He was covered in the shawls Jews wear for prayers, carried a long staff and shuffled slowly among the hundreds of marchers headed for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house in skimpy sandals.

He said he was a modern-day Moses, waiting to lead the way for the preservation of the mental health clinics that the city plans to shutter.

Photographers trolling the crowd last Saturday at one of the many NATO protest marches couldn’t help see him.

But I fear that not many journalists heard him. I fear that not only was his voice lost in the din and sometime disorienting chaos of the last few days of NATO marches, but so too was the voice of so many others with heartfelt and important stories about the lives we live today.

I don’t think it was purposeful. As journalists we relish stories that connect us, that show we care and that are the reasons many of us are drawn to this profession and its uncertain fate nowadays.

Rather, I think we were accidental victims of our distractions, and I suspect a number of reasons explain why some stories caught our attention and others drifted by us.

We were looking for the stories that dealt with the expected violence after the build-up about what could and what has taken place. And there were a number of scenes that raised the potential for such.

We were fascinated by the march passing us by but we were so focused on the bigger picture, the numbers and the mood of the crowd that we didn’t take time out to stop the marchers.

We thought we knew what many of these people would tell us because we heard them tell us their stories before at rallies around the city or at meetings and the carnival unfolding in front our eyes and ears was different and new. It was a twist on a story that we maybe thought needed one.

Take the middle-aged black man dressed as Moses.

Once he finished talking about his deep resentment over the cutbacks facing city mental health clinics, he talked about his own fears of what he would do once the center where he goes shuts down. The center he has been going to for over 20 years.

Or take the young Iraqi vet that we came across at the Nurses rally on Friday downtown. After she recited her anger over the war that she witnessed, she paused and added her own story about friends who have taken their lives, about her troubles getting treated at government facilities because she said she was told she wasn’t considered in the line of combat although she was, and her struggle to regain her balance in life.

What exactly were those conflicts that she has faced since coming here?

Not far from her in the plaza was a thin, grey-haired Vietnam vet who had come from far to lend his voice, saying he hoped what happened to his generation wouldn’t happen to the young people milling around him.

What did he mean?

There were all the problems his generation has faced, he said, and then he explained how he personally hasn’t had a real place to live for sometime and how these demonstrations have woken up something very new and energizing in him. Something that gave him hope.

I wondered about the Iraq veteran, who cried on the stage as he handed in his medals and said he could not put his words together. I wondered about the mother who told how her veteran son had tried to take his life once and then before she knew it, he succeeded another time.

I wondered about the frail 80-year-old woman who said she came to the Nurses rally out of allegiance to nurses and what they are seeing nowadays. What did she mean? I wondered about the Pakistani immigrant who was proud to have become a citizen after coming to the US many years ago but who spoke of the wrongs that NATO has wrought in the world where he came from? Has it all been wrong? What should we do?

For several days we had an immense drama unfurled in front of us, a drama that told about our city and cities, our nation and ourselves and the world. It was a confusing and tiring story, chasing down the events as they rolled out in the blistering sun and heat.

As this story from Poynter and photos below show, we were there. We trudged along. We chased after the story in the day and the night. We were on the front lines around the clock and a few of us suffered especially for our willingness to do our jobs and take extra risks.

http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-120520-nato-sequence-police-punches-pictures/#3

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2012/05/nato.html

Similarly, this story from the Guardian (UK) takes us out into the streets to sense the presence of Chicago’s violence and poverty and then goes on to make a larger point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/20/chicago-nato-g8-summit-inequality

But I so wish we were less distracted by the scene and more driven to hear the chorus waiting to talk to us.

Talk to me – cuente mi

steve@chicagoistheworld.org

from Columbia College Covers NATO

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang and Little Brother biking to fall soccer practice | photograph courtesy of my daughter Margot

by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, contributor
Oh no!

How did that happen?

I thought I took precautions! I was careful!

Grrr.

Biker’s tan.

