the jim crow south so their children could have more opportunity. group in washington d.c. and attended a fabulous high-school, the most important schooling experience i have had the a school for all boys and from there went to princeton i have been very lucky. i have led a very privileged life. >> host: next call from professor kennedy comes from of the land. you are on book tv's. >> caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i have two questions. barack obama and other white father was black but nobody talks about his white man's. why is that? and barack obama was not the only president to have negro

ancestry there were several others including jefferson and lincoln but nobody ever speaks about that. what about the president of the continental congress? he was a black man. could you speak to those issues? i would appreciate it. >> about barack obama ratio lineage, there has been some attention paid to that and a good many people who object to those like myself who called barack obama of black african american in some who say he should be called multiracial. his mother was white and his father was a black african and. i call barack obama according to what he says he wants to be called. he identifies himself as black and african-american in.

so that is how i describe him. it is a very important thing for him to describe himself as black that is an important decision that he made a good many years ago. i think his history would be different if he called himself lotto or multiracial , i had he had done that he would have a different profile am probably would have been seen differently by black people am particular. with respect to the second question about racial identity of other people who have been president, the fact of the matter is the question of who is white and who is black is a question and it up then sign it how you define who is black or white.

if you go back far enough may be all of humankind this effort can. said it began there then you could make the argument all americans are in some sense african-american it depends on how you want to define what you are saying obviously barack obama is the first person who view himself as black and that is the context i view him as the first black american. >> host: "the persistence of the color line" racial politics and the obama presidency" randall kennedy most recent book. winston-salem. >> caller: thank you for the program and i would like for him to speak kind the

issue of president obama, a politician in nine as to martin luther king as a leader. >> guest: it is very important to recognize people occupied different phases and have different missions. margin mr. king, jr. was then head of a wonderful and am perked -- important political social movement. he was a civil rights leader and a leader of the struggle and he occupied a certain role and he has certain responsibilities and a burden to carry eight when you occupy that role. as a policy issue occupy a different role.

you have to watch public opinion and if margin is 13, jr. was willing to go against you are the elected politician go over public opinion poll calculation is different winning and losing is defined differently when you talk about martin luther king, jr. and barack obama, these are men that occupy a completely different niche and you have to identify them differently 87 dr. kennedy will be joined by now irvin painter here at the campus of miami-dade. we will broadcast their talk in interaction on

booktv.org. that is about 10 minutes we have a few minutes left with randall kennedy. please go ed. >> caller: i have just finished reading your book and it is very interesting i enjoyed it. my first question is during the election it seems he had to encounter not only african-americans but columnists tried to make a division because his father was african born and wanted to treat differently from african americans and i seem to be going through the same situation as well. my friends are african american can you speak upon that?

also why did you decide to go to princeton 10 other than for wary resided? what is your reaction of zero the book of the occupy wall street move meant? only white americans seem to be suffering as well with financial aid and all of that. i would appreciate that and i also like your book i saw you last time i had to check out this book i am reading and again. >> host: thank you very much. >> guest: i appreciate you reading my book. first of all,, question number one, of black america is large and internally divided over various things.

many people in black america are immigrants from africa or the caribbean and there are certain tensions between than native-born black americans and black people who are immigrants from other place is. sometimes to the attention becomes rather ugly and use the a little bit of that in a commentary about barack obama truly a black american that his father was a black african as opposed to a black american. i think has subsided somewhat as the caller indicated that was a topic of conversation at all across the united states they deal with the attention but on a question why i went to princeton university, because my older brother went there and it was recommended to me and my

older brother suggested that i do. i am very happy i went there. it is wonderful. the third question on occupy wall street, very interesting. my sense of things is that to many black americans feel themselves to be in the grip of a dilemma. on the one hand many are feeling the real pinch of the continued economic difficulties. they feel it. at the same time a lot of them don't want to do anything to do with the president and a stand he cannot snap his fingers in everything changes in recognize he has influential

political adversaries so even though black america dense are hurting, maybe 13 quietly as the president's policies they don't want to be very public in their protest because they think that may hurt the president. >> host: o'quinn you have the last word. >> caller: i and stand that thurgood marshall has no black law clerks for the first four or five years he was on the supreme court. the second question is the census so identify african-american, black, neg ro or colored. would you comment on the industry shin listing that on a census form?

