NEW PERSPECTIVES

“The Hate U Give” and “The Book of Unknown Americans” and two incredible books that describe the struggle between living in your truth and living as people see you. Dealing with issues such as racism, disabilities, friendship, and fear, both novels take on the challenge of inspiring, educating, and serving as a catalyst for a change in perspective. I highly recommend these books. They’re both beautiful, heart breaking, and empowering. I read THUG in 3 days and The Book of Unknown Americans in 2.

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Chapter 5

The old abuelo lifted the iron knocker on the oak church door and let it fall back onto it’s tarnished plate.

He did this again and again until a nun cracked open the door to the night.

The nun had worked in the inner-city for many years and had seen many things, but never had she seen the beauty and suffering she saw in the faces and the bodies at the church door that night.

Their eyes were alight with beauty, the beauty of being.

Their bodies were heavy with suffering.

They were covered with the dirt and sweat and blood of a thousand miles of migration.

Their shoulders sagged under the weight of months of homelessness.

The only homes they found during their journey were the small spaces and simple kindnesses that people gave along the way.

They were still and very quiet.

They didn’t move.

They didn’t make a sound.

The old nun wrapped her arms around them.

“I’m here,” she whispered.

“Estoy aquí.”

Our

hearts

love home.

Winter snow,

spring mountain flowers,

summer salt in the deep, wide sea

fall leaves on the colorful trees are art for our hearts.

With tears in eyes,our hearts pull on their brown tattered coats, black holey shoes and red wool scarves.

Our hearts are so tired, poor, huddled, wretched, homeless and tempest-tost. They love their memories, families, homes but it is time for them to go.

Too many cold, deserted eyes at checkpoints in lonely streets pointed guns at our hearts. Too many clouds empty of rain brought pain to our hearts. Too many coughs from our childrens’ chests late into night broke our hearts.

Our hearts pick up their battered suitcases, with tape all around their ends, lest they break open and spill out our fathers’ favorite shirts, a love letter, a picture of our beautiful children, all we have in the world, onto the ground.

Deep in the hull of a ship tossing on stormy seas; high on the roof of a train winding down a long, steep hill; barefoot on a dusty road

silent, back to back, knee to knee, with poor people and little children. Migrating hearts.

With each step along the way our hearts whisper, “We’re here.”

With each mile long to hear, “I care.”

We hope for kindness.

Migrating.

Moving

our

hearts.

Chapter Four

Taki’s grandmother, Asiavik, had been like the Alpine Blueberry plant for which she was named.

Beautiful like its dark pink flowers.

Helpful like its berries, of which living things took their fill, from the humble Arctic mouse to the Iñuit people themselves.

Always there like its berries, too, for even after all creatures had taken their fill, an abundance of fruit remained.

She had been an anatkuq, which is a shaman.

One day Asiavik was resting inside of a sod igloo, the traditional dwelling of the Iñuit people that is dug into the earth and framed with whale bone.

She sat perfectly still.

She didn’t move a muscle.

She didn’t even blink.

Her spirit went traveling, as shaman spirits do.

She traveled far away until she reached a gathering of bowhead whales.

“Welcome, friend,” said the bowheads.

They saw that she was cold in the Arctic waters, so they gave her a parka.

“Quayanaq,” she said. “Thank you.”

She put it on.

Something wonderful happened.

She became a bowhead whale!

Her head became the immense, bow shaped head of the great Arctic whale.

Her body took on a two foot thick covering of blubber to keep her warm in the cold, cold water.

She was Asiavik and also a bowhead whale, both at the same time.

She spent the whole winter with the bowheads, living life as they lived life.

She dove down 500 feet into the depths of the water and stayed for over twenty minutes, until she had to surface for a breath of air.

She created her own breathing holes by breaking through ice up to one foot thick with her enormous head.

She spouted the cold, salt water into a V shaped pattern out of her widely separated blow holes.

Sometimes she swam with her pod and opened her mouth wide to expose her 10 foot long baleen to catch the tiny krill that moved in abundance around them.

Sometimes she swam and ate alone.

She would breach, lobtail, flipper-slap and spy hop above the surface.

Mostly, though, she stayed below the surface, learning the ways of her Balaena mysticetus friends.

