Voices Unheard and Lessons Learned

As immigrants, Professor Dahi and her family have had their own share of experiences coming to the US and learning to assimilate while trying to make a good life for themselves. Over the years, Dahi has heard many stories of other migrants and how their lives were before they embarked on their arduous journeys to make it to the US. They had often talked to her about the reasons for their migration, such as the systematic injustices in their own countries, fear of persecution, family situations, or poverty. In this book, Dahi decides to give voices to those people by writing fictionalized stories that represent similar aspects of those experiences and journeys. Professor Dahi highlights the power of education and having a good support system in each of the stories as ways to overcome obstacles and to dream bigger. Even though most characters in these stories face a contradictory reality to their idea of what living in America entails, some of them find ways to assimilate and settle down, and others continue to do whatever it takes to succeed in accomplishing what they had initially set out to do. The author hopes to broaden the reader’s understanding of migrants’ situations and their reasons for choosing to come to America as well as what struggles they must overcome and what difficulties they must endure in order to find better lives for them and their families. Each story in this book is followed with activities that promote vocabulary building, grammar and critical thinking. This reader can be used for language learners and young readers because it compels them to reminisce about their own initiation into a new culture or new life situations in general. In each story, there are lessons to be learned or voices with which to identify.