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Americanizing as an Adult
I volunteer at the Franklin Library where the majority of the people who I work with come from Africa. Here at the library they study the English language, math and for the citizenship test. What is really admiring is that they are already adults and are either a father, a mother or even grandparent and they willing to take time out of their busy weekend to come here. The little time I been volunteering I can already see some subjects we been talking about linking to my experience. One of them that really pops out is the difficulty to Americanize as an adult in the United States that deal with missing their home country and having responsibilities and at the same time customizing to this new world, some of their experiences can be linked to class readings.
People that come to the library to study come from many different parts of Africa and many of them come here in search for a better life but they struggle to keep the old good memories alive. The article Civil War Kids by Laura Yuen talks about just that, the experience the Somali community difficulties in Minneapolis Minnesota that can be connected to a lot of the people that come to the library. Some of the people who I have talk to have actually come from Somalia, many don't talk about their bad memories back at home but they have mentioned to me how beautiful it was and the things they
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miss like the food, family and the climate. It reminded me of what the first generation of Somali said in the Civil war Kids about the adults “ They've heard the stories from their parents of Somalia's beautiful beaches. But in their lifetime, they've only known their homeland as a failed state.” (2). I felt like I was experiencing a little of that, hearing how beautiful their home country is but only knowing the troubles the country has. When they talked about their home country I can hear the sadness in their tone, it seem like speaking about their home is...