Julianna Lopez Kershen is an Assistant Professor at the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma in the Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum department. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the topics of English language arts and literacy education, instructional improvement, and curriculum studies. Julianna has the privilege of working with amazing students and higher ed and P-12 colleagues who inspire her to stand resolute as an advocate for the best educational opportunities for all children, everyday, everywhere. |
Stories of Migration and Refuge: Seeking to Understand the Syrian Civil War through YAL by Julianna Kershen
From Part II. Arriving, Chapter III, p. 66 We are lucky. I know this because Mama tells me over and over again as we walk down the narrow hall toward baggage claim. Mazzozenn, Mama whispers under her breath. And I know she is referring to the fact that our papers worked, that we are not stuck in that line, that we were not sent back. It is strange to feel so lucky for something that is making my heart feel so sad. |
Katouh captures the complexity of how one might decide to stay even when they have the opportunity to go in the decisions of the character Kenan. When Salama and Keenan discuss that he could leave with his younger siblings, but he chooses to stay, he tells her: “This is my country. If I run away--if I don't defend it, then who will?” Salama turns to him and implores: “We're talking about your siblings lives” “He swallows hard. ‘And I'm talking about my country. About the freedom I'm so rightly owed. I'm talking about burying Mama and Baba and telling Lama they'll never come back home. How—' His voice breaks. ‘How do I leave that? When for the first time in my whole life I'm breathing free Syrian air?’” And thus, Katouh redefines bravery and belief, she challenges the reader to witness fighting for the potential of democracy and for fighting against tyranny. |
Abawi’s Destiny begins the novel: “One things I ask--please stop condemning me or giving me credit for how, when or where we meet. That is not up to me; it has never been up to me. I just show up when it is time--and that moment will always arrive. So yes, you were born to die. But in between, you are meant to live. If we run into each other prematurely, it's not because of my negligence. And often not because of yours. Your world controls me; I do not control you. I am Destiny.” (p. 3) |
My country’s complicated involvement in military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq made disentangling the Syrian civil war difficult. What I did understand was the hurt of the people. What I could do was educate myself and the people around me about the plight of Syrians. And, more broadly, I knew I needed a deeper understanding of international and American systems of asylum, refuge, and immigration. In 2016 I wrote a short article on bringing the questions of migration and refuge into the secondary ELA classroom. Nine years later, I watched in late December as an armed rebel alliance entered Damascus, overthrowing the Assad regime, and thus far, seeking an orderly transition to power.
Many other zones of conflict continue to coalesce and erupt. Violence and suppression in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Sudan, and China’s repression of the Uyghur peoples – all these people, all these children calling out for us to look, to learn their stories, to witness their lives. And yet, I think we are looking away. We are weary. United States policy appears to be leaning more nationalistic and isolationist. In my country I fear a diminishment of the potential to use our civic tools, our rights to speak, to worship, to organize, petition, seek redress, vote, and legislate. The feelings of 2011, that social media could be a force for good has gone by the wayside, as wealth dominates corporate policy and practice, as what might be civic tools are corrupted by continuing onslaughts of mis/disinformation, distortion, corruption, and now the use of generative AI to unleash exponential reproduction and reification of false and disingenuous ideas that echo in the chambers of our media feeds.
Abawi, A. (2018). A land of permanent goodbyes. Penguin Books/Penguin Teen.
Brown, D. (2018). The unwanted. Stories of the Syrian refugees. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Katouh, Z. (2022). As long as the lemon trees grow. Little, Brown.
Latham, I., & Shamsi-Basha, K. (2020). The cat man of Aleppo. (Y. Shimizu, Illus.). G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Nayeri, D. (2022). The waiting place. (A. B. Miralpeix, Illus.). Candlewick Press.
Warga, J. (2019). Other words for home. Balzer & Bray/HarperCollings Childrens.