>> host: a first question is the stated thurgood marshall had no black clerics the first four or five years at. >> guest: that is true. i think it went beyond that it was probably longer than that. not purposely. no. thurgood marshall was quite a stickler as the boss an extremely exacting requirements for whom he hired as a law clerk. thurgood marshall had more black law clerks than any other justice. nonetheless he still had very few. for instance the year before i worked for him he had no black law clerks are when i was there. i was the only black law

clerk at the supreme court when i was there. justice marshall, mr. civil-rights was quite elitist in his hiring policies. and it he had very few black law clerks that is a part of thurgood marshall's history that frank leave has not gotten much attention but that is true. on the question of the senses, there is a lot of different ways that people can identify themselves and i think that is proper. in my writings for instance, i use the term black and african american and afro-american is. i also use the term negro. some people think that is antiquated.

i don't thurgood marshall use that term with a capital in in march to me 13 it used the term negro and debbie lee b. dubois use that term of it is good enough for them it is good enough for me. there is a wonderful organization the national association for the advancement of colored people, if colored was that bad of a term i suppose the naacp would make changes then. use the term colored i see nothing wrong with that term if you use it as a term of honor i see nothing wrong with it and i use all of those terms. >> host: that is the last word from our guest randall kennedy his most recent book "the persistence of the color line" racial politics and the obama presidency" . he will be joaquin 50 steps to chapman holla he will be joined by nell irvin painter wrote a book the history of

white people they will be talking about their respective books and academic work you can watch that online booktv.org live in just a minute or two but we will continue the call in here on booktv. recently as a new kid is out about immigrant high school kids in new york city. we will show you just a little bit of the presentation recovered earlier this year than she will join us here to take your calls. >> to discuss her new book and just to give a capsule summary a high school called the international high-school which specializes in the education of in a grit teen-agers and broke spent much time at the school chronicling a year in the life of its seniors.

she will to a reading later but i wanted to ask a few introductory questions. the first of which is that you are an experienced journalist. you have written a lot about hollywood and films. this is a subject matter far afield from that. hot you come to the subjects? been a person who led me to the international school is in the audience. we went to colleges together he was working at the international refuge committee agency helping to resettle refugees across the country. and at the time his car friend was doing volunteer work at the bronx international high school i heard about the school and became very interested in the idea of i school where kids come from 70 countries and speak 70 languages. . .

>> like barbara ehrenreich or adrienne nicole leblanc. you can tell from the depth of detail how much time was spent clerking, interviewing -- collecting, interviewing, recording, thinking. and so i naturally wondered how much time did you spend, how many days were you at the school, how many students did you interview? and how did you decide what was enough? >> right.

um, i don't know how i decided what was enough. i think that my desk decided what was enough because it was, basically, caving in with all of my notes. and i spent a lot of time at the school. i was there for an article that i wrote for frank wooden, editor at the city section of "the new york times", and i wrote an article about the prom at the international high school. so that was the first amount of time i spent there, a few months. and then i went back for the book and spent a year reporting, but then the following year i was still in touch with the kids, and then the following year i was still in touch with the kids and reporting until, you know, basically, it went to the prohibiter. so it was a -- printer. it was a lot of time, a lot of notes and my life was on hold, basically, until it was finished. >> at the international high school, something like 28 languages are spoken or were at least in the year you reported on. >> yeah. >> that must have been a reporting challenge for you. >> yeah. >> how did you dole what -- deal

with that? >> i took a lot of aspirin because i think the teachers can relate, it's really, really loud at the school. um, you know, it's loud at any high school, but when you hear 28 languages at once in the halls, it's just -- [laughter] it's amazing. so, um, the kids were a huge help to me because several of the students who i wrote about, um, were already very, very proficient in english and, of course, their native language, and some spoke several native languages. and they were translators to me. so anytime i ran into a translation problem, i didn't have to hire a formal translator, i just asked the kids. >> as -- how many students are there at that time? >> somewhere around 400. the school, um, had been in existence for, um, one -- for four years. now they're, i think, the fifth year. so the class, the student body

kept growing. but now i think it was the biggest class ever that was just accepted this year, and it's something around 400 students now, i think, right? >> how, among all those students, did you choose the ones that you would talk to and interview and then write about in your book? >> um, i had a question that i asked all of the teachers at the beginning of the year which was, when you go home at night, who are the students you can't stop thinking about? and, um, really the teachers led me to find these students. and one girl from china had written a college essay about coming to america. her very first week she was supposed to move in with her father who she hadn't seen in years, and when she got there on her first day, her new stepmother, basically, didn't want her there and kicked her out. and she was, when i met her, living on her own in a room that she represented in china town.