She was 100 tons of wonder.

Spring neared, and the bowheads prepared for their yearly migration from the Chukchi Sea to the Beaufort Sea.

Asiavik joined them.

“We’ll meet hunters along the way, waiting in their umiaks,” they said to her.

“Some of these skin covered boats will appear bright and clean and will be pleasing to your eyes.

Others will be dark and dirty,” they taught.

“There is no greater gift that a bowhead can give to the world than to give itself to the Iñuit people.

By giving yourself to them, you will be helping them live.

Life is beautiful when you give yourself to others to help them live.

You’ll give them muktak from your thick skin and oily blubber that will give the nourishment and Vitamin C in the lean months of deep winter.

You’ll give them baleen that they’ll weave into fine baskets.

You’ll give them what’s inside of you so the can cover their drums and make music.

You’ll even give them your bones so they can frame their houses.

You’ll live through them.

If you choose to give yourself to the people, surface beside a clean umiak, for the people inside will be respectful, considerate and kind.

They’ll share you with widows, orphans, the old and all who cannot hunt for themselves.

They’ll place you in clean ice cellars.”

These words comforted her.

“If you surface by a dirty umiak, the people inside will be selfish and lazy.

They will not help people in need.

You will not want to give yourself to hunters like that.”

Asiavik listened closely to the bowheads, for she was a good listener.

“The best way to teach others about YOU is to share your life with THEM.

That’s why we’ve shared our life with you.

If you give yourself to an umiak, your spirit will not die, but will return to put on another parka, as do the spirits of all of the bowheads who give themselves to the Iñuit.

Your human body will die.

You will live with us forever.

If you choose to go back to the people of Point Hope, you must take the form of a humble Eider duck and fly back to them.

You must teach the people about us.

The choice to stay with us or go to the people is yours to make.

As they neared the coast of Point Hope, she chose to go to the people.

She became an Eider duck and flew into the sky.

At dawn, she landed in the town and became her human form again.

She wrote the story of her journey and all she had learned from the bowhead whales.

She kept it in a notebook.

Taki held that notebook now.

The peach and tomato farm where Hilcias, his mamí and his abuelo work has become our classroom.

It is land beyond land of trees, fields and streams for us to climb up, walk over and wade in.

It gives us all the space we need to run freely until the calves of our legs throb and the cheeks on our faces glow.

It gives us a place to walk at our own pace and ask questions about the world.

It gives.

A stream runs along the back side of the peach orchard.

We stand barefooted in that stream on late summer afternoons and feel the smooth rocks against our heels and the wet sand between our toes.

We stand as still as we can.

We look at life living just below the surface of the water.

We look at life living just behind the leaves of the plants and trees.

We look at life, aapaaluk.

We look.

We see how the little world is living, thriving and changing.

We see how the little world is staying the same, hurting or dying.

We see the little world, aapaaluk.

We see.

My name is Vince Allen Mercado; I am 19 years old and I live in San Jose (Norwalk currently) in the State of California. I am from the Philippines, a country located in Southeast Asia. I have one sister. 

When I was in 3rd grade, my father moved here in Campbell, California to provide for our family. I was really sad back then and didn't realize why he'd left us. We were poor but happy. Ever since he left us, I started studying so hard that I had good grades throughout my school life there. I have lots of friends, smart, the popular guy. I was so happy until, on July 2014, my mom delivers me and my sister news; We'll be leaving for the United States. I don't know what to feel. Should I be happy as my family will be complete finally? Should I be sad that I'll leave everything that I have? Well, I chose to be the latter. I felt devastated because I feel like I already have everything. I spent my last days there with my friends and classmates in school. They even made me a scrapbook with their messages which was really cool. When I said goodbye to my family and friends there, I was crying so much, it didn't sink into me that everything's gonna be different until I was in my first plane ride to here. 

On November 27, 2014, we arrived at Fremont, California. It was so cold; It was Thanksgiving by the way. In January, I started middle school. I was alone and didn't know how to approach anyone. High school happened and for 3 years, I have no friends at all. I was so sad about how my life turned upside down once I got here. It was not until senior year, that I found my friends right now that I started to enjoy life. 