You can always spot the bicyclists by that straight white line three to four inches above their knee and little white sock line around the ankle. I have been slathering on the sunscreen every day, trying (hopelessly) to stay fair and lovely (joke), but to no use. I know once that line forms, it is almost impossible to shake. Only two weeks into May and I am already marked. Everyone can see my secret.

As a kid, my bike was freedom. I biked to the park for ceramics class, I biked to ballet class, I biked to school, I biked to my Nai Nai’s house. I remember swooping in and out of the parked cars along Colorado Boulevard as I blasted downhill, signaling each swerve with my left hand, until my jeans invariably got caught in the chain, forever punctured with double stripes of oil (Sorry, Mom).

Then somehow, during awkward adolescence, I became embarrassed and hid with my bike inside the garage. I remember propping up the back tires on two paint cans and cycling inside the garage, where no one could see me. I have no idea why; it seemed to make sense at the time.

When I lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, bicycling made sense again. It was a way to get from one place to another. It was a way to stay independent. It was not like the bike geeks in their neon spandex biking 90 miles going nowhere. I especially loved not having to bargain or argue with taxi drivers who never wanted to take me all the way up to my house on the hill by the Russian Embassy. And I picked up some technique along the way.

I always wore a kurtha salwar (shalwar kameez in Hindi) or sari at the time to try to blend in a little better. What I did not realize was that I was still a girl out and about on my own. Not normal. I also wore a helmet. Really not normal. I was the only girl on a bike in all of Kathmandu. Totally not normal. And biking fast. Smile. I remember strangers telling me they saw me biking out by Tribhuvan University a full year after I had actually been there. I suppose I was quite a sight, elbows and knees in, head tucked down for speed, with two long braids and long flowing orange chiffon scarf flying behind me as I flew down that big hill from the university.

This year, my twelve-year-old daughter, Niu Niu, got strong-armed into biking to school with her friends on Bike to School Day. She did not want to do it and grumbled the whole way.

Because May is National Bike Month, my eight-year-old son, Little Brother, and I also started biking to and from school, and we have been having a blast. It means waking him up ten minutes earlier, and it means changing in and out of bike shorts and bike shoes twice a day (actually, yesterday I did not change and wore my bike shorts under my skirt to a lecture I gave at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); it seemed appropriate). We still need to ask our friend Kevin if he can teach us how to lube our bikes.

Every day I come home singing, “I love my bike, I love my bike, I love my bike.” Who would have thought?

May is also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

Having special months to celebrate the achievements and heritage of Asian Pacific Americans, to bike, to write poetry, and more may not seem like much, however, these months get folks excited, talking, and goading each other into action. I mean, I have been looking at my girlfriend Kate’s gorgeous Colorado mountain biking photos on Facebook for months, yet I did not get the bikes down from the rafters until my daughter “had to” bike to school with her friends.

In the way that an unexpected wink from a handsome man can be a catalyst to wink back and see what might follow, the results can be quite unexpected.

Shout out to Magnetic North and Taiyo Na and Heather Park for their new music video, “New Love.” Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Michigan and the Big Island of Hawaii. She is a contributor for New America Media Ethnoblog, Chicagoistheworld.org, PacificCitizen.org, and InCultureParent.com. She team-teaches Asian Pacific American History and the Law at the University of Michigan and University of Michigan Dearborn. She is a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her Web site at franceskaihwawang.com, her blogs at franceskaihwawang.blogspot.com and rememberingvincentchin.com, and she can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.

Running out to pick up flowers on Mother’s Day and what else?

But then I’m snagged by Frances’ essay that I start and can’t s stop (read the prior post from her here)

http://chicagoistheworld.org/2012/05/when-mother%E2%80%99s-day-goes-awry/

It’s about being a mother on mother’s day and the day’s meaning for a mother.

And that takes me in my head to a column this week by a young Columbia College student about her single-parent mother.

