldn't know how too. Saying they cannot make their own choices.
In the Ted talk “don't feel sorry for refugees–believe in them” by Luma Mufleh she moves to America because she's not safe where she is. In America she realizes refugees aren't treated as well as other people and are sometimes even seen as inhumane. She explains how when she was a kid she used to think she was better than people who were not as wealthy as them. Her grandmother explained to her that people aren't defined by their wealth or status and should be treated the same as everyone else. When she was in America she saw kids playing soccer on the streets who happened to be refugees. She played soccer with them and then decided to make a team for them. One practice she shows up late to find out that one of the kids was beat up just because he was muslim. Then she explains how refugees who live a normal successful life in America are lucky when they should just be accepted as normal people and not different. A quote connecting both the book and Ted talk is when one of the children say “why do they hate us?” “Who hates you?” “Everyone; everyone hates us because we are refugees, because we are muslim.” (Mufleh 8). They face discrimination because they are refugees.
What types of discrimination did your character face?
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