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Description
Lately, I've had the great privilege to see one of my pictures chosen to illustrate the "Invisible Americans" website.
The website is dedicated to "The Immigrant Experience Through the Eyes of Children."
"One of the values of seeing the immigrant experience through the eyes of children, is that children don't lie. Children get to the heart of the matter and tell you what they see. They open their hearts in the sincerest and most unshielded ways. And that's why they're such a valuable window on the immigrant experience. You want to know the truth, ask a child."
Alan Kraut, Chair of the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island History Advisory Committee.
A free audio program is available for download, which is definitely worthy of an hour of anybody's time, invisible or not, American or not.
Immigration is in the news every day. But we rarely hear from immigrants themselves. Invisible Americans: Stories from the New Immigrants is an hour-long audio program that explores the lives of immigrants through the eyes of children. It journeys into the heart of the immigrant experience and the identity of America itself, interweaving oral histories collected by elementary-age children against a rich musical score, with historical analysis from leading immigration historians, writers, and activists.
The 20+ stories told in Invisible Americans were culled from over 400 oral histories collected over a 6 year period by African-American children and children of immigrants in Oakland, California from interviews with their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. And what is most amazing is that, although these stories come from this tiny little corner of Oakland, they cover the globe.
So what you will hear are family stories, read by a broad range of community members and actors, set to a musical score, and placed into the larger context of the California and American immigration experience by leading scholars and community acitivists. You will hear stories from Yemen to Guatemala, from China to East Texas, and from Cambodia to the Gold Coast of Africa.
I'm very grateful for this honor.
