This year my 7th and 8th grade students will be reading a series of multi-cultural short stories and novels. That means I'm reading them NOW to get a jump on the game. I read Farewell to Manzanar about the Japanese Interment camps during WWII, and I finished reading Elizabeth Laird's Kiss the Dust today.Kiss the Dust tells the story of a Kurdish family who flees from their home in Iraq in 1984 to the mountains of Kurdistan (a place I knew almost nothing about), on to Iran, and then to Europe. Until reading this book, I had the vaguest notion of what a Kurd was in relation to an Arab.
In case you don't know, there is a region called Kurdistan that is in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. The Kurds have their own language and customs, though not their own country... a major point of contention with the countries in which they dwell. So most Iraqis are Arabs, people from Iran are Persian, and the people from Kurdistan are Kurds.
This book paints a very realistic picture of what it must be like to be uprooted from your country, to not speak the language(s) of the countries you find yourself in, and having to learn the word "refugee" and "asylum" in as many languages as you possibly can. Just in case you are not allowed to stay in, let's say Germany, and are forced on to Great Britain. I finished reading the last sentence, and had to sit there for a moment and take a couple of big breaths.
Laird does an excellent job of creating believable characters who change the reader's global perspective just a little bit at a time.
3 comments:
Hey Lizzy,
Just out of curiousity... do you get to pick the literature that your students read? Or do you have a set curriculum? Just wondering where you get the list of books or the planned list for your students.
Love ya!
In response to your comment, Tamara: it depends on the school. In Alabama, it was up to me to pick every book and short story. Here, they gave me a stack of books and I can use what I like out of the lot of them.
So far, I prefer this method. It's tons of reading, but I like having a basic idea about what they'd like me to teach. Plus it allows me the chance to read things I normally might not get around to!
You know me, the book worm.
That's cool!! I think I'd like it that way better too. I'm jealous of all the reading you get to do :) But I do love my little boy, so I guess I can just make my "to-read" list and work on it when I can!
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