#1 Chick Red 1---sbonner24

In Girl In Translation so far her and her mom have moved from Hong Kong to Manhattan. They moved with their aunt that helped ma get a job at the factory. Kimberly is having a definite hard time assimilating, the language barrier between her and her classmates is shown clearly. Because of her differences and difficulty assimilating she starts skipping school. 

I think in my book there is a language barrier because Americans assume or dont necessarily know other cultures as well. Some people assume off of stereotypes about certain cultures and I think that heavily contributes to the disconnect between immigrants and americans. 

"Annette was shocked that no one had ever told me about "the birds and the bees" And then, rather than help to enlighten me as usual, she giggled like mad, which made it especially intriguing. (Kwok 65) 

this quote shows the language barrier between her and one of her new friends at her new school. 

The disconnect seems to stem from the way that Americans treat immigrants as a baseline. While I feel like this has improved in a lot of ways in my lifetime, there are still massive issues in how our society judges and handles even simple and small situations.

In Phuc Tran's memoir Sigh, Gone, he talks about how much of his young childhood was just observing the way his parents handled situations. His whole family fled from Vietnam during the Vietnam war. And while they were able to stay together and had really generous sponsors provide them with the basic necessities, it's obvious from an early age that they are poor and of a minority. Tran's whole family moves to a very white town in Pennsylvania, and the lack of awareness that his town has toward immigrants feeds into everything they do. Simple situations of just going to McDonald's cause a large amount of stress. At one point, he talks about how his father gets into an argument with his grandfather over using the drive-through, just so they avoid the stares of going inside, "'There're too many of us, and people will stare. Who knows what will happen? Do you know how they treat me at the factory? You know how they laugh at me? What will happen when they see so many of us?'" (Tran 34). The threat of how they might be treated is enough to dissuade them from even trying. 

This creates an endless cycle. Immigrants don't want to be noticed negatively, so they avoid being noticed at all. Meanwhile Americans aren't afforded as many opportunities to work through how to deal with immigrants because they're so busy hiding. 

I share the same book, Out Of Nowhere and it starts with Tom. Tom’s the Chamberlain high school team captain. He’s considered one of the popular kids at school and has a clean reputation of being a good kid. His friend on the other hand, not so much. He convinces Tom that they should paint a mural on the rival schools statement piece and run off. They get caught by the police and Tom is punished with community service and repainting the mural. New to the area are a bunch of Somali refugees who don’t speak good English, one of them is on the soccer team and is an unbelievably good player and his name is Saeed. With Tom’s popularity, he’s able to help and communicate with Saeed and other Somali kids and understands their situation. He stands up for all the Somali kids where others just laugh and treat them as less. He builds trust with them and they trust him.

“‘Uh…hello,’ he began. ‘Hello,’ some joker from the back replied. A few titters. ‘You know, I am… new customer,’ he continued, ‘but I think, you know… we the team. And all go tomorrow. With Tom. Right?’” (Padian 99). This quote does a great job showing how hard it is for Saeed to speak English, not to mention he’s nervous as hell talking to an entire bus of soccer players. There's certainly a barrier, but it’s one that can be somewhat understood.

in the book Enrique's journey Enrique is a young boy that is trying to live with his mom in the united states. they lived in Guatemala when Enrique was just a young boy at the age of 7 but when his mom moved to the united states that when things went down hill for Enrique. When Enrique got older he got into trouble and had to move out of his grandmothers shack because of it he then moved in with his uncle but his uncle die due to getting shot by a gang and his uncles girlfriend didn't want Enrique anymore so he got read of him and threw him out Enrique is now homeless and is living in a broken shack he also tried to move back in with his grandmother she said yes but then she caught him sniffing paint he then got a girlfriend but his girlfriend also found him sniffing paint and his girlfriends mom said she needs to leave him but his girlfriend doesn't want to this is when Enrique leave and tries to train hop to the united states and he has been caught 7 different times trying to go to the united states and each time it ends the same way but one time he got beat up and had to get to the near by village but he had to get there half dead he was beaten so badly the people said he might not make it.  

"The water is the color of coffee with too much cream." this is a passing point on the train and this mean Enrique somewhat knows where he is. this is like a power point for Enrique because he can tell when there more water and less because if the rain is dry or not. I think that immigrant make it worse for them self because they tried to sneak in instead of getting in the legal way I think this causes issue but even when they do get in the legal way they still get dirty looks and have to deal with that there whole life