It ran this week in Hoy and it also stopped me. What a gift, I thought, to have such voices and voices that connect with your community. And what glue there is when you realize that this page is alive in a way that the best of journalism comes alive.

We need to see this life day after day.

Here’s the essay from HOY:

http://www.readoz.com/publication/read?i=1049418#page24

Let me know if you’ve produced anything on this day or any day that you think makes the same glue apply.

shukran

steve@chicagoistheworld.org

Big Brother Roland called today to see what my plans were for Mother’s Day and to ask if I wanted to join him and his family in case the children were not with me this day. He is always looking out for me and invites me every year.

I declined, as always, because I will be writing (and buying an iPhone). A sudden burst of inspiration and opportunity has me writing constantly these days, even in my dreams.

However, it does feel strange to realize that this will be the first time ever that I will not be able to be with my children for Mother’s Day. Their dad wanted to take them somewhere this weekend. No, it did not make much sense to me either, but we have this fight every year.

When I tried to dissuade him of it, he threatened to not let them compete in the Michigan Chinese Schools Storytelling Contest State Championships the weekend previous. So I had to choose.

Of course I chose the State Championships. Two children qualified for the State Championships and they had teammates depending on them. (Did I mention that Hao Hao won first place in the state this year? Awesome!)

I did not think it would be a big deal. Mother’s Day is just one day. The children and I show our love and appreciation of each other every day, so the actual date should not be that important. The children and I often celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter a day early to accommodate work, relatives, and travel plans. We often postpone M’s January birthday party until after finals. We certainly never get around to cleaning the house for Chinese New Year’s until…uhhh…ever.

And I am the queen of making the schedule work.

Besides, we always go out to dinner with all our friends after the State Championships, so I figured that we could just have that count as our Mother’s Day dinner. It would be more fun with friends in any case.

However, despite my rationalizations, I was surprised to discover how upset my children were. They really wanted to be with me on Mother’s Day.

Eight-year-old Little Brother sulked and complained to anyone who would listen about how unfair it was that he could not spend Mother’s Day with his Mother. I tried to explain to him about different calendars and schedules. Chinese Father’s Day, for example, is August 8 (In Mandarin, the date 8/8 sounds like “Ba Ba,” a homonym for father), so that is when we usually celebrate Father’s Day with my father. I told him that when I was teaching my Chinese class how to read a Chinese calendar, we discovered that the full moon (the 15th of every lunar month) was going to be on Cinco de Mayo this month, a weird cross-cultural coincidence. I even tried to convince him Star Wars Day “May the Fourth be with you” was the cooler day to celebrate. I told him how Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate any holidays at all because they believe every day should be a celebration.

He would have none of it.

Unfortunately, I forgot about kodomo no hi (Japanese Children’s Day) until after he fell asleep that night, although I doubt that he would have bought that either.

Whenever one of our “traditions,” however defined, goes awry because of scheduling or illness or some crazy thing, I always try to redefine that tradition for the children and to give them the skills to create something else to hold onto. Now the children are learning to do it for themselves.

Little Brother decided that he “had to” get me a doughnut for Mother’s Day. However, since he won’t be with me that day, he started walking the dog to the grocery store once or twice a week, every week for the past month, to get me (and him) an early doughnut for Mother’s Day. “I’m a big boy now.”

The children are agitated and I am aggravated. Still, there must be something we can salvage from this. Instead of trying to force my friend the MacArthur genius to go see “The Avengers” with me, I call my mom.

“Hi Mom.”

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Michigan and the Big Island of Hawaii. She is a contributor for New America Media Ethnoblog, Chicagoistheworld.org, PacificCitizen.org, and InCultureParent.com. She teaches and is a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her Web site at franceskaihwawang.com, her blog at franceskaihwawang.blogspot.com, and she can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.

Soon after they arrive, they struggle to adjust. So they seek links with those from back home. And they set up organizations to ease the pain, to renew the bonds and to help start life anew.

Again and again and again, this is the story of new arrivals in Chicago.

