Immigration Reflection

Immigration Reflection
Wade Bruffey

During the Immigration Project, I gained a lot of worldly experience and a lot of knowledge about the experience of people immigrating to America. Not only do I feel that I learned a lot about the easy side of immigration, where people were not oppressed before coming here, and the most difficult immigrant experience of all, where people had to flee their country to avoid getting killed.
My literature circle choice was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. This autobiographical novel was based on the author’s experince growing up as a child soldier in a small country called Sierra Leone. I was happy with my book choice, but it was hard to read at times. The author’s recollection is so vividly described, and sometimes extremely graphic, it makes reading about what this 14 year old boy had to see happen quite hard. The book was also very good because of the wealth of powerful quotes that I applied into my blog entries for our responses. I enjoyed blogging my responses, and I also liked being able to see what people thought about what I wrote through the comments. I realized that my group members were thinking about the book’s events in the same ways I was, and we were able to take our common viewpoint and put it into interesting discussions through our questions. Through our group discussions, I think that we have all realized how lucky we truly are to be born in such a peaceful place, where the quality of life is so good, and how lucky we are to live in America.
In our art piece for the book, I chose to do a particularly powerful scene from A Long Way Gone where Ishmael is burning down a village. I wanted to choose a powerful scene that would reflect the experince of that Ishmael had before coming to America, and make the viewers see the extreme contrast between his lifestyle at home and his shock upon arrivial in America. Since I did a depiction of a scene in the book, I also feel that the viewer would see the direct relation to the book’s story. I belive that I made a clear connection to the literature through my piece, and I hope that the viewers will see this connection as well. If I could change a few things about my final product, I would erase the lines I drew on the canvas before painting over it, in order for the piece to look more finished, and I would paint the sky over and mix in green edges around the stars, creating more of a realistic look. Otherwise, I am very happy with the way the painting turned out.
Perhaps my favorite aspect of this project was the interview process with my immigrant. I chose a person who my parents have known for several years, Julian Littleford. Through talking with Julian I gained a better knowledge of what it must have been like to come here, and some major differences in the culture of other countries than here. Before interviewing Mr. Littleford, being from England, I didn’t think that there would be many differences between the two cultures. He explained to me otherwise, that while living in England he could never have accomplished the things he has here. I think that because my interviews went so well, I was able to get a better understanding of Mr Littleford’s experience in traveling to America, and relate it to what we learned in class. However, I do think that I would have enjoyed cutting out some of the old immigration cirriculum and learning a little more about modern immigration and how it has changed over the years. My Final Product was aimed to recount the life of my immigrant, and I don’t think it could have turned out any better. I hope that my immigrant will see the gift as a tribute to him and his life.
This was a great project overall, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I learned a lot about the immigration experience in Ellis Island, as well as the hardships of certain people back in their home countries in Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone. I learned about the immigration experience of Julian Littleford in my interviews, and the difference between the United States and other nations. The immigration project has expaned my knowledge of the world, and I enjoyed learning the broad spectrum of information in the topic.