Tuesday, November 04, 2014
[Library Events and Programs] Dinaw Mengestu visit and Immigrant stories panel TODAY!
November 4th is finally here!
After you exercise your right to vote in today's election, don't forget to make your way to the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library at 5:30 p.m. for a fantastic event--a visit from Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, the Memphis Reads city-wide book selection.
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| Panelists: Adams, Blatteis, and Gbee |
We want to extend a special thank you to CBU's Fresh Reads top ten essay winners who shared personal but powerful stories for this initiative. We also want to say thanks to the organizations that made this event possible.
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Immigration Stories, Library Events and Programs, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
[Memphis Reads 2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Saehymn Oh
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Saehymn Oh
Throughout the novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu, the theme of displacement is explored, as Sepha Stephanos tries to find his identity in his new home in the United States while being mentally stuck in Ethiopia. As Sepha makes an effort to settle into his community in Logan Circle, forget about his homeland, and find love, the conflict of displacement follows him. The novel frequently flashes back to several months before and his life back in Ethiopia to further readers’ understanding of the theme and the character of Sepha.
In his 17 years of living in the United States, Sepha only makes two fellow African friends, who share his sour nostalgia of Africa. Whenever they get together, they discuss their lives back home, the politics, and events that had happened in Africa. Sepha makes it his lifestyle to relate everything he sees to his memories of Ethiopia. He and his friends speak in “broken English of Africa’s tyrannies,” as they create a fantasy world revolving around their reminiscence of their lives back in Africa. Sepha lives in this fantasy world while simultaneously trying to survive in the harsh reality of running his indigent grocery store in the corner of Logan Circle. Although his life is in Logan Circle, he never feels like he belongs there, and imagines himself moving back home. He lives his life in isolation and loneliness until Judith and Naomi, a Caucasian lady and her biracial daughter move in next door.
As Sepha’s relationship with Judith and Naomi deepens, he tries to play the role of a father to Naomi as he remembers his own father. As Sepha read stories to Naomi, he slips into the characters just as his “father would have done had he had been the one reading.” He attempts to identify himself with his father who had sacrificed himself for his family to his relationship with Naomi. At night he “relieved old fantasies and memories” of Ethiopia and imagine his father remembering the way he “cried at funerals, baptisms, and weddings.” Although Sepha is developing a relationship with Naomi, it revolves around his reminiscence of his father, hindering him from making a fresh start.
Some aspects of Sepha’s life are applicable to my life, because I had also moved to the United States. Although the circumstances and reasoning behind my journey here is much different than Sepha’s, moving to a different country is difficult and often stressful. I moved from South Korea when I was six and lived in Minnesota ever since. My memories of Korea have become snippets of images, so far and distant that sometimes I wonder if they were fabricated in my mind. As Sepha had forgotten how his brother looked, I began to forget the faces of my cousins and aunts and uncles back home. My fondest childhood memories are in my backyard of my suburban neighborhood in Minnesota, playing ghost in the graveyard with the neighborhood kids during the summer and making snow forts during the endless winter. For the longest time I had a difficult time figuring out whether I was Korean or American. The documents tell me that I’m American, but my blood tells me I’m Korean. Like Sepha, identification was something that was confusing and I was stuck between two nationalities. When I was younger, I tried to hide the Korean side of me. I only wanted to blend in with my friends. But as I got older, I could feel the Korean side being more and more neglected. There is no one way solution and answer to this struggle. I only just matured, and the more I thought about who I am as a Korean American, the prouder I became. How awesome is it that I get to say I understand and am part of two cultures? I started embracing my Korean side, becoming more interested in the history and language. This, something that I had once considered embarrassing and shameful, is now a prized and valuable part of me that I will forever cherish and continue to cultivate.