Marking a major meeting tomorrow, Saturday, May 12, of the United African Organization, here’s a story written by Ivana Hester,  a Community Media Workshop intern and Columbia College student.

How can you tell this story about your community?

Steve

By Ivana Hester

For many Africans making a new home in America is not easy.

The information needed to start a new life is rarely easily available.

As a result, the United African Organization has posed as a bridge between the gaps. They provide Africans with the resources needed to become successful in their newfound home.

Founded by Alie Kabba in 2005, the group’s Immigrant Family Resource Program has become a vital resource for newly arrived Africans here in Chicago. A 2007 count put the number of African-born residents in Cook County at about 35,000, but Kabba says the number is at least 40 percent larger today.

A Community In Need

The program gives voice to the growing community that was under served, according to Kabba. A survey by his group showed that many new arrivals lack basic information about basic resources, he said.

“The community was highly under served. At least 70 percent of the respondents did not know about the Illinois Department of Human Services,” he said.

“The UAO emerged in a time when there was an unprecedented growth,” he explains, adding that “more Africans arrived with in a decade here than any other period in U.S. history”.

The UAO unites several different African organizations under one umbrella creating a large and diverse community, which has helped create a bond between many different African cultures.

Uniting Africans in Chicago

Since it’s beginning, the organization has developed a number of programs along with a monthly newspaper, the African Advocate, a website, weekly English classes and public education events.

The annual Chicago summit on African Immigrants and Refugee, which has been going on for five years, has been a major way for the UAO to get the word out about their program.

No, they are adding something new to further keep the community connected.

The task has fallen to Tara Weinberg a young South African working for the UAO who has a passion for helping the African people. Her job is to give Africans here a voice as well as help curate their history.

She came to Chicago scholarship for a master’s degree at the University of Chicago. Growing up in South Africa during a time during its apartheid era, she was up fascinated by the idea of rebuilding the country.

She found the UAO at their yearly summit and coming from Africa as well, she says she was looking for some kind of home base.

Telling Their Stories

And so, she began her work with the UAO working on an Oral History Project in which she documents video footage of Africans in Chicago telling their history. The Africans will be featured telling stories about their journeys and explaining how their transition has gone here in Chicago.

She says, “History is important as an educational tool for students, schools and so on, but for history to reach beyond the traditional institutions and for it to become public history and involve the community and get people to think about their past and contribute stories. While also, learning about people within their own community. The Oral History Project opened up the door for people to do that.”

The Oral history Project has now branched off into a even bigger project which includes podcasts to be shared online as well as the video documentaries combined, all of which will be posted on a website for world wide access. This will help unite African’s all over Chicago while also helping the UAO to learn how their organization benefits others and what they can do to improve.

Tara says, “The aim is to raise funds to expand the project to interview a whole spectrum of immigrants across different education and class levels in Chicago.”

The payoff from these projects, she says, is to take it to schools, churches and community associations to educate the public about African immigrants. Hopefully, it will help dispel some stereotypes, she adds.

Ivana Hester is an intern with the Community Media Workshop

So when NATO’s hundreds of delegates and visitors gather here in the coming days before their summit on May 20-21, think how you can tell the story of your community and its global links.

If you are not sure, talk to me.

For example, take a look at this effort by the Community Media Workshop and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs  to tell Chicago’s story to the visiting journalists. chicagostories.org

Remember NATO is more than its 28 members. It includes dozens more friends of NATO nations.

NATO’s future in Afghanistan is an issue. NATO’s legacy in Libya may led it to Syria.

NATO’s umbrella over nearly all of Europe reaches far. It touches on the future of Bosnia-Herzegovinia and the economic troubles that has all of the continent somehow lashed together.

We are place as part of the global network as any and we should talk about that.

