>> should september 20, 2010, isabel wilkerson spoke with us about her best-selling book "the warmth of other sons the epic story of america's great migration." quoting from the interview, the book is about the migration experiences of three people who became representative of the larger whole, which was essentially the defection of 6 million african americans from the south to the north to the midwest and the west from 1915 in world war i until 1970 when the south begin to truly change. >> on this episode available on the apple or wherever you get your podcast.

♪♪ good afternoon and welcome to the 36th annual planning board printers row lit fast. please help me thank our sponsors for putting on this event. [applause] before we begin we ask that you silence your cell phone and turn off all camera flashes. the restrooms are down to my

right past the elevator and when we do question and answer at the end of the presentation, i will bring a microphone to the stand and we ask that you come up there soam the questions are clr on the videotaping. with no further ado i want to introduce the author coming-of-age in america and she will be in conversation. thank you so much. [applause] thanks, everyone for coming. welcome. i'm a senior producer with wbz radio, thet local npr affiliate. and as you heard with me is the author off refugee high and also with us as the director of the english language learners

department at sullivan high school and also sam who is a former sullivan high student. thanks for being here. >> thank you. we are going to start off with a short reading from refugee high. so if you may have already read it or may be familiar with the story. to some of you may not know the story behind itre but essentialy it is about the school in rogers park which has i think almost half the studentll body are foreign born, immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers from all over the world so this is the stories about the community found. ellie is going to kick us off

with a brief reading to give you a sense of what the story covers. >> thhello, everyone. so happy to be here. so, amongon the folks i met at sullivan obviously are sarah and sam that i follow for students in the book from different corners of the globe. one is from guatemala, one is from iraq, one is from myanmar and another from the democratic republic of the congo. if you follow their stories ovr the course of a single school year as well as sarah's among others but what i thought i would read today is the introduction of a young woman. these are all pseudonyms. she is the young woman, a sophomore at sullivan from emr

-- myanmar. she passes memories of the life she narrowly escapes and counts down the days until she turns 18. she has 408 to go but that's close enough to keep her in good spirits. she and her mother rarely speak and when they do, she curses her daughter f and the school offers distraction. inside a sullivan she walks past quotes painted next to each classroom. the american dream is being able to follow your calling and one from dr. seuss, fink left him to think right anded think low and think hi. the things you can think of a fully you try. acf navyet blue lockers with a bright yellow s insignia painted above them into below, the black and brown floor dampened the

optimism advertised on the wall. the deteriorating first floor bathroom marked by a concrete slab [inaudible] it's there in the room that the 16-year-old will station herself and take dozens of self easy and spend hours posting photos and enhancd with filters with portraits to instagram and keeping up with ongoing flirtations with a slew of boys on facebook messenger. she's been talking to a boy in boston who claims he carries a gun and runs with a crew. his profile picture has the logo and their name with a lightning bolt for the sea. though she's never been particularly interested in school, she looks forward to starting her sophomore year at sullivan. at the school she can watch youtube tutorials on make up looks andpi catch up on social media gossip and make plans to

watch scary movies and get a ride to the mall, drink diet cokehe and eat soggy pizza. ever since she began fighting with her mother, the girl refuses to eat at home. most days meals provided at school are the only ones she eats. at sullivan, she can be allocated. six months ago the teenager thought she would never get that chance again. so that is one of the four students that we follow in the book. >> thanks so much. so where i want to sort of get started here is you describe the schooling and where she is but i want to go before that before you walk into sullivan back to 2016, 2017 on what's happening in the world at this time that

leadser you to seek out local refugee stories. >> this does go all the way back to 2017. i've known these guys a long time now, very much part of each other's lives now at this point whether they wanted that or not. i first began w this project afr attending a protest after donald trump was inaugurated in january, 2017 and one of his first executive orders was signing a travel ban from seven majority muslim countries and when i was at the airport where this protest was happening, i just wondered to myselfun who ae these refugeet families arriving and what do their lives look like here. that quickly led me to sullivan because i've always been interested in the lives of young people and when you think about young people you think about