As people transition from one phase of their life to another, it’s easy to get behind mentally and live in the past. By the end of the novel when Sepha leaves the store, Mengestu decides to leave out Sepha’s definitive future. Despite this frustrating and confusing ending, it only reemphasizes the uncertain and unpredictable thing that is life. As incoming freshmen in college, this is where many of us are--the fork road ahead of us of either living in the past glory or condemnation of high school days or taking advantage of college to renovate ourselves and pave our futures. As Sepha’s father’s wise words resonate within us-- “ a bird stuck between two branches gets bitten on both wings--” as one door closes, we must walk through the other door in order to break through the uncertainties.
--Saehymn Oh
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Monday, October 20, 2014
[Memphis Reads 2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Prakruthi Phaniraj
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Prakruthi Phaniraj
A man who believes and lives with the mind and heart together lives a life well. However, if the same man's mind lives in one place but the heart belongs somewhere else, he lives in confusion and mystery. In Dinaw Mengestu's novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Sepha Stephanos experiences this confusion as he searches for his identity and overcomes his displacement of living in a new country, America. He is stuck between the old memories and joyous family members of Ethiopia and the new adventures, as well as struggles, of America. As Stephanos tries to make a living in America by forgetting his homeland and finding love, the confusion of self-identity and displacement chase after him.
Even though Stephanos has been living in the United States for seventeen years, he manages to make two African American friends, who, like him, share the longing of home. Through their similarities of homesickness, they all get together and discuss their lives back home, the politics and all the events that happened and are happening in Africa. They typically speak in "broken English of African tyrannies, what had yet to grow tedious," while they create a world of fantasy revolving around their recollections of their joyous lives back in Africa (48). Stephanos lives in this same fantasy world, reliving old memories and anecdotes while concurrently building a life and surviving through the life of the American society with the opening of his international grocery store on the corner of Logan Circle. While Stephanos dwells on the thought of living in isolation for a long period of time, Judith and Naomi, a Caucasian lady and her bi-racial daughter move in next door.
Stephano's relationship with the eleven-year-old Naomi deepens and he tries to play the role of a father to Naomi. He remembers his own father and his thoughtful and careful judgment; through this, he cares for Naomi with a stronger heart. As Stephanos reads stories to Naomi, he falls deep into the character's actions and thoughts just as his "father would have done had he been the one reading." He tries to recognize himself with his father, who sacrificed his life for Stephanos and the rest of his family in his own relationship with Naomi. After dusk, he "relived old fantasies and memories" of Ethiopia and pictures his father, recollecting the way he "cried at funerals, baptisms, and weddings." Stephanos is developing a deeper relationship with Naomi, however the memories of his father are hindering him from making a new start and better relationship with Naomi.
"How was I supposed to live in America when I had never really left Ethiopia? I wasn't, I decided. I wasn't supposed to live here at all," Stephanos thinks as he uses his uncle's couch for two strenuous months (140). However, he soon realizes it is enough and with a little push from his uncle, he gets a small job and even attends the school his uncle picked out for him. Three years later he decides he can’t live like that anymore. "I couldn't believe that my father had died and I was spared in order to carry luggage in and out of a room. There was nothing special to death anymore. I had seen enough lifeless bodies by that point to know that," he thinks as he leans over an edge looking down at the sea (142). The next day he quits his job at Capitol Hotel and soon moves out of his uncle's apartment. With the help of his friends. he soon manages to learn how to "make lists, order supplies and goods and balance my budget" (143). That's when his new life, along with his friends' new lives, starts.
After many challenging endeavors and obstacles, he soon comes to a twist in his father's old saying: "A man stuck between two worlds lives and dies alone. I have dangled and been suspended long enough" (228). He is stuck between the two worlds and struggles to know where he truly belongs. Although those moments are inevitable to anyone, all they can do is sit back and look at the life they have made in the place they live. When Stephanos looks at his store, he sees that it could not be more perfect than it already was. He now has something he can truly claim as his own and this new claim is more than just property: it is his final destination and discovery of self-identity.