As a reminder of how global we are, consider the gathering on May 12th of Chicago’s African community, called together by the United African Organization. http://unitedafricanorganization.blogspot.com/

So, too Latino groups from across the US will be gathering here from May 17 to 19th for the National Latino Congreso. There’s no better time than now to write about Latino society, politics, business and immigration issues and how they tell the story of life here and in the US today.

Here’s a story from the GATE which talks about this unique gathering; http://www.thegatenewspaper.com/2012/05/chicago-to-host-national-latino-congreso/

If you want to cover the summit, hopefully you’ve acquired credentials for the diplomatic events. But if you haven’t you might consider looking at what’s happening in the communities and downtown. The story downtown may be a complex one and the Chicago Headline Club is putting on a workshop to help you think about your security and what laws you need to know to do your reporting.

Here’s the info.

Come to this workshop to learn about:

-          Safe places to report from along the protest route

-          What equipment to bring for emergencies

-          What to do and whom to call in case of arrest

Saturday, May 12, 9am-noon, Loyola’s Corboy Law Center, 25 E Pearson St. Room 105

Price:     $10 for members of CHC; $20 non-members

Registration is required for this event because space is limited.

Please visit www.headlineclub.org

Questions? E-mail chc.spj@gmail.com

steve@chicagoistheworld.org

How cool is it that a fifteen-year-old high school student carries a picture of a world leader in her backpack rather than Justin Bieber? | photograph courtesy of my daughter Margot 

by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

My fifteen-year-old daughter Hao Hao came back from school last week pretending to sniffle, “All my friends and even my teacher laughed at me.”

That was very much out of the ordinary, so I gathered her into my arms and asked, “What happened?”

She explained that they were talking about the Cold War during AP US History class, when the conversation segued to Putin and some of the things he did at the end of the Cold War.

This is when Hao Hao said, “I have a picture of Putin here in my bag,” and pulled it out to show everybody.

Instead of being appreciative of this instant handy-dandy visual aid, her friends asked, “Uhhh, why do you have a picture of Putin in your bag?”

“Well, he was on my wall next to my JFK poster, but then he fell off, so I put him in my bag,” she answered a little too straightly.

Her friends just stared, open-mouthed, wanting but not daring to ask the next obvious question, “Uhhh, why do you have a picture of JFK on your wall?”

Instead, her teacher simply declared, “You are certainly a unique individual.”

Hao Hao spent the rest of the afternoon puzzling over why her friends found all this so strange. I just smiled, secretly patting myself on the back for having raised such a, well, unique individual.

The irony is that for most of my childhood, I desperately longed to be “normal,” or to even understand what “normal” entailed. As a child of immigrants, I often conflated “normal” with “American” with “the right way” with what I saw on television, and I felt largely left out. I spent much of my childhood (ok, ok, and adulthood too) feeling foolish for getting caught doing things “the wrong way” when I did not even know that there was any other way, and I thought it was my fault for being obtuse and forever awkward.

So I try to make sure that my children at least know what counts as “normal,” even if we do not aspire to it. I give them as much information as possible so they can choose their own path rather than just defaulting to whatever is right in front of them (or simply doing the opposite because it is the opposite). However, I often find that they are much more insightful than I ever was—than I still am—they not only know what is “normal,” they also know what is “alternative,” as well as all the various “alternative alternatives.”

As a teenager, I loved reading Miss Manners and Ann Landers for the small window their readers opened onto “normalcy,” especially regarding issues that “normal people” would, of course, be too polite to say directly. As an adult, these windows come more infrequently, but when they do, the opinions revealed are much more surprising because the issues have been hidden away so deeply, sometimes even to that person herself.

There has been a lot of talk lately about unconscious racism. Toure wrote a provocatively titled article in Time, “Inside the Racist Mind,” about a woman who admitted she was racist and who said that racist thoughts kept popping into her mind unbidden, even though she knew it was wrong. Then, after the W.F. Kellogg Foundation’s America Healing conference, Psychology Today wrote that different health care due to doctors’ unconscious racism did not make them racist. What? Jezebel called out hipster racism as not ironic, just racist. Then Ashton Kucher’s unfunny brown-face Popchips commercial somehow came out without anyone asking, “Yo, is this racist?”

