thanksgiving

Thanksgiving traditions

My family focuses on getting together and spending time together so the holidays are very important for us. Thanksgiving is one of our favorites because it is an opportunity to see everybody. Typically we will alternate years between spending it with my father’s side of the family and my mother’s side. This year, however, is going to be very different because I will be going to Bakersfield to spend the holiday with my boyfriend and his family.

When it comes to traditions and food, my family does not vary or have any passed down recipes. Our turkey is made in the oven, and typically we will also have a ham, for variety and to feed the whole family. Our stuffing is not made with the actual insides of the turkey but instead from hand with bread, celery, sausage, and other seasonings. Our other dishes are made fairly standard, vegetables, dinner rolls, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

We always say a prayer before our dinner. When we celebrate thanksgiving with m mother’s side of the family, we have to have a “buffet style” instead of a sit down dinner because there are so many of us – at least 30 people. After we say a prayer and before we eat dinner, my grandmother recites a poem that was passed down from her mother. This is our thanksgiving tradition. Just recently, us grandchildren have been trying to memorize this poem so it may be said at our future thanksgiving meals. Like I mentioned before, my family is huge on spending time together and being able to take this poem and share it with our future families will help to keep the tradition alive.  This is the poem:

Pies of pumpkin, apple, mince,
jams and jellies, peaches, quince
Purple grapes and apples red,
Cakes and nuts and gingerbread
That's Thanksgiving

Turkey! oh, a great big fellow!
Fruits all ripe and rich and mellow;
Everything that's nice to eat,
More then i can now repeat
That's Thanksgiving

Lots and lots of jolly fun,
Games to play and races run;
All as happy as can be
For 'tis happiness, you see
Makes Thanksgiving.

We must thank the one who gave
All the good things that we have,
That is why we keep the day
set aside, our mammas say,
For Thanksgiving

The poem reflects our kind of Thanksgiving. It talks about food, about having fun, and giving thanks to God. After eating dinner and recovering, all of the kids head to the church, which is across the street, and play on the playground, play wall ball, or capture the flag. When we are done running off the food we head back to the house for dessert J it always results in a really fun time with all of us kids and cousins.

Another tradition that we have is to all meet up again the day after Thanksgiving to have leftovers. It is one of our favorite times because 1) we get to all hang out again and 2) we get to eat delicious food again!

It will be very interesting to be with another family for Thanksgiving this year. My boyfriend, Ian, and his family deep pit a turkey. All the men go to a neighbor’s house and deep pit the turkey while the women stay and cook the food. Since Ian’s family is also very large, they eat a more “buffet style” and he says that the stuffing has more ingredients than what my family usually has. I am very excited for Thanksgiving, not only because it is a fantastic holiday, but because it will be in a new atmosphere and with new people.

I hope that everybody has a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

boat people

Edwidge Danticat is the winner of MacArthur “genius grant”. She is a poet and a native of Haiti. Her poem Boat People was featured in Women’s Voices for Change: Poetry Friday.

The poem is about the struggles Haitian people face when they try to flee their country because of political unrest. The first stanza refers to some of the first flees from St. Domingue to Louisiana and how they were not accepted and killed at sea. Danticat writes that the Haitian people do not care what the people call them because to them they are just people. They are referred to as Boat People by people who do not know them and who have prejudices against them. The Haitians were treated poorly by Africans and treated poorly in Louisiana, Venezuela, Miami, and Chicago. In these places people suspected them of carrying drugs and weapons but they only carried “courage and strength to work”. Danticat also makes the point that being called Boat People is a term that all other people have given them, not to be called Haitians, but Boat People. They have gotten no respect and have been treated poorly everywhere they go just because they are trying to live a free life. Haitians come to other countries not to invade or to impose, but instead to “come with respect” and to be treated equally.

The term “boat people” refers to people who are political refugees, illegal immigrants, or asylum seekers who come to other countries by boat. In reference to the poem, people from Haiti traveled to the United States by boat. In January of 1996 there was a change in Presidency in Haiti. President Rene Preval did not keep promises and the people of Haiti did not respond well to the new President. There was an increase in criminal activity and old practices remained the same. Nevertheless, the people of Haiti constantly fled their country to places like the United States and France.

In 2004, President Bush told the people of Haiti not to flee their country to come to the United States because they would be turned back.

This poem is very moving. I never really thought of Haitians, specifically, struggling. I assume they have been jumbled together with other groups and have just not been singled out. What surprises me the most is how I have not heard of the term “Boat People” before. Especially considering the term and laws against them was addressed in 2004 with President Bush. Then again, at the time I was 13 and was not interested in what the President was saying at the time. Besides the point, I am surprised it has not come up in any of my other classes. Danticat is a very passionate writer and you can definitely hear the passion in her voice when she reads the poem.

I also briefly read her other poem, Tourist, and it just tear at my heart. She goes into such great detail about how she is not worthy of having a photo be taken. How even her lifestyle is dirty and ugly, saying that “Your camera will break”.