Similar to Sepha Stephanos, I feel like I have been pulled between two places: my home country India and the United States. I entered the United States as a child, around eight years old. Although I was young enough to adapt to the culture and ways of the American society, something always seemed to pull me back from reaching out to the other American friends I had made. I didn't realize what it was since I was still so young, but a few years later I returned to India for a visit. Being back with my old friends and close relatives, I realized that my heart still belonged in India and the customs that I was so used to, I couldn't find in America. The Indian languages, Telugu and Kannada, were widely spoken and the food was known to everyone. However in America, I had to hide the Indian curries and rotis I brought to school and speak a language not spoken fluently every day. But soon enough, I taught myself to show the other side of me, the Indian side, to the other Americans around me. I had nothing to be embarrassed about and I although I was living in another country, my home country, mother India, will always be with me. As I found the courage to open up, I found that my peers were very interested in my food and language and even music. As I showed them the variety of Indian delicacies and different music selections, they showed me the different foods and musical artists in America. Then I didn't feel so stuck between where my heart was and the place I lived in. I live in a place where I can engage in the society and around me and live my Indian life as loud as I want.
--Prakruthi Phaniraj
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
[Memphis Reads2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Nick Vongprachanh
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Nick Vongprachanh
Where I Belong
While the primal desire to reach a state of stability is apparent in all living organisms, the psychological strain produced from changing environments is a characteristic almost exclusively reserved for humans. In the novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu, the protagonist Sepha Stephanos appears to be leading an average lifestyle; he has a home, friends, and a store which provides his income. Although most would be content with his way of life, Sepha still feels as if he is “a bird stuck between two branches” due to his inability to fully accept American culture and realize that he will never return home. In this novel, the author utilizes this geographical barrier and Sepha’s inability to let go of the past to display how difficult the path of self-discovery was for Stephanos and how he was able to carry on with his life afterwards.
Although Sepha left his home country of Ethiopia at the age of sixteen, it wasn’t until he moved out of his uncle’s apartment that he truly felt like he was leaving home. Upon Sepha’s return to his uncle’s apartment almost fifteen years after moving out, he stated that “living here is as close to living back home as one can get, which is precisely why I moved out.” While still living with his uncle, Sepha still had plans of returning home and never fully accepted that he would never return. After moving out, however, Stephanos, with the help of his friend Kenneth, embraced his newfound hope in America and opened up his own shop. By doing so, Sepha further cemented his ties to America and came one step closer to accepting his newfound life.
Although changing locations displayed Sepha’s willingness to become independent of not only his uncle, but also the comfort of his own people, it was still difficult to fully grasp how Sepha’s mentality towards American culture had changed. Luckily, Stephanos had two friends who illustrate his split sense of belonging perfectly. His friend Joseph, commonly referred to as “Congo Joe,” never missed an opportunity to bolster about his African heritage. Joseph’s desire to retain his African roots was so severe that he even refuses to seek dental work and instead claims “you can never forget where you came from if you have teeth as ugly as these.” On the other hand, Sepha’s friend Kenneth, otherwise known as “Ken the Kenyan,” fully embraced American culture and all it has to offer. Since coming to America, Kenneth has crawled his way up the social ladder to become an engineer, who continues to “fight the good fight.” Together, these two characters display the split sense of identity Stephanos retains throughout the novel; they also continue to reiterate the fact that “home” is where you make it and the importance of retaining some sense of personal identity.