school. and as you mentioned in your lovely introduction, almost half the students are refugees or immigrants into so as soon as possible walked in the door to me to sarah for the first time, i was completely overwhelmed by the scene that i saw you that the languages and the visual languages of flags and different fashions from all over the globe and i thought this was a place that there are many stories to tell him i want to figure out what they are. >> so you mentioned meeting sarah. who else did you mean to? >> i think i spent a lot of time in sarah's h classroom at first and she had to get me out and give me the green light before i started meeting students. that was veryce purposeful. she takes great care of her students and i also was aware i was an outsider walking into a classroom with kids of all different experiences including

very serious trauma and i didn't want to encroach on anyone before they kind of knew who i was and got familiar with my face, so sarah had me play some of her typical classroom games, one called hot seat which now i've put you end up here so it all comes full circle where i sat in front of the class with a big jar of candy. i don't think you were in that class but i met you around the same time. your sister was innd that class. kids were encouraged to ask me questions and as a reward then i would answer and throw them a piece of candy and slowly he had just started to build familiarity in relationships with kids and then it kind of unfolded from their.

a. >> she said you had to assess her. this journalist rolls up to your school, what is your reaction? >> i'm a little nervous about the microphone now because -- can everybody hear me? [laughter] a so i told ellie over and over and tell people allat the time what is entertaining to you all is our real lives. so t you come in and want to yer our stories and think it's so fascinating to me to kids from all over the world who speak these different languages and have had all these different experiences, trauma or otherwise and it can be very exciting to hear especially if you just live in your own little bubble in chicago. you can be swept

up in the moment of meeting somebody that's experienced this. she's talking about being at the airport. we both knowe a kid whose family sold everything in turkey, got on the airplane, sold their clothes and everything, got on the airplane, came to chicago and they were stuck at the airport the day donald trump closed everything and they had to fly back to turkey but they had no apartment, no clothes, no car, nothing so it's exciting for people when they meet students or people that have experienced these things but i was regularly reminding what is new is it exciting to you is our real lives, so what are your intentions and what are you planning to do and how will you tell our stories because it isn't always entertaining. it doesn't always feel good.

i say we meaning community partners, agencies or teachers we go home at night and carry that stuff t with us and we take all those things home with us and try to find a way to compartmentalize and shut it down so we can have our regular lives. if there are four questions you're never allowed to ask someone in america and so i was always teachingg my students thy come from cultures where you don't ask questions. the teachers give you the andrmation that you need it's rude to ask a follow-up question or for clarification and in general the kids are shy about their language and the cultural differences so i was constantly putting people in the hot seat and forcing my students to ask questions except for four questions you're never allowed

to ask. who did you vote for, how much emmoney do you make, how much do you weigh and how old are you. those are inappropriate questions in our culture. >> itshe said don't ask any womn in america how old are you. >> also dating advice. she saved your life with that advice. >> can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, where you came from and how you ended up at a sullivan? >> my dad is from lebanese, beirutut and when the war startd we went to egypt and lived there for like three years and four months exactly then we studied their, started work and

everything. egypt started having problems so one day my dad received a phone call it was from a church and they said we would like to see you because they are ready to leave to chicago. my dad didn't believe the phone call and hung up and said someone is playing a game with me so he hung up the phone and they called again and again for three days. so we went for the meeting and everything and then from there we started the process and came as refugees. >> so you get to chicago, get enrolledre in a sullivan. before that what was your first impression of chicago, what was going on in your mind? >> right away to the house they rented for us it was apartments allu, the way like a bad shape

house but we had to because i told you like in my country my dad we had everythinghe we want but then with the war we lost everything. my dad had to dealerships and lost them. when i get here after two weeks right away they send me. >> it's been a million years since i've been in school but i know the most nerve-racking moment is the night before your first day of school. that's for any kid let alone someone coming to a new country starting at a new school. what was going on in your mind the night before. >> the night before were the night beforee i got here? >> the night before sullivan. >> i can tell you i couldn't fbelieve i could make it. first is the language. when i came here i speak only