We all have biases and unconscious programming of various sorts, however, I am uncomfortable simply explaining it away, “I was raised that way.” That is too easy. Sure, there are lots of people raised by racists who then become racists themselves. However, there are also lots of people raised by racists (and sexists and homophobes and Republicans, etc.) who are not. What is it that makes some people choose a different path? We can be bigger than our programming.

Try it. Do you have to eat everything on your plate like your mother told you to? Or could you change if you wanted?

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Michigan and the Big Island of Hawaii. She is a contributor for New America Media Ethnoblog, Chicagoistheworld.org, PacificCitizen.org, and InCultureParent.com. She teaches and is a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her Web site at franceskaihwawang.com, her blog at franceskaihwawang.blogspot.com, and she can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.

When her company checked her social security number, it found out that it was not proper and she was let go. So were about 200 workers from the same plant.

What’s the heart of this story?

It’s a story that runs nowadays throughout the immigrant news media, but more so in the Latino news media which is larger and with great concern as well because of the large number of workers in the community without legal documents.

In the hands of La Raza reporter Fabiola Pomareda this story then becomes an explanation of government polices, of who speaks up for workers, of the economics of losing such a job on people with little recourse to good paying jobs and of the humanity of the people involved.

It is a two-page spread with fotos and links and it’s free as long you get to a box that still has a copy of La Raza.

How does she do this?

She explains the US government rule that requires companies to verify workers’ social security numbers and then, leaning on experts, explains the marked expansion in companies and workers cited for violations.

Next she goes to a community group which has rallied to the workers’ side and which raises issues that concern the workers and the larger community. What matters here is the link that has now been made in the article between the workers and the community.

While there’s a community group involved, the union that represents the workers doesn’t seem to have taken up on their behalf. She tries to reach the union but there’s no response. So there’s another story here: what does a union local do on behalf of undocumented workers. Does the union deserve their loyalty and their dues? Who is accountable for this?

Next she steps back to look at the bigger picture and what’s happening with what appears to be an increase in government actions against companies in these situations. Here she brings up an in-depth report indicating that such actions have been driving the undocumented further into dismay, poverty and the shadows across the country. She quotes an expert nationally and links to the article.

What we have here is a lesson in what happens when the ethnic news media does its job. It takes an issue close to the heart of the community, humanizes it and then proceeds to explain what is happening and why and what lies down the road.

This takes more work and patience for the usually incredibly understaffed workers of an ethnic news outlet. But ultimately these are small costs because without this, the ethnic news media will only shrink because it won’t matter as much as we hoped it would.

We are deeply lucky we have reporters that do this work.

http://www.laraza.com/Golpe_a_econom%C3%ADa_local

What art and poetry do to you in the springtime. L-R Evan Huang of BaoHaus Restaurant and Lisa Lee of ThickDumplingSkin.com at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit, Michigan. | Photograph by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, contributor.

A sudden cold snap has sent me scurrying for my Hello Kitty scarf and gloves. Hard to remember that only one month ago, I was splashing through puddles at balmy midnight, wearing a Hawaiian print skirt and flip flops.

A woman I see every morning walking to school growled about the cold this morning, and I, for some reason, sang out, “But it’s National Poetry Month! The sun is shining, the birds are singing.”

She was not quite sure how to respond.

On my way home, I found a stack of five free SAT and ACT and AP Calculus AB prep books on a neighbor’s lawn. A Tiger Mom score! Life does not get better than this.

So here we are, in the last week of National Poetry Month. A few more days to take the NaPoWriMo challenge of writing a poem a day. Last year, I was so impressed by all those poets who dared to publicly take the NaPoWriMo challenge, writing and publishing in real time, that this year I wanted to try, too.

