Select a person to interview who is an immigrant or has migrated to this country. Interview/Talk to them about their experiences as an immigrant: What made them want to come to this country?
Select a person to interview who is an immigrant
Immigration/Migration Essay
1. Select a person to interview who is an immigrant or has migrated to this country.
2. Interview/Talk to them about their experiences as an immigrant: What made them want to come to this country? How did they did they come to this country?, What experience did they have on the journey?, How is life for them now that they are here? Is living in America what they expected? What effect has this move had on their relationship with other family members ie. those they left behind? How has the move to America affected their children? Do they regret their decision to come?
The above are examples of the type of questions you should ask the person you interview.
Remember to take notes or record the interview so you can go back and reference it while you write your essay.
3. Include information in your paper about the person’s country of origin. This means you must research a bit about the political and/or social issues that were happening when the person left their country. This is where your Works Cited page will come from.
The Immigrant Experience: Down the Rabbit Hole
Relocating to a new country can be a disorienting experience. Immigrants often find themselves in a strange new world where the rules have changed, the surroundings are unfamiliar, and the inhabitants speak in strange tongues.
In some ways, the immigrant experience is like the dizzying journey taken by the lead character in Lewis Carroll’s 19th-century novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
In this lesson, students will use class discussions of students’ experiences, the first-hand accounts of immigrants, and other primary source documents and images from the collections of the Library of Congress to uncover the common themes of the immigrant experience.
Objectives
Students will be able to:
- understand common themes of the immigrant experience, such as pushes and pulls, encountering differences, and assimilation;
- identify the common themes of the immigrant experience in a primary source oral history or narrative;
- draw conclusions about the themes of the immigrant experience by analyzing primary source photographs; and
- reinforce and extend understanding of the immigrant experience by creating a primary source photographic exhibit.
Lesson Preparation
Materials
- Primary Source Analysis Tool and Teacher’s Guides
- The Immigrant Experience – A Photographic Exhibit (PDF, 73 KB)
Resources
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940
- Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910
- Detroit Publishing Company
Activity 1: Making the Literary Connection to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
As a lead-in activity, read portions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to the students for a few minutes every day. You may be able to find the book online or in a local library.
Although there are many themes for discussion, for the purposes of this unit, highlight scenes that relate to the discomfort experienced by Alice because of the unpredictability of her experiences in Wonderland.
The four following scenes can be highlighted for introductory discussions about the immigrant experience:
Chapter IV: The Rabbit Sends In a Little Bill
“It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole – and yet – it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”
Chapter V: Advice from a Caterpillar
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
- “Who are You?” said the Caterpillar.
- This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I – I hardly know, Sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
Chapter VI: Pig and Pepper
“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
- “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where – ” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
” – so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. “What sort of people live about here?”
“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: the’re both mad.”
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