While Sepha’s best friends played a vital role in fully illustrating the two sides of his personality, it wasn’t until the arrival of Judith and Naomi that Sepha fully realized that he was searching for all this time in America. While Judith may play an important role in revealing Sepha’s own insecurities regarding what he has accomplished in life so far, it is Naomi who plays the truly vital role in Sepha’s own self-discovery. While it may seem rather odd that a middle-aged man and a little girl could become great friends in such short period of time, it is primarily due to the fact that they rely on one another for emotional support. Although Naomi’s father is still alive, she has never fully accepted him as her parent. By having Sepha read to her, she is filling the void left in her heart. This was also the first time that Sepha finally felt at home since coming to America and as he put elegantly “tomorrow did not come fast enough.” It was also during these reading sessions that Sepha was able to reminisce about the time he spent with his father and help him cope with his loss. While reading to Naomi, Sepha states that “this is exactly what my father would have done” and that “he would have made the story an event, as grand as real life.” This statement reiterates Sepha’s desire to be like his father and to live a life that would make his family proud. It might have been easier for Sepha to forget about his past if his brother back in Ethiopia, Dawit, was not a constant reminder of his father and his own failures. Unlike Sepha, Dawit was a college graduate and as Sepha put frankly “he already looked more like him then I ever would.”
Ultimately, the coming and going of Judith and Naomi along with the eviction of Sepha from his convenience store led to Sepha’s realization that while it is important to remember his father, it is pointless to try to emulate him. He is a grown man, and now it is time for him to lead his own life and become his own person. America is his home now, and it is imperative that he find happiness in his own life instead of constantly dwelling about his own shortcomings and worrying about what his family would think if they saw what his life had become. As a whole, this novel illustrates the fact that home is where you make it and the importance of understanding one’s self, because living for someone else’s sake is no way to live.
While reading this novel, I found myself constantly thinking of my own father. Like Sepha, my dad was also a refugee, escaping from Laos with his parents and two sisters at the young age of eleven. Although I’ll never fully be able to understand the difficulties my dad faced when coming to America, I still experience the friction between the two cultures in my everyday life. Unlike my father, my mother is an American, born and raised. While this may seem like no big deal, I find myself constantly trying to appease both sides. I also find myself not fully wanting to fully embrace or reject the other culture. While my tastes in food, appearance, and knowledge of Lao customs might make me a little too foreign to be seen as a typical American, my inability to speak the language and dislike for some of the weirder Lao foods permanently subjugates me to be branded as no different from any other Caucasian. For me, being stuck between two cultures was never a big deal. While at times it may be somewhat irritating trying to appease both sides, I never really felt like being wedged between both cultures was that overbearing. Therefore, to claim I have resolved my dilemma would not be necessarily true; instead, I would consider myself at home between the rock and a hard place. While it may not be the ideal situation, I find comfort in knowing that both are there to stay.
--Nick Vongprachanh
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
[Memphis Reads 2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Luke Wade
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Luke Wade
Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a story of a man with an identity crisis, though not so much in who he is as where he feels he should be. Although the book’s protagonist, Sepha Stephanos, has left his home country of Ethiopia seventeen years prior, he is still conflicted as to whether the U.S. is really where he belongs. Several times, he considers just packing up and going home, yet in the end he stays. The text serves to show how he comes to understand that he cannot go back, as well as the trials he must face to reach this understanding.
Stephanos, at least for a good portion of the story, is a man who has left his home, but has not altogether “left.” He is still reminded of his old life everywhere he goes, and even claims, “For at least the first two years that I was here, I was so busy passing my mother, brother, father, and friends…that at times it hardly felt as if I had really left….My hallucinations of home became standard” (175-176). It is clear that though he has physically moved on, he is still stuck in the past mentally. Yet he still tries to create his own identity as a store clerk chasing the American dream. This exemplifies his struggle for a unified self in one country or the other, in that he strives for success in one while struggling to let go of the other. Without making a choice, he remains stuck in a geographic limbo. That is, until he meets Naomi and Judith, or rather, when he must say his last goodbye to them.
When Sepha becomes closer to Judith, he often considers what a relationship with her would be like, but he always holds back. Why? Even after seventeen years in the country, he still can’t see himself with an American woman, because he still hangs onto the possibility of returning to Ethiopia. Time and time again, he skirts the edge of intimacy with her until it is too late to make his move. It is at this point, as he walks away from her for the last time, that he truly accepts that he can never go back, and the fact that he should have been looking ahead in the first place. “…a man stuck between two worlds lives and dies alone. I have dangled and been suspended long enough…Right now, I’m convinced that my store looks more perfect than ever before” (228). Here, he chooses his quaint little store, the life he leads in America, and the affirmation that he will not let another “Judith” slip through his fingers.
