A Stunning Moment
One of my Bangladeshi students just “published” a biography of her grandmother during writer’s workshop. She is a beginner ELL but she puts to use whatever new words she hears, and so her English has increased quickly. In terms of writing, her strengths are in narratives, rather than in response to a reading or in any of the content areas.
Her story started with pictures – she sketched it out and drew exquisitely detailed pictures of her grandmother in her village, wearing traditional clothing, and carrying fruit on her head. She added when and where her grandmother was born, and other timeline-related details. She then asked me what the word is for a job where women carry food around. I asked if she meant in a restaurant, and she said, “No, no restaurant in her village.” I suggested food vendor but she preferred waitress. Really, we don’t have a word for such a job since it doesn’t exist exactly – another interesting relationship between language, culture, and experience.
At the heart of the story, they were taught how to focus in on their subject’s most important moment. For nearly all of my students, this moment was when their person of study hiked across the border into the US, or arrived some other way.
Alia (not her name) told me her grandmother, however, was still in Bangladesh, so I asked her to sketch some more so I could help her choose the most important moment.
It wasn’t hard to do this – rather it really took my breath away.
Alia told me her grandmother, when she was 8, had to get a job because she didn’t have the $3 it cost to go to school, plus her parents had just died. So she got a job carrying and selling food.
As she was writing, Alia came up to me, drew a picture, and asked me how to say/write it in English. To be clear, she mimed the action. The picture was of a whip.
The tree Alia’s grandmother relied on to get the fruit she sold belonged to the Rajah, or king, as she translated it, and one day he yelled at her and tied her to a tree for stealing the fruit. As king, he owned all the trees. She tried to explain she wasn’t stealing, but he demanded she move to a different village. When she refused, he made her stand so he could whip her. Then he sent boys to trash her home.
I don’t know what happens next, and it’s not even all clear to me if all this happened when her grandmother was just 8 years old, but I can really see this little girl, Alia, who just came to America a few months ago, becoming a published author here.
It’s moments like this – where I get to see them write pieces that are not simply genuine, but meaningful stories that otherwise wouldn’t get told; stories that are locked inside them, and give us a glimpse into all the experiences that have brought them this country and to this point in their lives. It’s in these stories of personal strength, where I – and maybe they – can see the uniqueness and profoundness of their lives.
These brief glimpses into their lives remind me just how upside down the world really is. 
Why did you edit this for Edwize? I instantly felt that that version was less powerful. I miss lines such as
“These brief glimpses into their lives remind me just how upside down the world really is.”
They have their own editors. I’m also not sure if that was in the original I sent them or what I added when I posted it here.
Wow.
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Perhaps the word you want is “porter.” The guys who carry goods in Turkish are “hamal” which my lousy Langenscheidt 50k word bidirectional renders as “stevedore” or “porter” or “carrier.” Since the first is related to loading and unloading ships, I’d go with porter. And fwiw, Wikipedia agrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_(carrier)
Knowing that word, and the various contexts WP suggests, gives me a better word to complete a story: “When my grandfather was a young man, his town was overrun by Petliura’s Ukrainian Nationalist army, and they pressed him into service as a porter.”
Jonathan
Thank you. That does seem more accurate. I have not been able to find a Bangla/English dictionary, save for a very simple Picture dictionary that is more artsy than informational.