Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

“How Immigrants Make America Great”

• a TEDx Talk from July 2016 by Mawi Asgedom, in which he makes the case that immigrants in the US make America a safer, better country
• Playing on former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan (“Make America Great”), Mawi discusses the anti-immigration rhetoric that characterizes Trump’s campaign for the presidency.
• Mawi talks about his life’s experience as a refugee from Ethiopia, drawing on themes from the book like Power in Education and Tradition and Appearances as Deceiving. He makes the case that the immigrant experience is a benefit, not a hindrance, to America as a country.

“Immigrants in Our Own Land”

• a poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca from a collection by the same name which Baca wrote while incarcerated in a state prison in New Mexico
• The poem is a sustained analogy that compares prisoners to immigrants leaving their life behind and entering a new “country” (prison).
• The poem sheds light on both kinds of experiences.