While Sepha’s story may seem foreign (both figuratively and literally) to some, it is actually quite relatable to me. Though I’ve never been out of the country (and have hardly left Tennessee, for that matter), I can understand being stuck between two conflicting “worlds,” and letting life pass me by in the process. Not long ago, I was battling severe depression. Every day felt like a tug of war between waking up and giving up. I knew I should have been productive and involved, but I rarely felt the drive to be so. I considered my thoughts bipolar, but never my actions; one minute I was ready to conquer the world, the next not even ready to get out of bed. Regardless of what I was thinking, I hardly left my room save for going to school, because I was trapped by “what-ifs” and whether it was just easier not to try. I wanted to be successful, though, so I finally made my choice and stuck to it. I knew that I was depressed in part from an incredibly poor self-image. I was overweight, had poor hygiene, and prior to making my decision, made next to no effort correct either. However, I needed a starting point, and that proved to be it. Over the course of about three months, I lost nearly sixty pounds, and, to the benefit of everyone around me I’m sure, began showering consistently. My fourteen-hour long gaming marathons ended, and I eventually gained some confidence. I was doing better than ever in school, and overall felt much better about who I was and who I could become.
A year has now passed since I decided to make a change. While I still have some kinks I need to work out, I feel I am in control of my life and have the support I need to keep moving ahead. Now I’m just your average, somewhat awkward teenager going to college to take yet another big step forward in life. To me, this reaffirms the idea that your development as a human being is never done. The journey never ends, but you move a lot faster when you’re not trying to follow two separate paths.
---Luke Wade
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
[Memphis Reads 2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Jeanne StaAna
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Jeanne StaAna
Sepha Stephanos, like many immigrants, came to America for refuge. Many of them seek opportunity, and a new life full of possibilities. However, Sepha and his friends came to realize the reality of homesickness was all too real. To migrate from a land that is not your own, and to make peace with the faces that are not like yours can be a difficult battle to win. Regardless of the hell Sepha had seen of the war in Africa, he could still not accept that the land he knew was no longer there, and that he was no longer a part of it. Every day he lived his life with the future in mind, blindly waiting for tomorrow to come, never realizing what had become of the present. Somewhere along the road, he began to drag his feet, and the weight felt a little heavier.
In his mind, somewhere things were supposed to change. In the land of opportunity, he was supposed to become someone. At one point, he decided to go to college, not because he really wanted an education, but because he wanted the title. He wanted an identity, and in a place where he had nothing of his own, it was his best effort at trying to find a way to assimilate. It was supposed to be his beginning, an accomplishment that would establish his roots, and give meaning to his being there. Yet, nothing came of it. Nothing became of Sepha’s life at all. He’d become so afraid of losing everything that he settled for having nothing.
However, when Judith and Naomi came into his life, he finally saw something that he wanted, desperately. The problem was that in his eyes they were worlds away. He finally saw the harsh reality of America. There were limits; here he would never be given the time of day. Not only by Judith, but also by anyone, because he came from a war-torn country, an impoverished country, a bloody country that was not America. His people were pitied and looked down on, or they were feared. Never was he to be seen as respected unless he proved himself. This was America, the land of the free. A country where you work for what you want, but Sepha could never find his place. Not in his neighborhood, not with Judith, and not in Africa. His problem was he never knew where he truly would land his step. He longed for one life, and let his own life just pass by.
As an immigrant, I do understand Sepha’s struggle to move on. While we are all aware what kind of opportunities America has to offer, it’s hard not to look back on what you left. Often it feels like when you migrate to America, you expect a grand life and are blind to the reality that you are not the only one racing towards this goal. My mother often tells me that I have everything I could want here. While I agree, there are moments where I wonder what could life had been like if I had stayed in the Phillippines. There are still times I wonder what will be waiting for me if or when I go back.