arabic.h. in my country the second language is french but i don't know french that much. when i came here everybody's just speaking english into some and somepeople speaking spanish. i hear people -- before we talk about school we have to talk about the first two weeks here in chicago. i walked down my apartment going down the street to find somewhere to buy a car to to turn on my phone. i come up to the guy and i swear i can't talk to him he kept looking at me like what do you want. i have my finger on the phone and he's like i cannot help you. i'm like okay and then i go back home. i couldn't get a card for my phone. the day beforee, i get to sullivan, i was talking to my sister and told her like how cas we make it we just came here. it's a different culture, different language, different people. there's too many things that are different. how are we going to deal with

it. it was hard for me but when i came to sullivan it is a way tudifferent story. a. >> do you remember meeting sam? [laughter] >> i think i'm going to leave. [laughter] >> t.i do. he had v his sister were placedn the same class, so i remember meeting both of them. >> what were your first impressions? >> first impressions he was actually very quiet and he just kind of stood there. a 24 hours later he was no longer quiet and hasn't stopped talking since. [laughter] but first impressions, this is just another guy. he's going to learn english and inlife will be great. >> so you lead the english language department. there's over 40 languages spoken and you will hear on any given day arabic, french, english, et

cetera. sam had mentioned he was nervous about the language. so what does communication look like?bu >> it's funny because we did and even a couple days ago and i made the audience participate in an activity to show them what we do with all these different languages it's just like what you see up here it's lots of smiles, lots of hugs, high-fives. it's a lot of using your body to point at things or charades. i'm pretty well known for my awful drawings on the board. it's a lot of pictionary. also sam mentioned one of the first things he did is try to get a sim card. he's not alone in that. no matter how little they have or how much they are struggling, they have a cell phone and that

is one of the first things i noticed. technology is absolutely part of the book as well and it's this amazing way young people stay connected with their home countries and communities but also how they communicate with each other like one of the nicknames that maybe i gave it is the google translate school because i always saw kids like sam who wanted to talk to their classmates from let's say the congo, anywhere or wanting to flirt or share music and google translate. i had no idea how advanced it had gotten. you take a picture and it translates it let alone what you want to say and then communicating. so, one of my favorite things i would see inside the holes is kidsds kind of flirting with eah

other through google translate and how things would get just a little bit scrambled in the most beautiful, wonderful ways. so, i think even though that's not what the teachers are doing that's one of the things i saw is how communication happens like with all teenagers. a. >> a teenager is a teenager anywhere. >> inan the book you focus on fr students that go to the school. in the way we arere introduced o them we learn about them as people and who they are before we read in the learn about the burdens they carry or the trauma that they may have experienced. why was that important to you as you are writing the story? >> i mentioned earlier i was aware that these kids carry heavy burdens and come from all different kinds of backgrounds into situations but also look at

this young man. they are not defined by that. they are multifaceted people. they get here and they are trying to buy a sim card to text their friends. they are teenagers ifas i wanted to understand who they were in the school that day and who they were as teenagers first because in my mind, and this is something we certainly talked about throughout the process like what i was seeing was stories of resiliency not simply of hardship. so much of that i feel like is often not necessarily overlooked, but a lot of stories about refugee narratives do focus on the flight and the hardship and i wanted to tell a different kind ofci story and tt honestly grew directly out of what i was seeing in sullivan. the memories i have while reporting the book when sam was there seeing him dancing with

his friends and plugging in his phone when eventually he got his card whichy i'm sure didn't take him long and putting on his favorite songs and all the boy is starting to dance together and pulling in their classmates at school events like there is an event they do every year called refugee thanksgiving and you brought this incredible architectural i always mispronounce it, tell me. the rice, the inverted risa bish. i mispronounced at the other night and i was trying not to do it again. those were the things i wanted to highlight and celebrate as much as telling of course the stories of the culture they came from and the places that they fled and their journeys to chicago and to sullivan. >> as journalists we often deal with the ethics of reporting