(I just want to share this small story in light of President Trump’s words about immigrants and the wall)

Maria is 7 years old and is in the second grade at my elementary school in West Greenville. Her parents fled the after effects of a brutal civil war in El Salvador and found a new life on the farms and in the fields of South Carolina. She is like those farms and fields, with dark skin the color of the ground and a garden of a heart that produces love and joy as if they were tomatoes and beans. I have seen her hold the hand of a frightened kindergartner in the lunch line in the cafeteria during early morning breakfast time and offer her shoulder to a crying friend who scraped her knee on the blacktop during recess. She is a beautiful child.

I can see her smile from all the way down at the end of the hall from the front office. Sometimes, I can hear her steps from there, too, because on special days she wears tiny high heeled shoes with her flowery dresses and I can hear the click, click, click as she makes her way toward me over the tiled floor. This always makes me stop and smile.

One day I realized I forgot to send my money through the mail to the water company to pay my bill. I stopped by the office to make my payment in person after school. Apparently three-fourths of the residents of Greenville County forgot to send in their payments, too, because the place was full of people, people standing in the doorway, people meandering their way to the payment counter, people everywhere.

In the middle of all of that humanity I heard a click, click, click. I looked behind me, around me, in front of me and there, coming around a desk, was Maria! She was pushing a stroller with a tiny baby inside of it. I could barely see her over the handles of the stroller. She was leading her mother, who was holding a toddler in her arms.

She saw me. Her face lit up with her Maria smile. She let go of the stroller for just a moment, wrapped her arms around me, and said, "Oh, Mr. Barton! Buenos tardes! I am always so glad to see you!"

She took hold of the stroller again and I lost her among the faces of the people around me. But I heard her voice, her sincere, serious voice, rise above the noise. "Excuse me," she said, "But could you help us pay our bill?"

I am a 4th grade teacher at a Title I elementary school in Greenville, South Carolina. The neighborhoods around my school are filled with families from Mexico, Central America and South America. The children of these families make their way each morning through the doors of my school, through the doors of my classroom, and through the door of my heart. At various times and from various people during the past election cycle, these Latino friends were described with demagogic, destructive and dehumanizing language. I know from my life with them that this language does not tell the real story, does not paint the true picture, of the committed, compassionate and creative people they are to me and to our community.

Let me tell you a story. There is a boy in my classroom. His name is Hilcias. He has the earth in his brown eyes, the sun in his smile, and is very much a real, flesh and blood nine year old kid. Sometimes he laughs until he cries, and sometimes he cries until he washes the sadness from his heart, but at all times he keeps those eyes and that heart open to learn as much as he can from the people and the places around him. He speaks Spanish mostly, and English a little, so at the beginning of the year we could barely communicate with each other. He is learning more and more English words and phrases as the school weeks pass by, and I am learning more and more Spanish words and phrases, so we are getting along just fine.

His English to Speakers of Other Languages teacher came to pick him up on the last day of school before Christmas break.

"Bye Mr. Barton," he said with a smile. "I will be back SOON."

He emphasized the word soon because we had just been talking about adverbs.

"Bye Hilcias," I said with my own smile. "I can't wait to see you AGAIN."

We giggled and he walked out into the hallway with other English language learners.

Soon, he returned again. He walked to my table and placed a letter in front of me.

"This is for you," he said, and he walked back to his table to resume his writing.

I am thankful for Mr. Barton. Here are some reasons why. First you teach me how to do fiction or nonfiction stories. Second you help me know how can I be good at writing. Finally you make me happy when you pik me to be the student of the day.

I lifted my eyes to Hilcias. I thought about his Mother bringing him and his younger brother to the United States from Mexico, hoping to make a better life for them. I thought about how thankful I am to be his teacher, to work with him every day to help him be all that he can be and do all that he can do. I thought about how wonderful he is. I picked up my pen and wrote a letter back to him. I walked over to his table and placed it in front of him.

"This is for you," I said, and I walked back to my table to resume my work.

I am thankful for Hilcias. Here are some reasons why. First you teach me how to be a better teacher because you are a great student. Second you told me you want to become a doctor and there is a kindness in your heart and a sharpness in your mind that will make you great at anything you choose to do. Finally you make me happy. You make me happy you are my student.