Another unfortunate fact is that while I may love going home, memories can make things better than they are. Nostalgia can trick your mind into obsessing over a place that no longer exists. Also, another problem with being an immigrant is never being able to fully assimilate into other cultures without losing parts of your own. The values that are highly upheld in one country may not be a respectable or admirable value in another. The blurred lines between generations of immigrants become difficult to distinguish, and problems arise as to what culture should be more dominantly practiced.
So which country is really home? What I’ve learned is that while I wish to call both countries my home. I can only say that the Philippines was where I was born. My home is in America, in the places I’ve grown up. While my family has found a good balance with assimilating parts of my Filipino culture and American, I still identify more with the latter. When I am in the Philippines, this is where I feel more foreign. Their social norms and mores are completely different from where I was raised, but at least it is still relatable. I have been exposed to enough of my culture, told enough stories, and reminded of fond memories enough that in my heart, the troubles of my people are not disregarded. I am fortunate to have come here, and, yes, I do look back. However, when I see myself moving forward, the only home I see is here in America.
--Jeanne StaAna
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Monday, October 06, 2014
[Memphis Reads 2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Katie Dorsey
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Katie Dorsey
Throughout the book, readers see that Sepha Stephanos is constantly torn between his home in Ethiopia and his present life in America. Readers also get a constant feeling that he struggles with the sense of identity.
Towards the beginning of the book, Judith and Naomi invite Sepha to their house for dinner. “I stepped back from the mirror and practiced my introduction. I wanted to be ready for the moment Judith opened the door and found me standing on her steps” (51). This excerpt is one example of Sepha struggling with his identity. He wants the evening to go perfectly, so he practices different ways to say hello. Instead of eating at the dining room table, Judith suggests eating on the couches in the living room. “I tried to erase any sound of food being ground into bits by chewing slowly, but it was never quite enough. I was still there, with all of my flaws, in Judith’s immaculate living room, which was larger and grander than anything I had ever sat and eaten in since coming to Logan Circle” (55). Through this excerpt, readers see that Sepha wants to be the perfect gentleman, but then comes to the realization that he cannot, because he is flawed.
Throughout the book, Sepha constantly refers to his life in Ethiopia. Towards the end of the novel, Sepha says, “I searched for familiarity whenever I went” (175). He was reminded of home when was saw streets that intersected at weird angles or in the layout of the buildings around him. Sometimes, he would let his imagination get the best of him. For example, he would walk across campus with his father and talk to him about what was going on that day.
In today’s society, many people are going through the same struggle as the main character; we are being pulled between two “places.” Some of us are pulled between our parents in a divorce or between two friends who are fighting. For someone who is adopted, the constant pull is between wondering why your parents left and not really wanting to know why.
When I was three months old, I was left in front of the court house steps in China. I was found and brought to the orphanage and from there I was adopted by my parents. Throughout my childhood, I never struggled with my adoption; I always saw my adopted parents as my real parents. As I started getting older, the topic of adoption was brought up through literature or in history class, whenever the country of China was brought up. I remember coming home from school and asking my mom about my biological parents. She said that neither she nor the adoption agency knew anything about them. I told her that it was okay and I was just curious.
Around the age of sixteen, I struggled with my adoption more than I ever had in the past. I was constantly wondering why my parents left me and why didn’t they try to raise me. These questions consumed my brain night and day to a point where I had an emotional breakdown in class. My mom came and got me from school but instead of going home, we drove around and talked. I asked her why my parents didn’t even at least try to raise me and why they just threw me away. She said that they had a law in China where a family could only have one child. Another thing that I told her was what if I was a mistake? How could my mom just leave me, especially after carrying me around in her stomach for nine months? My mom said she did not have all the answers and that she wished she did. The most important thing my mom told me that day was, “You will always be my daughter, regardless of you being adopted. Your father and I love you with all of our hearts and nothing will ever change that.”
