Refugee High
Page 20
I spent the next three and a half years reporting what would become this book. It started with a Chicago magazine article in June 2017 titled “Welcome to Refugee High.” For that piece, I spent several months inside Sullivan. While there, I found myself enwrapped in the stories of students who had suffered years of horror that they often kept inside. Their resilience was remarkable. But they were also, in many ways, typical teenagers. This was a realization that both delighted me and challenged my preconception of the refugee experience. Their lives were swirls of Rihanna, acne, and gossip mixed with Turkish pop, midday prayer, hijabs, and bottle-blonde hair. I wanted to know these students and understand their stories.
In September 2017, I began to report the book in earnest. My first step was identifying the four students who I would follow over the next year. I spent an entire school year following Mariah, Belenge, Alejandro, and Shahina. I shadowed each of them both in and outside of school. I spoke with them in the library and ate at their neighborhood restaurants. I watched YouTube on their couches and shopped at their favorite stores. I sat in their bedrooms and attended family gatherings. They became part of my life and I theirs.
I also spent time with each of the student’s parents. I listened as they shared stories from the lives they left behind. Mariah, Belenge, Alejandro, and Shahina may not always agree with their parents’ choices, but I felt it important to understand their perspectives. They have, after all, made great sacrifices to provide a better life for their children.
In total, I conducted hundreds of hours of reporting. Everyone featured in this book agreed to participate. The scenes I did not personally witness were reconstructed from in-depth interviews and secondary documentation including videos, emails, police reports, and notes taken by first-hand observers.
Because this book deals with teenagers and their families who stand among the world’s most vulnerable, I decided to use pseudonyms for them in the book. I am so grateful to those who shared their stories, and I felt it was important to protect their trust. I recognize it is a privilege to have this platform and I’m grateful for it.
Since finishing my reporting, I have kept in touch with both students and Sullivan staff. While the shifting political tides loomed over the city back in 2017–18, no one could have predicted how the world would change in the coming years. Over the course of four years, the Trump administration introduced a suite of blatantly anti-immigrant, anti-refugee policies including an expansive ban on work visas and a 49 percent reduction in legal immigration. The administration also established an annual ceiling for refugees that was 84 percent lower than the final year of the Obama administration. As of July 2020, only 7,848 refugees had arrived in the United States in fiscal year 2020. But there remains reason to hope. In January 2021, President Joe Biden signed a suite of executive orders on immigration including ones that lift the travel ban, end the national emergency declaration that diverts money to border wall construction, and change arrest priorities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He announced his intention to reestablish America’s commitment to refugees and set the annual global refugee admissions cap to 125,000.
In Chicago, the once-crowded Sullivan hallways now sit nearly empty as everyone reports to school from home due to COVID-19. Sullivan’s English language learner funding continues to shrink as does its number of refugee students. But for the students and teachers of Refugee High, life marches forward. Both Mariah and Belenge graduated in June 2020. Mariah enrolled at Wilbur Wright College, a community college in Chicago where Aishah is also a student. Belenge now works at a recycling center in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he moved with his siblings and father after graduating. Shahina remains in search of love, and Alejandro works in maintenance. He still hopes to become a mechanic and buy his mother a house. Sarah Quintenz continues to chair Sullivan’s ELL department, which has shrunk to six members. She also has a new partner with whom she had a daughter in 2020. Chad Adams, who now goes by Chad Thomas, launched a $25 million project to address the numerous issues plaguing the nearly hundred-year-old Sullivan building. Ever the optimist, Chad still holds his vision for Sullivan close. And now, thanks to a renewed contract, he has until at least 2025 to execute it.
No matter what shape America takes in the coming years, Sullivan will continue to carry forward this country’s long tradition of welcoming newcomers. The story of Sullivan High School reflects a better America, one that offers sanctuary and second chances to those who need them most.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the cooperation of Chad Adams, Matt Fasana, and Sarah Quintenz. They were brave to let me into their story and did so with the hope that it might make a difference for their school and their students. I am also grateful to the entire Sullivan High School ELL department, who did not shy from asking me hard questions about my intentions and process. They care deeply about their students, and I appreciate their trust.