I am not a poet. I just write essays. However, I am quite easily seduced by a good turn of phrase. (Hear that, Beau Sia? Oops, did I just say that out loud? Uh, just kidding! Uh, sort of…).

Now the sun is shining, the birds are singing.

I never really understood poetry. For years, I thought that there was something wrong with me, something lacking in my education, that I simply was not smart enough to “get” poetry. Finally, I went to the library and borrowed ten years’ worth of “The Best American Poetry” anthologies and read them backwards in time, one year at a time, hoping that by simple immersion, I could figure this poetry thing out. I read through the volumes, several poems a night, for weeks.

When I got to the tenth volume, published ten years before that day, I came across a poem about Szechuan chili peppers set in a Thai restaurant in Berkeley. The restaurant owner’s son was wearing a full Samurai costume and scowling at the customers. A Chinese gang sat making deals in the back. Huh? I searched for any possible way to turn this bizarre mishmash of images into something meaningful, something deep, something lyrical, and I realized that this was just the same old mixing up of random Asian American stereotypes that I see anywhere else. There was no magic. This poet was just a person like anyone else. His poetry might work for people with the same stereotype confusion. It did not work for me. (This is why ethnic studies is so important, Arizona!)

I stopped reading “The Best American Poetry” and found a book of Asian Pacific American poetry instead—which I understood, which made me laugh, which made me think, which did not offend. Then I started seeking out Asian Pacific American poetry and poets.

Slowly, I realized that the problem was not me, the problem was finding poems that fit me.

A few months ago, Little Brother’s second grade class all wrote poems entitled, “I am From.” His poem included this stanza: “I am from/ rice cooking,/ spam sizzling,/ hot cocoa spinning in the microwave,/ curry burning,/ and cookies baking in the oven.” Little Brother has already found that fit.

I have been teaching a class at Washtenaw Community College called “Finding your Voice,” and the key exercise is simply writing every day (a la Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, and Carolyn See). It does not have to be good. It does not have to be finished. It just has to be ten minutes (or three pages or 1000 words) every day.

Every day.

The amazing thing I always find is that as our writing becomes more honest, more in tune with who we are, we also become more honest, more in tune with who we really are. I like who I am so much better when I am writing every day. When I am too heartbroken or my head too cluttered to write, the rest of my life falls apart, too.

Did I mention that the sun is shining, the birds are singing? And I am writing.

How about you?

Note: April 26 is National Poem in your Pocket Day. Here is the poem I will be carrying around in my back pocket, Li-Young Lee’s, “Persimmons,” published in Rose (1986), which takes me right back to my parents’ persimmon orchard (we had both hachiya and fuyu persimmons)… 

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Michigan and the Big Island of Hawaii. She is a contributor for New America Media’s Ethnoblog, Chicagoistheworld.org, PacificCitizen.org, and InCultureParent.com. She is a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her Web site at franceskaihwawang.com, her blog at franceskaihwawang.blogspot.com, and she can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.

Here in Chicago, the immigrant stream is only at one end of a long line. Consider this Associated Press story and what might need to told here. If you do any reporting here on this, please let us know and let’s share your work.

Stephen

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Associated Press

McALLEN, Texas (AP) – An unprecedented surge of children caught trudging through South Texas scrublands or crossing at border ports of entry into the U.S. without their families has sent government and nonprofit agencies scrambling to expand their shelter, legal representation and reunification services. On any given day this year, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement has been caring for more than 2,100 unaccompanied child immigrants.

The influx came to light last week when 100 kids were taken to Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio for temporary housing. It was the first time the government has turned to the Defense Department – now, 200 boys and girls younger than 18 stay in a base dormitory.

While the issue of unaccompanied minors arriving in the U.S. isn’t new, the scale of the recent increase is. From October 2011 through March, 5,252 kids landed in U.S. custody without a parent or guardian – a 93 percent increase from the same period the previous year, according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Services. In March alone, 1,390 kids arrived.

