13. The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom

This was a Book Babes Book Club read. I really loved it. This is the story of a journalist who spent a year with Room 142, the Newcomers Class for refugees at South High School in Denver, Colorado. As someone who has spent the last 38 years of her life helping people from other countries navigate the waters of language and culture here, it was heart-warming to hear her story. The histories of the children in this classroom will give you nothing but compassion for the global refugee crisis we face today. 

This quote at the end of the book says it all:

Getting to know the newcomer students had deepened my own life, and watching Mr. Williams work with all twenty-two of them as once with so much grace, dexterity, sensitivity, and affection had provided me with daily inspiration. I would even say that spending a year in Room 142 had allowed me to witness something as close to holy as I 've seen take place between human beings. I could only wish that in time, more people would be able to look pat their fear of the stranger and experience the wonder of getting to know people from other parts of the globe. For as far as I could tell, the world was not going to stop producing refugees. The plain, irreducible fact of good people being made nomad by the millions through all kinds of horror this world would produce seemed likely to prove the central moral challenge of our times. How did we want to meet that challenge? We could fill our heart with fear or with hope. And the choice would affect more than just or own dispositions, for in choosing which seeds to sow, we would dictate the type of harvest. Surely the only harvest worth cultivating was the one Mr. Williams had been seeking: greater fluency, better understanding. 

Providentially, my library had a Random Review by the former director of the Multicultural Center in my town that was excellent:

https://cbcpubliclibrary.net/podcasts/random/2019-04-10_Newcomers.mp3