young people's stories and kids. you mentioned part of how you build trust was this hot seat game where they got to ask you questions. how else were you building trust with the students the end of the faculty that were protective understandably of the school. how were youut navigating gettig them to trust you with their stories?ng >> we just took it really slow and a lot of it before i ever took out my recorder or did formalizedn interviews i just wanted to have conversations with people and even the teachers. i wanted them in the same way encouraging students to ask questions and in her classroom i wanted them to feel like they had agency and they could ask me questions and i also tried to make it as clear as possible they could raise their hand at

any point and say if they were uncomfortable or if there was something they didn't want included in the story. over three years which is how long i was working b6 i want to make it clear it was a book. a notable game things like that just making sure they understood i was att work and they didn't feel taken advantage of were important throughoutsr the process. a. >> from what you are saying you spend a long time there.

how are the kids responding to you? how are you responding to this journalist in your class? >> she's always there before us and leaves after us. i ask one day like do you live here, are you going to graduate from here. a. >> i did get filtered into a freshman assembly once and said thank you i think. [laughter] can youtu share a memory you are hanging out at the school for ages. can you share something that stuck out to you that he was all or experienced whether it was your own experience with the student or observing the faculty interacting with them or each other? >> one of my favorite scenes in the book and one that i almost wasn't there for was sarah's 30

something birthday party. a. >> we don't talk about age of here. but i think she called me the day before and she's like i'm pretty sure the kids are going to throw me a birthday party. i think you should be here for it. and i actually it was sam's sister who was one of the main organizers, another one of my favorite people on the planet and this incredible they got sarah out of the room so they could throw a surprise party, which i don't know is that a very american thing, a surprise party? >> we surprise people with birthdays s and stuff. put him on the spot like can you tell us about the rest of the

world. >> that's strong journalism. [laughter] so she planned it out, she's very organized and they had written a sign that said happy birthday and everyone had brought the dishes from home like somalian pastries and -- you are not going to set me up to fail again. and sarah's favorite food is diet coke and chocolate so that was in ample supply as well and -- >> remember the birthday card? >> i was just getting to that. the amazing thing every student in the class and may be from several classes made a handmade book -- >> i was talking about the poster board and the shape of a diet coke can and it was all drawn with a diet coke font and everything. >> if you see a diet coke you know sarah isn't far.

but as her gift, they made her this beautiful book where every drew her picture that wasri a scene from their home country and it became -- i remember they presented it and ith was thick like a foot tied together with string and it was like a travel log of all the places they had fled and at the memories they wanted to share with her and it really was one of the most beautiful moments that i saw and now one of my favorite scenes in the book. >> that tells me a lot about how the students see you. i didn't do that for my teachers in high school.ab you mentioned they called her miscue and sometimes mom. >> ihe can tell you about that.

from my side, i can't talk about other students but i can tell you we always talk to each other about it but when i came to school, sarah wasn't only a teacher, not because she's msitting here, i would say it o everybody, to my family, for me she was a friend, sister, mom, teacher, helper, everything. she helped me with my court date. she called my lawyer. i had a speeding ticket. she helped me with that, she helped me find a job. she used to spend at least more than two hours a day helping me, how i would deal with people, talk to people. don't do that, you have to do it this way. she explained if i want to apply for a job how i should be addressed. my hair, whatever i have to look nice for them.

shee always helped me. she's not only a teacher for other students they say the same thing. when we go to her class we feel like we are home because i'm telling you she's not only a teacher, she treats everyone the same. we are all the same but she treats us like her kids. >> you also call your office the womb. kids run in. a. >> i actually call into the uterus but i guess maybe that was inappropriate for the book. [laughter] >> to me that tells me that's a different dynamic than i think thee average director were just regular teacher has with her students. what made you want to approach helping these kids that way?