I owe so much to Mariah, Belenge, Alejandro, Shahina, and their families, all of whom shared their stories and tables with me. I was, and remain, deeply moved by the generosity of those who have experienced the world at its worst. There were many others who welcomed me into their lives and homes, including Aishah, Abdul Karim, Ihina, and Lauren. They, too, were a constant source of inspiration.
So many have championed this book from the start, but a few people deserve particular mention. To Terry Noland, for believing in the original idea and giving the book its name. To Clare Fentress, for weathering the proposal process with me. To Nate Sivak, Trudi Langendorf, and Gloria Walsh for answering copious calls and texts and for their friendship. To Alex Kotlowitz for his generosity and wisdom. To Annette D’Onofrio and Natalia Piland for their wonderful, thorough edits and advice. To Bill Gerstein for alerting me to Sullivan High School, and to Alisa Wellek for her insight. To Niclette Kibibi, Yara Meerkhan, and Sarah Hunaidi for their kind and exacting notes.
To Ben Woodward, my thoughtful, erudite editor, who was a true collaborator and who has become a friend. To my agent, Andrew Wylie, who encouraged me to write this book and who fought for it, too. And to everyone at The New Press, I’m so thankful you let me tell this story.
Many thanks, too, to my friends and family who have nurtured me and my career; I have always felt buoyed and bolstered by you. Thank you to Jessica Stern, Brenda Fowler, Gioia Diliberto, Jennifer Tanaka, Jonathan Eig, and Dan Buettner for their guidance. And to the ladies in my life who showed up in Chicago, Montreal, and Milwaukee, and in ways far too numerous to name.
I am also indebted to the International Women’s Media Foundation and the Awesomeness Grant for their support. And to my research assistant, Bashirah Mack, for her brilliant work on this project. To Lily Chavez and Michael Blackmon for fact-checking the book.
Finally, thank you to my dad, Ted, for inspiring me to write and guiding me along the way. And for his unvarnished critiques. To my mom, Sara, for everything, including her genes. To my brother, Adam, for his support, sensitivity, and for Sequoia. To my cousin Emily for answering every call and for always making me laugh. To my aunt Nancy for her advice and enthusiasm. To my grandmother Elaine for being the most insatiable reader I know. And to Jonah Gaster, my husband and partner, for always cheering me on and up. For listening and loving, and for all those buttermilk chickens. I couldn’t have done it without you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elly Fishman worked as a senior editor and writer at Chicago magazine. Her features have won numerous awards including a City Regional Magazine Award for “Welcome to Refugee High,” her first report on the students and faculty at Chicago’s Roger C. Sullivan High School, from which this book grew. A Chicago native and graduate of the University of Chicago, Fishman currently lives in Milwaukee with her husband and their dog and teaches in the Journalism Department at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
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THE STUDS AND IDA TERKEL AWARD
On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, Studs Terkel and his son, Dan, announced the creation of the Studs and Ida Terkel Author Fund. The Fund is devoted to supporting the work of promising authors in a range of fields who share Studs’s fascination with the many dimensions of everyday life in America and who, like Studs, are committed to exploring aspects of America that are not adequately represented by the mainstream media. The Terkel Fund furnishes authors with the vital support they need to conduct their research and writing, providing a new generation of writers the freedom to experiment and innovate in the spirit of Studs’s own work.
Studs and Ida Terkel Award Winners
Catherine Coleman Flowers, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret
Lawrence Lanahan, The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide
Janet Dewart Bell, Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement
David Dayen, Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud
Aaron Swartz, The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz (awarded posthumously)
Beth Zasloff and Joshua Steckel, Hold Fast to Dreams: A College Guidance Counselor, His Students, and the Vision of a Life Beyond Poverty
Barbara J. Miner, Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City
Lynn Powell, Framing Innocence: A Mother’s Photographs, a Prosecutor’s Zeal, and a Small Town’s Response
Lauri Lebo, The Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America
© 2021 by Elly Fishman
This book was authored based on copyrighted work owned by and published by Chicago magazine on June 6, 2017.
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Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2021
Distributed by Two Rivers Distribution
ISBN 978-1-62097-508-4 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-62097-509-1 (ebook)
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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund For Women Journalists
Book design and composition by Bookbright Media
This book was set in Minion and Futura
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