so for one english teacher, that was the student she couldn't stop thinking about when she went home at night, and every other student i basically found that way, except for a burmese girl who i found because i wanted to observe a new student, and i really just ran into her on the first day of school and sounded very interesting that she was the only person in the whole school who spoke her language. no one else did. so i thought she would be an interesting person to follow. >> and back live at the miami book fair. it's a street fair this weekend on the campus of miami-dade college, and here's the book, you just saw brooke hauser talking about her book in brooklyn, "the new kids" is the name of the book. and now joining us here in miami on our outdoor set is the author, brooke hauser. brooke hauser, what is the international high school? >> the international high school is a high school in brooklyn that, um, teaches english to new immigrants and refugees from are

around the world. so at this school kids come from more than 45 different countries, and they speak more than 28 different languages. basically like the world under one roof. >> how did you find this story about the new kids? because this is a narrative. >> yes. um, well, i had a friend who was working at the international rescue committee which resettles refugees around the country, and i was looking for volunteer opportunities because in addition to my more investigative journalism, i do a lot of celebrity profiles, beyonce, mariah carey, and i wanted to do something really different. and i thought i'd volunteer my time. i heard about a program where you could work with refugee youth at one of these international high schools. the more i learned about the school, the more i decided, you know, this is something i really want to write about these kids, not just volunteer. so i found a high school that was in my neighborhood in prospect heights and, you know, went over there and spent some time. >> host: and when did you get the idea to write their story? >> guest: well, it started with

an article that i wrote for "the new york times" called this strange thing called prom. and i wrote about the kids putting on their first-ever prom. they're brand new to the country, they had no idea what prom was. and, you know, that made the planning of it very difficult. and they basically studied for prom the way you or i might have studied for a chemistry exam. they would watch a movie like "mean girls" and say, okay, i get it, prom king, prom queen, you know, this is how you do prom. so i followed them for the few months that they were organizing it, and in the end it was unlike any prom i'd been to or heard of, and the most popular girl was a goat herder from tibet. these kids were so charming, i fell in love with them. i knew from that point on i'd only scratched the surface, and it would make a great book to go back to the high school. >> brooke hauser, were they trying to be americans through the prom? >> some were and some with respect. when you have kids coming from more than 45 different countries, you get a whole range

of, you know, what it means to be american and what it means to assimilate and if people even want to assimilate. some of the students, you know, immediately started changing their dress and would wear, you know, designer jeans and converse sneakers. other kids, you know, from bangladesh, say, would continue to wear their head scarves, so it really depended on the culture how much they wanted to adjust. >> host: what was the kids' reaction to your following them around and writing their stories? >> guest: most of the kids were very open. um, you know, i found the five kids who i followed by asking their teachers when you go home at night, who are the students that you can't stop thinking about. and i found all sorts of different kids that way, but for one teacher that was a chinese girl who was supposed to come live with her father after seven

years of not seeing him. when she got to new york, she found that he was remarried and had two little boys with his new wife, and the stepmother kicked her out of the apartment, would not let her live with them. so when i met this girl, she was living on her own in new york city. >> host: and what was her name? >> guest: her name was jessica. >> host: right. >> guest: you know, it really ranged, the kinds of students who i found. but that was how, that was how i found a coup l of the students, and i also found them by reading their college essays. >> host: 202 is the area code that talk to brooke hauser about the students she followed in new york city, 624-1111 if you live in the east and central time zones, 624-1115 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can also send a tweet, twitter.com/booktv. brooke hauser, which language -- was english used as the teaching language in this school? >> guest: yes.

