Jerry Stanley

Of course I cried. I'm a training teacher reading about outcast children who are given a place of their own. OK. That's out of the way.

What I really want to talk about is this book's relevance in our current climate. Today, we face a national immigration crisis, and I'm not just talking about Syria. National news sources demonize immigrants "flooding in" from Central America, immigrants they say are "uneducated, unable to speak the language, who will drain taxpayers of their resources and show more never be able to adjust to support themselves and become successful in the United States." I'm quoting from my memory of a recent O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. If this book is fresh for you, I don't think I have to list the parallel phrases from its pages. That Okies are ignorant, too dumb to learn, cost the taxpayers money. And, of course, there's the "Bum Blockade" at the California border that resembles nothing so much as a wall with border patrol.

This book is concerned with the fate of Dustbowl children. At this moment, the majority of Central American immigrants are children. Families facing death from gang and police violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala send their children North because they have no other choice. Just as Dustbowl farmers went West because they had no other choice. The agricultural industry over-advertised jobs and took advantage of the surplus of workers to lower wages. May I point out that when California ran out of white migrant workers from the Dustbowl states, they repeated the very same tactic in the fifties inviting migrant workers from Mexico and Central America. In both cases, the workers suffered both the poverty and the resulting abuse and discrimination.

Both groups were lured to the area to benefit industry and then abused for stealing jobs and driving up taxes. And now we read Children of the Dustbowl or The Grapes of Wrath in classrooms across America, but the stereotypes of Latinos that rise from the same conditions remain unchallenged. One reason, of course, is color. Whiteness can fade back into familiar whiteness, but color can't hide. Those stereotypes get to stick around, even when we forget their origins.

I was struck by a moment in this book when a woman yells that there are "more Okies in California than white people." I've been talking to my students about whiteness. We discussed how it is a construct used to name the people with power. This was a perfect example of how "white" applies to privilidge. But I also began to think about how these children, once they grew past this moment in history, were able to leave the disadvantage of being "Okies" and rejoin the class of "whiteness," while our disadvantaged students of color have, historically, been burdened with stereotypes and animosity over all the decades of their lives.

Like Leo Hart, as educators we must make sure our students have a place of their own, where "everyone is for them," where their dreams and aspirations are the center of energy. And like Hart, we must work to find a way to help them to their "rightful place." Unlike the Dustbowl children, our students are not products of one historical moment or a single disaster. Many of our students are working against centuries of discrimination. What kinds of schools do we need now? How do help our students create this same sense of ownership and power when sometimes it seems the whole country is screaming "Okies, go back home."? show less

I read Children of the Dust Bowl before reading Out of the Dust, and I think that is the order I would introduce these books to students. Children of the Dust Bowl gives a good overview of the hardships faced by those who moved from Oklahoma to California in search of work. Out of the Dust, a fictional work, hones in on one family and the struggles they face in the harsh conditions of 1930s Oklahoma, helping students understand WHY so many people moved to the West.
My favorite aspect of show more Children of the Dust Bowl is the vast amount of photographs; there's one on almost every page! I found the text compelling and comprehensive, but the photographs are what really sold me on this book.
As a teacher, I can't believe this is the first I'm hearing of Leo Hart. What an inspiration! I love the shift in the book when the focus turns to Mr. Hart's mission and the school community he created.
While the subject matter is heavy, the text never feels that way. While some informational books are slow or wordy, this one is intriguing and easy-to-follow. Now I'm adding Grapes of Wrath to my reading list! show less

Prior to WWII, thousands of people of Japanese ancestry lived and worked in the United States. Some, known as Issei, had immigrated from their home country of Japan, while others, known as Nisei, were born in the U. S. and were citizens. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, government officials began to question the loyalty of all people of Japanese heritage regardless of their citizenship status. Soon after, 120,000 Japanese, two-thirds of whom were Nisei, were forced into show more internment camps and stripped of their civil rights, despite having committed no crime or broken any law. I Am an American chronicles this internment, focusing on the story of one Japanese American young man, Shiro Nomura, who was a high school student at the time. Shiro had been dating and was in love with a young girl, and they’d planned to be married after graduating, but each of them was sent to a different internment camp. Shiro tried to get transferred to the camp she was in, but by the time they were reunited, her feelings had changed, upending his plans and causing heartbreak.

I Am an American looks at Japanese internment in a broader historical context with regards to the war as well as what it was like for Japanese people both before and following the war. But it also presents a more intimate portrait of Shiro Nomura, as well as his girlfriend, Amy Hattori, and the woman he eventually married, Mary Kageyama. The book presents details of their lives before, during, and after internment, while also talking more generally about what life was like in the internment camps. It also focuses on the racism experienced by Japanese Americans in spite of them going to great lengths to prove their loyalty to their country. Even those who’d served in the U. S. military weren’t exempted from this inhumanity. The only slight misgiving I had with the book was how the author frequently quoted white people who used a racist slur. I commend the author for pointing out that it was a slur, so that kids hopefully won’t get the wrong idea and start using it themselves. I also like that he tried to balance these stories of racism with those of white people who supported Japanese Americans, as well as the fact that he pretty unequivocally expressed the injustice of it all. However, a part of me wonders how a child or teen of Japanese ancestry might feel if reading the book and seeing these slurs. This led me to muse on whether there might have been a way to soften the language a bit, given that even I, as a white adult, felt uncomfortable while reading these quotes. I grudgingly admit, though, that the shock value of it does help drive home how terrible and unjust it was for the Japanese Americans experiencing it. My only other concern, given that this is a book aimed at middle-schoolers and perhaps young teens, is the brief mention of a Japanese man committing suicide when he found out that people like him were to be interned. Otherwise, I think this is a great book for teaching kids and teens about this often overlooked and shameful piece of American history. I learned a number of things while reading it that I didn’t previously know, so I know that it would be informative to young people as well. show less

I was fascinated by Children of the Dust Bowl, and found it to be an informative and well-rounded non-fiction children's book. The first chapters of general information on the dust bowl and migratory workers gave much-needed context for the following chapters on school at Weedpatch Camp. The story of the school was intriguing for me as a teacher, and I'm sure that students would be interested in it as well. The text is well-written and flows like a story being told, rather than a textbook. I show more liked that quotes from interviews with people from the time were embedded into the text. This is a wonderful resource for students interested in the time period. show less