These kinds of poems are the things that get people to realize the hardships other groups go through. Poetry has been a staple and a connection between literature and history. It has the ability to tell a story with all the struggles and disparity that comes with the racism and prejudices that follow a group trying to make a living in the world.

http://articles.cnn.com/2004-02-25/world/haiti.revolt_1_haitian-refugees-coast-guard-florida-coast?_s=PM:WORLD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people

chapter 13

Changing the Rules: Immigration Law 1948-1980

The immigration act lasted until 1965 and it marked the end of a racist system. However, as we know this was not the end of racism. This just marks a time where racism was a government action and the denial of certain groups was well known. This definitely did not stop racism between the people, in some ways it only intensified it.

The McCarran-Walter Act was passed in 1952 which ended total exclusion of racial and ethnic groups from naturalization and immigration. This made the laws “color blind”. This also was a huge deal. I think it is most interesting that President Harry S. Truman actually vetoed this bill, but Congress still passed it. I would have thought that the President would be all for this kind of bill, but I guess not. This act still had some of the discriminatory policies implemented before, but it was a start. It also was a way to keep up the nickname “Free World” because how free is a world if they don’t let groups of people come to? If we would have kept the immigration act and exclusion acts our country would have lost it’s diversity and would probably have a much lower population.

Post World War II brought many Europeans refugees to our shores. However, most people were against letting these people in because of a fear of being overrun by Europeans who are coming from a devastating and crumbling country. It just makes me laugh how us Americans can be so upset with letting people into our country because of a failing home country when majority of the first immigrants came for that reason. The first three groups, Siberian Asians, East Asians, and Polynesians mostly came because of exploring and migrating. Europeans came to America because they wanted to get away from the monarchy and the way the government was.

The pie charts on page 335 really caught my attention. It shows the legal immigration to the United States by region. In 1931-1960 the Europeans were the highest, in 1961-1969 Europeans and Latin Americans were the highest, 1970-1979 showed Latin Americans being the highest, and 1980-1984 has Asians being the highest. What is most impressive is over the years Asian immigrants increased. The first chart has Asians at 5% and the last chart has them at 48%!

I have never heard of the term “asylee”. An asylee is a refugee who who applies for entry into the United States while they are already in America. Some would be legal on something like a student visa, while others would be here illegally. The government tried to regulate the amount of asylees that came into America but the numbers got so high that the 1980 act put a cap of five thousand asylees. Having a refugee policy was part of the new American consensus.

This chapter really opened up my eyes to the way that the government handled immigrants. I like to think that immigrants were more than welcome to this new country, but in reality it was all just a front. We only wanted to promote that it was a new world where all people were welcome. We had regulations, laws, and acts that kept people from getting into our country. We had a rough start, and are still fighting ways to handle immigration.

chapter 11

The great depression was a lowly time and it is very interesting to see that immigration did not decrease during this time. my own great grandmother immigrated to America right before the great depression but did not go back to Mexico because her parents had faith in the American economy. I guess that is the same thing for immigrants who came during the Great Depression, a hope for a better life even if the country is in the worst economic times.

Daniels says that it is ironic that the most common post-war immigrants came from our enemy Germany. I do not agree with this. It does not surprise me because Germany was filled with unrest and many of the German citizens were not happy with the government and with the Nazi regime. It only makes sense that after the war Germans wanted to get out of the country that was recovering from the war and still had an unstable government.

I don’t understand this chapter. In the first section it stated that immigration into the states did not cease during the depression and World War II, but in the section on the Depression and War on page 294, it says that the number of immigrants leaving the states exceeded the number coming into the states. And then it says that in fact the numbers stayed positive because of the years 1932-1935. So ultimately the statement that there were more people leaving than entering is incorrect because over the years of the depression and the war there was, in fact, a higher immigration rate. This chapter also continues to state that this was a time where the exact number of immigrants is unsure because there were some loopholes in the process. So my question is how reliable is the number of immigrants entering and exiting the country? Is the assumption that we had more people entering valid? Or do we need to calculate in a possible immigrants or leaving?

The last paragraph on page 299 talks about other horror stories of American sponsors. I hate to read that as Americans we had the chance to save lives but chose not to. I understand that we have regulations and if we allowed everybody to enter our country we would have more issues than we already have. But I really didn’t like the story of the Cubans who had their visas taken away and were taken close enough to Miami so they could hear the music but were taken back to Europe where most of them were killed in the holocaust.

It still amazes me that so many people that immigrated during World War II say that they are so happy to be in this country. After reading this chapter, and reading the way some of them were treated makes me think that the immigrants would hate this country. Asians and Germans were put in concentration camps in places like Utah. Isn’t this the kind of treatment they wanted to get away from? And then they would send for their family to join them! However, it goes to show you that things are not that bad here. If people were sent to concentration camps and still sent for family back home, I can only imagine the kind of treatment they got in their country, the country they left.