>> because they are all a bunch of babies. one hero. >> they are all a bunch of babies and they are learning to grow and learning how to behave and they are not allowed to leave school, leave the underworld, leave until they have been fully conditioned and trained and ready for the rest of you to meet them so it started as a joke but in general i approached them all as little babies and i tell them all the time youxp are not dumb, you are learning english. you are not going to try to get away with something here because you are from somewhere else or you don't speak english. you still have a brain in your head. you still have experiences and values and morals and lessons you've learned the end of manners. it mays be hard to articulate

those, but you are not dumb and i'm not going to let you get away with it because you are in a different country around different people or you know another language. >> [inaudible] a lot of these kids come out not only speaking fluent english but spanish and i come out feeling just real dumb because i start with english and ended with english and nothing more. >> as far as how we are talking up here right now, it's a lot of humor. you asked how do we teach and i said hugs and yes google translate and everything but it's so much humor. the other thing i tell them as if we are not laughing we are crying. we definitely have lots to cry about. he's telling this beautiful story of like the war broke out so we left and then they called and said we could come to america. that is the shortest, quickest

and easiest description of his life. i know where he came from. w i had to dinner at his family's house. his family came to my parents house two years in a row for thanksgiving. i know their story. i know his father, his mother and you would be in a corner crying if you knew his real stories so i tell them if we are not laughing we are crying so let's do a lot of laughing. >> the way youro department supports the students that come in, to me it's way beyond just learning english and of the advice and how to get a job and court dates and all that advice that you give. it was the department always taking that approach or how has it evolved to put it is now?

>> i can't speak to how it was before i got there. i was hired in the fall of 2012 and i started as a teacher and i just started running my classroom that way. i think you write about the only fight i've ever had. i sort of just ran my classroom that way as a family, and every monday through thursday with i love you have a good night and then friday is i love you, have a good weekend, don't get pregnant. it started out as t a joke, the love you. i was just kind of stirring the pot and then a student one time saide you know your i love you s the only i love you i get all day and i said in my head now i

feel bad kind of mocking, telling 17, 18-year-old boys by, love you and they started saying it back and i thought they were just mocking me back within this kid said it's the only i love you i get all day long and it just kind of status so as far as how the department is i started in my classroom and then i was promoted, promotion implies money but really it's just more work. i was promoted to run the department the year that she started writing the book 2018? >> 2017. when i met sarah she was still in the classroom and then she transitioned to the library and much of my reporting w and at te book, the heart of the book is her office which is this a small smallroom at the back of the liy

whereow she was stationed with r department and so much of the kind of ethos of the classroom were translated into this corner of the library. you were talking about how his family has had thanksgiving dinner with you and i've had a dinner at your families house and your mom made me an incredible feast, syrian pizza. but in this room where i spend so much time and so much of the heart of the book unfolds there's a table that kind of functioned as a family dinner table and the students that cae into that room -- >> to get the snacks, yes, to nap. there was a lot of mapping. but also to find that family feel and that's where i met a

lot of the students i ended up following in the book because i was i there and they were there and in many cases when they start to kind of get their footing and find their way they show up at the library less and less, they kind of leave the nest in a a way and that is ultimately what you want estate acclimating to become more comfortable but because it is a place whereth there are always w students and there are about to be many more from afghanistan, there's always new peoples at te table and it was this amazing -- there's a reason i spent most of my time in there because it felt like it was a place, a physical space that sat at the heart of everything sullivan y was doing. >> i always introduce the kids to each other. she spoke about new kids coming in and leaving. i would say i would always introduce them to each other and say this is your brother, this is your sister and you would end up having guatemala, nepal,

syria, iraq, all these different countries sitting around this table plus the people that work in the actual office trying to get work done while all these idiots are sitting around gabbing about who knows what. idiots being the students. >> youee say lovingly. >> i do, they know it. but going on about these things and like i'm trying to work here.ee >> none of it feels dumb at 16. >> it's so dramatic. but i will do always introduce them like this is your brother, this is your sister and the cool thing is when you see it transcendd out of the office whn you see them interacting with each other in the hallways or other classrooms and you see two or three students who outside of sullivan know where would you see these different cultures or languages interacting and certainly not supporting each othere and loving and helping each other were joking around

the way they do. you look at these kids and think if the rest of us could get our act together and behave the way they do this world would be such a nicer place. >> i was just going to say teenagers do kind of spend a lot of time talking about who they are dating at a gossiping and stuff and it can feel really trivial but that was one of my favorite things is that it's also a universal language and no matter where they are coming from and language they are speaking they are still teenagers and that was also really important to the story and all that silly stuff they are talking about and gossiping about i is actually from my perspective because i don't have to try to teach them in the classroom, one of my favorite things and something that i also spend a lot of time talking about in the book m because it's what makes us the same.