the goal is for the students to learn english, but the executive director of the international network for public schools which oversees many of these high schools in new york and a couple in california, she likes to say that learning english is kind of like riding a bicycle. you don't learn by watching someone else riding it, you learn by getting on. so these students are really thrown into learning english. they're brand new to the country, you know, they're put into classes where the lessons are being taught in english, but they have training wheels, and those training wheels are their native languages. so students work in groups. there might be a kid from senegal in the same group as a kid from haiti. perhaps they share a common language of, you know, french because creole has its roots in french. and, you know, the students are able to tutor and help each other so the ones who are more proficient in english are able to coach the ones who need more help. they're learning english all of a sudden, all at once, but they have these different support structures in place to make sure

that they don't fail at it. >> host: were there any concerns, did you have any concerns seeing these kids, weren't they kind of isolated from the larger american kid population? >> guest: definitely isolated in the school in that there were no american students at this school. to be eligible to get into the high school, you have to havelied in the united states -- lived in the united states for fewer than four years, you have to be from another country, and you have to have failed an english language assessment exam in order to get in. so, um, you know, people have different opinions about whether this model works. i, i felt it was very successful and, you know, as different and diverse as the students were, they were all in the same boat in that they were all brand new to the country. and that rule got a lot of teasing and taunting that comes along with being brand new to a place, especially as a teenager. if you have a different accept or a different way of -- accent or a different way of dressing. >> host: what were their

parents' reactions to your writing the story? >> guest: the parents, you know, you'd asked me about the students and how they felt, and i basically really -- i found the students by asking their teachers that question, but then i narrowed it down by looking for kids who really wanted to talk to me. it wasn't enough that i found their stories interesting, i wanted them to find my project interesting, to know that they would be with me for the long haul. and so the students who came to me and who were interested in sharing their stories were pretty much as committed to the book and telling their story as i was. and for the most part, so were their parents, if they came here with parents. one thing that really surprised me was how many students had made the journey to the united states alone. and even one boy who i write about in the book from sierra leone, the way he came here is a little more complicated, but when i met him, he was basically on his own and had been since the age of 14 or 15. so the parents weren't always in

the picture. but he did later have a legal guardian -- >> host: was that mohamed? >> guest: yes, it is. yeah. so, you know, all of the kids i had them sign release forms or had their parents sign release forms or their legal guardians. someone was, you know, protecting them, and so was i. it was very important to me -- >> host: how did mohamed get into the country? >> guest: how did he get into the country? he came here with a church group, and, um, you know, the understanding was that he was supposed to live in connecticut for a certain amount of weeks, and he did, and he adjusted well, and, um, you know, i don't want to give away his whole story -- >> host: sure. >> guest: basically, he had come from one of the poorest places in the entire world, sierra leone, specifically a rural village. he grew up in a mud hut with no running water or electricity. more than 20 children, his father had had a few wives.

and when he came to connecticut, i think he really felt that he, you know, he was happy there for a while and, um, like i say, you know, his story takes some twists and turns, but, um, he never did go back to sierra leone. when i met him, he was living in new york city working for some african glue makers which was not his choice exactly. so he had a very twisted, complicated journey here and, um, since, you know, he has attended the school, he's really succeeded, excelled, and he's now on a four-year scholarship. one of the hardest working kids i've met. >> host: do most of the kids stay in the u.s. afterwards? are most here legally? >> guest: most are here legally, yes. most of the kids are here as, you know, legal immigrants or, um, refugees. that said, 15% of the senior class the year i was there was

undocumented, and in this country we had a 1982 supreme court case which ruled that students, regardless of their legal status, have the right the go to public school and get a free public education. so it's scary to see that challenged now, and i think that whatever your feelings about undocumented immigrants in this country, it's hard to argue with, um, you know, the advantage of educating all children. because a lot of the kids, um, are going to stay anyway. so the question is, do you want them to be contributing, valuable members of society or not? and if you do, education is very important. >> host: "the new kids" is the book. "big dreams and brave journeys at a high school for immigrant teens." tracy nicole here in miami, you're the first call for author brooke hauser. >> caller: hi. good afternoon. it's such a pleasure to have you both here in miami. welcome to our city.