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a book that many people can relate to. The main character is constantly searching for a home in America while still remembering his home in Ethiopia. In today’s society, we also have the same feelings; we are continuously being torn between two people, places, or decisions.
-- Katie Dorsey
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
[Memphis Reads 2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Hozyer Saeed
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Hozyer Saeed
“Living here is as close to living back home as one can get, which is precisely why I moved out after two years and precisely why my uncle has never left.” In this part of the book, Stephanos tries to visit the old apartments he lived in with his uncle, but he was not there. While Sepha is there, he realizes how much the apartments felt like back home. But if he missed Ethiopia so much, why would he leave those apartments if they reminded him of back home?
Throughout the book the reader is able to see Stephanos go through a complicated stage in his life. Some days he wants to give up, put down everything, and abandon his corner store and go back to his homeland. “As a capital city, it doesn’t seem like much. Sixty-eight square miles, shaped roughly like a diamond, divided into four quadrants, erected out of what was once mainly swampland. Its resemblance to Addis, if not always in substance, then at least in form, has always been striking to me.” All through the story, Stephanos tries to compare America to his homeland, maybe to make himself feel better, maybe to make himself feel as if he is at home. His stay here, in America, seems like it would work out for him, but he refuses to accept change. If he tightened up his store and became more social, he would have a good life. Sepha does not want to accept that fact, though. He says, “I refused to acknowledge the charm of a sunset or the pleasure of a summer afternoon. If possible, I would have denied myself the right to breathe another country’s air or walk on its ground.” The negative attitude really impacts his stay, causing him to live a bit miserably.
While reading The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears I would connect to Sepha time after time. Dinaw, the author, did a great job making sure he connects his foreign readers to Sepha, which made this book intriguing. I, like Stephanos, have also been in the situation where I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was much in the same position as him, where I missed home, Kurdistan, where I was born, but I was not able to go back with ease. Entering America in 1996 was mostly every Kurd’s dream, because of the harsh times it was going through. People were getting abused by the Iraqi government; it was awful to live there. I am grateful that we had the opportunity to move to the United States, but sometimes you stop and wish things had worked out better at home and none of that happened. Everything has either a positive or negative consequence, in most cases both. The negative part of living in America was not being able to be with the rest of your family. That was the biggest disappointment. You also miss out on the culture back home. When you do get here to the States, you are mixed with the American culture and often times forget about your own. I have no uncles, aunts, or cousins here; it is only my brother, two sisters, mom and dad. I am grateful to have them here, although it would be undoubtedly better to have the rest of the family.
My family and I had our green cards since 2006, giving us permanent resident, which also gave us the privilege of traveling back home, but when we did, there was always a bad outcome. The expense of going back is extremely large. It usually affected us here, but we might not show it when we get back, because it is worth every penny when we see our family. That was half of the problem; the other half was always being questioned and taking longer for our documents to get here conveniently because of the September 11. Since we were Middle Eastern citizens at the time, they made us go through extra investigation before allowing us to go home. After years of waiting anxiously, the chance finally came for my parents to take the Oath of Allegiance in 2006 and to become citizens of the United States. Although it made the process of going back home quicker, because we did not have to worry about going through the extra investigations, it did not help financially. We have gone back four times and on average we roughly spent around $10,000 on gifts, food, hotels, etc., not including plane tickets for each member of the family. There are six of us, and it costs $2,000 per person. It never mattered, though, when we are back home in Kurdistan; the price would not affect us until we made it back to the States. Then it was going back to work on a daily basis for my parents. Most occasions they hoped they got the chance to work overtime or come in during the weekends, because that is how hard we were impacted financially from going home to see family.