even though i'm not a teenager anymore, although i was filtered into a freshman seminar class, i see myself in them and all those experiences that still live close to the surface even for me. so i wanted to write about that. >> i just want to tell everyone we are going to leave a few minutes at the end so if you have any questions please feel free to get ready to ask them but while you are thinking of a question i'm going to ask at trleast one or two more. what sticks out to me in the interviews you had, you mentioned it's a story of resiliency. to me it's not a story about trauma or adolescents but what sticks out to me is a story of community, where we find community and even the most surprising ways and how community evolves. would you say that's the point?

>> yeah, in many ways yes. also, how the school fits into the community and one of the things that i think sullivan and particularly the staff do so well as they recognize they are part of a broader community and invite neighbors in and build that community from the classroom outwards. it means that it extends beyond the four-year or however many years kids are in the building. look at sara and sam. they are still so close and i keep in touch with many students and it's also a reflection of rogers park where the neighborhood in chicago where it sits it's a neighborhood of sarah mentioned that an earlier event it felt like the whole neighborhood came out to support

the school and it is a place that rises up in many places around refugees and immigrants and that is community. a. >> i'm going to live give the last question to you. you mentioned the physical space of the offices into the relationships that you build with these students which are obviously long-lasting. during the pandemic a lot of the last year and a half was remote. you didn't have the physical space to build so how do you cater to the needs of these kids that really need help and how aree you navigating that and building these relationships? >> we lost a lot of it. i'm sure there were a lot of things that fell through the cracks that kids rely on school

staff noticing. there's things that happen at home or in our personal lives that go unnoticed that trained professionals or untrained work around each other all the time that we pick up on and notice and the students didn't leave their homesn into signed onto te computer you're not picking up on those things so there's a lot of stuff we missed and the things we could i went to a student'ss home and met with her in her backyard. she didn't go to school for three weeks and it was her senior year and i drove over and said we are going to mask up you stand there and i'm standing here and we are not leaving until weho figure out why you ae not in school. i had coworkers that did theo same thing. one of the social workers at my school would run groups outside in the parking lot so we relied

on the kids reaching out for help which they are not so good about doing so we didn't miss a lot. it's going to take a long time to catch up. >> was that really 45 minutes? >> you don't know your self. >> i guess. i want to see if anybody has any questions. i just want to say that i love your book from the first page to the last.

my only complaint is i wanted to know what these various languages were like if you wrote a sample of the top line and mentioned what language it was. i could do my best but what i will say about the cover is many of the translations are from the students themselves so that's their handwriting. we had students write in their native languages and then took a picture of it and photoshopped it to get her to be this cover, so on here there's arabic, swahili, nepalese, or do,

spanish and a couple other ones which i could tell you if i had of me.s in front but that was really special. i wanted to have a way to bring the kids onto the cover and that was it. >> the third one in particular i couldn't figure out what language that would have been. a. >> i think that is not a lease -- >> it's malay. >> and i do want to say your grandmother is very proud of you. >> thank you. [laughter] i have the best grandmother. a. >> a classmate of mine in a writing group. a. >> another place i wrote about once. >> any other questions?

what i was going to ask, the english department you run it the way you do. what about math and science? do they take the same kind of approach or that's not how we do things? >> teacher questions finally. [laughter] so we are very fortunate we have an administration that supports innovation and creative thought and creative approaches to everything so what we ended up doing actually was the english learners department we made ourselves our own cohort, our own department and the english learnersou department it is mat, english, science, history music, art, jim. inthe entire day so we have been our own meetings and staff development, our own everything

that the regular school is doing we are doing but we get to do it on our own so it's sort of like how a special ed department will meet and plan. to reflect on how you maintain your traditions and culture and language as you've now become an american. or do you even want to, that's something that you value.