as you can see, um, you know, we're a very multicultured city full of people from different places, and i wanted to ask brooke, first, i want to congratulate her on her project. i think it's going to be a fundamental piece of work that can be utilized all around in different educational institutions. my question was how you feel from the time you experienced high school to what you experienced writing the project, the book and the difference in how you forecast the future of education in the 21st century of america? >> guest: um, you know, this book isn't really about education per se, and i'm not an education expert, but i would love the see more of these high schools, um, set up. it's not the specific -- if not the specific model then, you know, i think there's a real problem in addressing the needs of new immigrants who are also

learning english. i grew up in miami, actually, and, um, miami as you pointed out is a city of, you know, very multicultural city. i went to school with a lot of kids from cuba and from haiti and everywhere. and, um, i lived in new york and l.a., and it was recently news that those cities, big cities are not meeting the needs of english language learners. and, um, you know, they're treated as a relatively low priority in the public school system, and i think that's largely because, you know, they don't -- not all the kids have voices yet, and if they don't have voices, the parents don't have voices because they may not speak english. i think it's important to give all kids a great education, and that's what i would like to see, better programs and schools for the kids who need it most. >> host: with so many

nationalities represented at the school in brooklyn, were there tensions between kids from different countries? >> guest: yeah, definitely. you know, one of the ones that always comes to mind, and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't too bad, but, um, tibetan students and chinese students. the whole reason that a lot of the kids and their families lefty bet in the first place was because they were not able to fully practice their culture, their custom, their language, their religion, um, you know, under chinese government control. so, um, here step into the cafeteria at the international high school, and there are still tensions among those groups, between those groups. and i remember one day a flier was passed out to advertise an upcoming meeting of the tibetan unclub, and the chinese boys said, nah, don't go to tibetan club, come to chinese club first because tibet is inside of china. and that really fired up some of

the tibetan kids, things like that do happen. >> host: pearl, you're on with author brooke hauser on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: hello. fabulous book. i would like to know if you have any tips for teachers and professors about how these teachers handled the perspective view of students, especially where students had very different perspectives. when i was the head of an english department at a college, i had teachers who were, became very concerned about students who wrote papers ranting and raving about the goth. government. and i would interview the students and find they're not talking about washington, they're talking about the eastern bloc country that they've just come from. so how did these teachers handle that? were students -- where students literally did not have what we would call an american perspective on certain cultural

or historical experience cial issues as yet. thank you. >> host: thank you, pearl. >> guest: well, that's a good question. and, again, the thing that immediately comes to mind, i was there 2008-2009, the year that barack obama was elected president. and that was fascinating for me because, um, the kids didn't quite grasp the significance of this moment in america's history, the moment that a black man becomes president, why that was such a huge deal in the united states. and that's because a lot of the kids were coming from haiti or, you know, western africa, places where they've always had or for a long time have had black leaders. so some of, you know, the students didn't, they didn't have the same perspective, same point of view as some american-born kids would have. and the way that the teachers seemed to handle it is they just shared their own experience. so the teachers told their students why it was so significant to them personally to see a black man elected president. and they took it one step farther, and they said, you

know, i'm going to vote tomorrow, and here's how you vote. you go to, you know, your local school or church, and this is what you do, and this is how you do it. this is why it's important to vote. and so i think that's the way the teachers handled different points of views and perspective is that they shared their own. >> host: some of the kids go on to college? >> guest: many of the kids, most of the kids go on to college. and that was one of the things that was most impressive to me about the school was, you know, the kids are mixed together in classes no matter their nationality, religion, education, background. you get kids who are coming from, a minority coming from, perhaps, a boarding school in china. then you get a kid from maybe sierra leone or guinea who's never held a pencil before the ninth grade. and no matter where the kids have come from, they really make strides at the high school. and i mentioned the nomadic yak herder before -- >> host: the prom queen. >> guest: the most popular girl at prom. [laughter] and that same girl, she was, she arrived here -- i don't love the

term illiterate, but she arrived here not knowing how to read or write. and, um, she is now at an excellent liberal arts college, and that just shows, you know, how hard she worked in four years. and so, you know, many of the kids go on to college. >> host: did the teachers there volunteer the work at this school? is are they assigned? who tease the principal? -- who's the principal? >> guest: well, the original principal is actually an immigrant herself from ecuador and, you know, her story's very interesting to me because as a child she came here, herself undocumented. since then she's become -- you know, she's here legally, of course, but her story was very interesting to me. she was so passionate about the school. she has such a moving story herself, and the students really looked up to her. so as far as how teachers are recruited, you know, in this all different ways. they have all different backgrounds. many of them are young, many of them speak different languages.