Like Sepha, there are always communications between us and the rest of the family back in Kurdistan, thanks to electronics. It has been easier, too, over time as devices have gotten more advanced. Now we use tools and phone applications like Viber or Facebook that help us connect to them easier and smoother. As I get older, I get more fond of my hometown. Now I am making plans to visit soon.
--Hozyer Saeed
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
[Memphis Reads 2014] Fresh Reads Top Ten Winner Caye Caparas
Fresh Reads Essay Contest Winner Caye Caparas
In Dinaw Mengestu’s book, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, the main character, Sepha Stephanos deals with the struggle of finding his own identity. The reader meets a teenage Sepha Stephanos, who is forced to migrate to the United States, because his home country Ethiopia is devastated by war. Although Sepha’s family back in Ethiopia believes that life in the United States will be better for him, he questions this new life and never really settles in, even after seventeen years. He lives his life in the United States, never fully awake and accepting or appreciative of his new life, because he never saw it that way. He says, “I did not come to America to find a better life… I came here running and screaming with the ghosts of an old one firmly attached to my back,” and from then on, he remains longing for his home country, trying to live a simple and unnoticeable life in the United States.
Sepha’s identity, he believes, lies within geography. As the old saying goes, “Home is where the heart is,” and Sepha’s heart is clearly in Ethiopia. After years and years of only half-heartedly living in the United States and meeting Judith and Naomi, a mother and daughter who have similar cultural conflicts, Sepha questions living this half-hearted life, but remains resistant of assimilating to any sort of American culture. What Sepha does not realize is that the world he left in Africa no longer exists like he thought it would. Time does not stand still there, or anywhere, for that matter. Continuing to live his life only yearning for the past and refusing to move forward will ultimately hold him back him from having a fulfilling life. His identity cannot grow, because he refuses to allow himself the treasures around him, and to create a story for himself in his new home. He finally realizes that what his uncle said was true, that nothing in his life was his in the beginning. It was only with his work could he call something his own.
I come from a family of immigrants; my parents and their siblings came from the Philippines and immigrated to the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s. I am the first one in my immediate family to be born in America and as a first generation Filipino-American, I have always had difficulties combining my American and Filipino cultures together. Growing up, I was confused as to what I should and should not do. In one culture it would be perfectly fine to do something, but in the other culture, that “something” would be classified as a strange habit and would be frowned upon by my peers, because they could not understand any of it. I felt stuck in a position of trying to please everybody whether they were American or Filipino.
Growing up in the Filipino community, I was an outcast. I was different from the other Filipino-American children my age, because I did not know much about the Philippines. Moreover, other children in the community were able to fluently speak the native language Tagalog, while I could only understand every other word in a sentence and speak a few conversational phrases. Not being able to understand Tagalog clearly set me apart from the other first generation Filipino-American children. The adults would somewhat look down on me as a spoiled American child with no respect for “our culture.” It made me feel awful, so I tried really hard to please them and to show to them that I was not an ignorant brat. On month-long family trips to the Philippines during the summer, it became much harder to please relatives, because the language barrier was blatantly apparent. My parents came from poor parts of the Philippines, so the assumption that I was a rude American proved to be true when I had only packed “fancy” American style clothes and video game handhelds in my suitcase.
In America, many of my peers in school thought that being Filipino was weird. For lunch, I would bring leftover Filipino food and eat traditional Filipino snacks during recess. They thought that whenever I spoke in Tagalog, I was practically an alien. A lot of my American peers dismissed my ethnicity and that made me feel insignificant. They would immediately write me off as Japanese, Chinese, or some other type of East Asian. To many of them, it was all the same thing. I was stuck in a position of trying to please both cultures. Like Sepha, I battle with finding my own identity, but my struggle is between my two cultures. I have come to terms with the fact that my two cultures might never be entirely integrated and that I need to appreciate them for what they are.
--Caye Caparas
--Caye Caparas
Labels: CBU Fresh Reads 2014, Fresh Reads Top 10 Essays, Memphis Reads Citywide, Memphis Reads Citywide 2014