but just explain to us why. i still speak arabic with my parents because they do go to truman college and they learn english but they are not really good. and i still speak it with my friends that are from lebanon, syria, iraq, i still speak arabic with them. but half of my friends are arabic and half of them are mexican, so i speak more right now s then spanish but the

arabic language, my family always says don't lose it no matter what. you will have family and kids, don't lose this language. that's your own language. a. >> what about just language though she's asking about traditions, holidays, customs like when you first came to america you didn't hug women, right? and now you do. [laughter] she wants to know do you still maintain a link to where you came from? >> not really. i live every day here like my life is here so i'm doing as the people living here. a lot of holidays we don't have

like but i'm living here, my life is here and everything like it's change completely so i have to live as people are living here so i will leave it there. thank you, everyone. i haveve a question about the social networking links and telecommunication links the rstudents have. they are communicating with friends from all over the world. it may be people they met in refugee camps before they got here. do you have any sense of what it's like if they are comparing their life here to the fate of people who were relocated in other countries like where does the u.s. stand in the kind of imagination and how do the refugees communicate about their

life here to people who ended up somewhere else? >> do you have friends you talk to? >> i have friends in syria and egypt and friends that it was hard for them and i always cry when i remember the story. my friends go to germany to get there and havean life. they went and i have three friends that passed in the water, they died in the water. my best friend, his dad just disappeared.meam they couldn't even find his body in the water. i have a lot of friends there and we always talk. america it is always a dream for middle east so if someone wants to go that's a dream what are you talking about, it's hard to get there. how are you going to live there and have your family life,

language. people have it asmi a dream but when it's opened up as refugees and people start coming and learning to do work and everything as how you live it starts to become like something normal like he is leaving to america. okay. aboutt my friends when i talked to them they always say like can we find any way to come here i'm like i don't know. it has to be legal. there's nothing. but i'm telling you when i talked to my friends in syria they don't have electric, water, food. there's a lot of things they don't have that we have. i have some questions for my friends like what are you driving. i don't likee to show people wht i have here because i do work hard for it, she knows i had a job in 2016 and 2017. i had three jobs.

now i have my own job, my own business. i don't show my friendss what i have here because they cannot have it no matter what i'm driving i'm still the same person whether i have one dollar in my pocket or 2 million or billions of dollars they are still my friend and i'm still the same how i am so i don't like to show my friends what i have right now because it is a dream for them. a lot of people in egypt they are trying. they go here and they are just trying to get here but there is no way to get here especially with covid and stuff. a lot of refugees are assigned to come here. there are people walking in five andfive months ago but that wase last that loaded to chicago. after that they stopped. but people started having hope i'm going soon, next month, next year so i'm waiting for two of my uncles to come.

i think we could probably ask questions and listen to you all all afternoon but sadly the time has come to end. i want to thank you all for your time. if we could give a round of applause. [applause] and thank you for telling your story and being so open we really appreciate.

how exactly did america get up to its neck in data? one of the greatest characteristics as we are striving to provide equal opportunity for all citizens. video documentary competition 2022 students across the country are giving us behind the scenes looks as they were gone there entries using the hashtag student cam and if you are a middle or high school student you can join the conversation by entering the competition. create a five to six minute documentary using c-span video clips that answer the question how does the federal government impact your life. >> be passionate about what you're discussing no matter how large or small you think the audience will receive it to be

and know that in the greatest country in the history of the earth, your review does matter. to all the filmmakers remember the content is king and just remember to be as neutral and impartial as possible in your portrayal of both sides of an issue. c-span rewards $100,000 in total cash prizes and you have a shot at winning the grand prize of $5,000. entries must be received before january 20th, 2022. for competition rules, tutorials or how to get started, visit the website at student cam.org. ingary hoover is the authorf this book the lifetime learner's guide to reading and learning about before we get into that, the themes of the book, in your biography it says you live in a 33 room house, 32 rooms of which