but there is much of a hodgepodge in some ways as the kids are. >> host: are you still in contact with some of the kids? >> guest: yes. um, i was invited to give the 2011 commencement speech at graduation which was a very moving moment for me. and so i saw one of the boys from sierra leone graduate and several other kids who i know. and then, of course, there's facebook, so -- [laughter] i have way too many, you know, teenagers who are my facebook friends. >> host: brooke hauser is who we're talking about with. this is her first book, "the new kids." brookehauser.com is her web site. she also writes or has written for "the new york times", the miami herald, the l.a. times and was an editor for premier magazine for a long time. now what kind of writing are you doing? are you working on another book? >> guest: well, i need to find another subject that i love as much as this one, and i intend to. >> host: do you have some in mind? >> guest: you know, i have a few

ideas, but nothing, nothing that is sticking quite yet. so i'm really on the lookout. if you have ideas for me, let me know. [laughter] >> host: you say you grew up here in miami? >> guest: i'm from miami. >> host: right. where'd you go to school? >> guest: miami killian senior high school. >> host: and college? >> guest: kenyan college in ohio. >> host: and english major? >> guest: american studies, yeah. a little bit of everything. >> host: how did you get into the writing business? >> guest: um, well, it started with "the miami herald". i went to an enormous public high school, and that had one of the advantages was that they had some internship programs that you could do outside of the school, and so i started at the miami herald and, you know, covered the city and really found a love for journalism and kept at it. >> host: robert in brooklyn, home of the international high school. robert, go ahead with your question. >> caller: yes. i have a quick question about the school system. what, um, who's paying for the school system for these, for the

non-english-speaking children that are immigrants? and be, um, is that going to come out of my tax money to pay for this free education that american citizens can't get? >> guest: well, american citizens can get a free education. you know, every american is supposed to get a free public education as i was mentioning with this filer v. doe case. and the international high school, you know, the one i was at is funded by the department of education, but they also get a lot of, um, outside grants and support from other organizations. so, you know, as i said before, it behooves our country to educate all children. you don't want a bunch of uneducated, um, children. i mean, that's not the preference. the preference is for us to have contributing, valuable members of society regardless of legal status. >> host: next call for brooke hauser comes from mike in

hawaii. go ahead, mike. >> caller: thank you. brooke, i just wanted to ask with your school, this new school, what is the percentage of kids that come from china or from the different countries, and also if school is taking advantage of new technology in, like, presenting material, like on youtube or other material that has been, um, put out, and there seems to be a resistance from a lot of public schools to use that because they feel it might replace the teacher. and i just wanted to ask if this school could take advantage of this, you know, technology that wasn't available, let's say, 10 or 15 years ago. >> sure. well, um, as for the percentage

of students, there are a lot of students from china, from the dominican republic, you know, so many different countries are represented. those are, those are big populations. same with haiti. and regarding the technology, um, i think that the teachers and stuff are always looking for different tools, you know, to teach the students. and, you know, at this school in particular there's a documentary club. so the kids are involved in film making and, you know, with kids who are learning english, i think it's very important to take advantage of all the different tools that are out there, um, you know, art class, for instance. when you don't speak the language, um, what a great thing to begin with, you know, drawing and painting and expressing yourself without words first and then gradually becoming comfortable enough to begin using those words. technology, i would say, i would think at any school there's just the question of whether there

are funds for that. >> host: we have a few minutes left with brooke hauser. again, brookehauser.com is her web site. membershipty in franklin, tennessee -- mindy in franklin, tennessee. good afternoon from miami. >> caller: good afternoon. brooke, thank you for doing this book. i am a retired english teacher, and i taught in california public schools, so i know about a multicultural classroom. i also recognize that when the -- [inaudible] is expected in the classroom, kids have an easier time to learn. my question for you is this, did you find in the schools in new york that students from the english-speaking caribbean who speak a kind of dialect were regarded as, um, positive students of the school? did you meet any of those students? >> guest: as, as what kind of students at the school? >> host: mindy, we didn't quite catch that. >> caller: oh, the students from

the english-speaking caribbean who speak a dialect of english. >> host: a dialect of english. >> guest: a dialect. >> caller: were there any at your school? an english creole. >> guest: oh, yeah. well, there were kids -- a creole of english? the one that comes to mind, of course this area of brooklyn is full of people from the caribbean, but when you say a creole of english, the one that comes to mind is creole, actually, from freetown in sierra leone. and, you know, that, that was interesting. the boy from see sierra leone se a west african language and also creole, and it might be just as hard to learn standard english when you grow up speaking creole was the words are so similar -- because the words are so