During 2024, I want to share migration/immigration stories that stand toe to toe, nose to nose and fist to fist with the demagoguery, dehumanization and destructive language right wing politicians and their ilk use against some of the most vulnerable people around us.
“The universe is not made of atoms,” said Muriel Rukeyser. “It’s made of stories.” Maybe, just maybe, xenophobia can be change by telling stories.
For the sakes of the students I teach and their families. I hope so.
Auribus cordis audi.
This is my favorite Latin phrase.
“Listen with the ears of the heart.”
If I’m a holy anything, I’m a holy listener.
My ears are the most important part of me.
Listening is sacred to me.
When I hear the word immigrant, I close my eyes and listen to the lives of my students from Mexico, Central America and South America who walk through the door of my classroom, who immigrate to the country of my heart.
As I look through old Life Magazines and see pictures of people wearing tattered coats and holey shoes, holding battered suitcases taped around the sides to keep their meager, precious things from falling out onto the ground; and parting lives they know and love to try to make a better life, una vida mejor, I hear them, and they are no longer ‘them’ to me but are my neighbors.
In the lives of my students and their families, in the faces of the people in the pictures, I hear human beings, I hear the human face.
I was an immigrant once.
I was welcomed into the country of Mali in West Africa.
I made a promise to always care for my immigrant neighbors around me just as my Malian neighbors cared for me.
I made a promise to listen and to love.
No comments:
Post a Comment