“The whole community right now is in triage mode,” said Wendy Young, executive director of Kids in Need of Defense, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that matches pro bono attorneys with unaccompanied minors navigating the immigration system. “It’s important that the resources and the capacity meet the need, and we’re not quite there yet.”

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities in 10 states range from shelters to foster homes and have about 2,500 beds. Government-contracted shelters were maxing out their emergency bed space, setting up cots in gymnasiums and other extra spaces.

“It’s a much more limited set of services,” said Lauren Fisher of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, which helps children and their families navigate the system. “It felt something like a Red Cross shelter, a hurricane shelter.”

Unaccompanied children are first processed by the Department of Homeland Security, and then turned over to the ORR while the deportation process begins. Once in a shelter, the search begins for their relatives or an acceptable custodian, while nonprofit organizations try to match the children with pro bono attorneys. When a custodian is found, the child can leave the shelter and await immigration proceedings.

Eighty percent of the children referred to the ORR end up in a shelter, according to a report released last month by the Vera Institute of Justice – a nonprofit that developed a program to better provide access to legal services for children. The average shelter stay is 61 days, and the report found that at least 65 percent of the kids end up with a sponsor in the U.S.

The cause of the surge remains a mystery to child migrant advocates and government officials. The kids are coming from the same places as usual -Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico – and they offer the same range of explanations: they made the trek to look for parents already in the U.S.; they’re seeking economic opportunity to send money home; they want to escape violence or abuse.

“We’re talking to the children, but we don’t have one solid answer,” Fisher said. “There seem to be the same reasons that we’ve seen before.”

Some have suggested that human smugglers are more aggressively marketing their services. Others wonder if the Border Patrol, whose presence has doubled in recent years, is simply catching more of them. But Border Patrol apprehensions of children and adults were cut in half from 2008 to 2011, and only 5 percent of those caught are unaccompanied children. Younger children commonly cross with adult smugglers at the ports of entry, while older kids join groups that follow guides through the brush.

A South Texas woman told border authorities this month that the 5-year-old girl accompanying her at the international bridge connecting Hidalgo, Texas, and Reynosa, Mexico, was her sister, according to court records. She even presented a Texas birth certificate. But the girl couldn’t answer basic questions, so the woman told customs officers that she wasn’t related to the girl at all. She said that a man whom she worked with in Mexico offered her $2,000 to “cross” the girl – who was actually from Guatemala – and accompany her to Houston. The woman was charged with transporting an illegal immigrant.

This week, the first ladies of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala spoke at a three-day conference on unaccompanied minors in Washington, D.C. Mexico’s first lady, Margarita Zavala, and Honduran counterpart Rosa Elena Bonilla de Lobo noted that tougher U.S. border security made it more difficult for parents working in the U.S. to return for their children, a suggestion as to why parents increasingly would put their children in a smuggler’s care.

“The statistics are worrisome,” said Rosa Maria Leal de Perez, Guatemala’s first lady. “We’ve had 6,000 unaccompanied children repatriated in the last year.”

The Department of Health and Human Services limited its public statements on the unaccompanied migrant children program, but it allowed a few reporters to take a short tour this week of the housing at Lackland Air Force base. They were not allowed to speak with children.

The beige, nondescript four-story dormitory is located deep on the base. When children arrive, they are issued black duffel bags filled with clothing and are allowed two phone calls a week. Three-quarters of the children are boys, most between 14 and 17 years old.

Green cots were spaced two feet apart along the stark-white walls. A media room held a large flat-screen television and a video game console; there were also board games and an outside area with a basketball hoop and two soccer goals. The kids play outside for an hour each day.

“We are looking to add some educational features that are appropriate for a 30-day temporary program,” HHS spokesman Jesse Garcia said, though the goal is to move kids to more established accommodations within 15 days.

As of late Friday, 83 kids had already been transferred out of Lackland, most to permanent facilities. Nineteen had been reunited with family.

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Associated Press writer Paul Weber in San Antonio contributed to this report.

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