Our Beautiful Homelands

Our Beautiful Homelands
Our Beau­ti­ful Homelands

There are those among us who are doing vital­ly impor­tant work. Mer­na Ann Hecht is a bright light among those won­der-work­ers. She has been work­ing for many years with refugee, immi­grant, and asy­lum-seek­ing stu­dents in the Seat­tle area on projects called Sto­ries of Arrival and WORD TRAVELS Refugee and Immi­grant Poet­ry Projects. I first learned about her work through a mutu­al friend, Karen Cush­man. Mer­na has been ded­i­cat­ed to these project for more than 16 years.

Each year, I am so moved and inspired by the art and deep-reach­ing thought­ful­ness of these stu­dents that I want to share their work with the world.

In the intro­duc­tion to this year’s Our Beau­ti­ful Home­lands as Told in Self Por­traits by Glob­al Youth, Mer­na believes:

Repeat­ed news­casts and arti­cles about the lack of hous­ing for the recent­ly arrived asy­lum seek­ers in our area tend­ed toward broad sweeps of crises-based report­ing which too eas­i­ly can lead to mind­sets that stereo­type, mar­gin­al­ize, or worse demo­nize and dehu­man­ize. Counter nar­ra­tives that hon­or human rights and the human dig­ni­ty of peo­ple in pur­suit of the same peace, pro­tec­tion, and oppor­tu­ni­ties we want for our­selves and our fam­i­lies are too often absent from our local and nation­al news­feeds. The young peo­ple in this project are ask­ing you to par­tic­i­pate in one of the most fun­da­men­tal acts of peace-mak­ing, which is to see them and in so doing hon­or their beau­ti­ful human­i­ty.” (Intro­duc­tion, pg. 13)

Mer­na works close­ly with mul­ti­cul­tur­al learn­ers teach­ers at Fos­ter High School in Tuk­wila, Wash­ing­ton. This year, Hongyan Zhang New­ton, Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers teach­ers, was her partner.

Mer­na observes:

The young peo­ple in this and every project yearn to abol­ish false assump­tions about who they are and what they can achieve. If allowed, refugee, immi­grant, and asy­lum seek­er youth will help deter­mine the more equi­table and sus­tain­able future they envi­sion. Their expe­ri­ences car­ry­ing mul­ti­ple cul­tures, lan­guages, and iden­ti­ties can enrich our ways of under­stand­ing the root caus­es of migra­tion and help teach us to deep­en our knowl­edge of how to sup­port them in shap­ing the world they want to work toward.” (Intro­duc­tion, pg. 14)

By read­ing the poems, study­ing the self-por­traits, learn­ing from the stu­dents them­selves about what their self-por­traits express, I believe your heart will open fur­ther, just as mine has.

May I sug­gest that you repli­cate this project in your own com­mu­ni­ty? Encour­ag­ing mem­o­ries of home­lands helps us all. None of my fore­bears vis­it­ed the home­lands of their par­ents but they talked about that land as though they had. Mem­o­ries of the home­land were that strong. For the young immi­grants with whom Mer­na and Hongyan work, these are imme­di­ate mem­o­ries, long­ings, for what could have been if vio­lence had not forced them from their homes.

I share just one of the thought-pro­vok­ing projects in this book, from Maryam Ayazi:

Our Beautiful Homelands

My Sto­ry and My Culture

I remem­ber my grand­moth­er and grand­fa­ther
and the city of Her­at, Afghanistan.
I miss espe­cial­ly sleep­ing next to my grand­moth­er
and I miss the pop­pies
and all of the yel­low, red and green flow­ers
and the sheep and goats around their house.

I remem­ber the beau­ti­ful city of Pan­shir, Afghanistan
where my friend Razmea and I lived
I miss her, I miss her cook­ing our Afghani food
I still trea­sure the love of cook­ing the food
of my Afghani culture.

I still miss my Uncle Mas­mood going out­side,
eat­ing ice cream,
and I still miss my Afghani cul­ture,
and my friends from the city Her­at,
and my fam­i­ly who are still far away
in Afghanistan, my homeland.

These young peo­ple are new to the Unit­ed States, to the Seat­tle area, and very new to the Eng­lish language.

Pur­chase your own copy of Our Beau­ti­ful Home­lands from Chin Music Press

More Infor­ma­tion about Mer­na and the Sto­ries of Arrival project, which I’ve writ­ten about in Bookol­o­gy magazine:

The Voice of My Heart: Unfor­get­table Mem­o­ries in an Unfor­get­table Year, 2022

We Are the Future: Poems with a Voice for Peace, 2021

An inter­view with Mer­na Ann Hecht after the pub­li­ca­tion of Our Table Mem­o­ries: Food & Poet­ry of Spir­it, Home­land & Tra­di­tion, 2017

Our Beau­ti­ful Home­lands
as Told in Self-Por­traits by Glob­al Youth

edit­ed by Mer­na Ann Hecht
fore­word by John Fox, founder and CEO,
The Insti­tute for Poet­ic Med­i­cine
Chin Music Press, Seat­tle, WA, 2024
ISBN 978−1−63405−074−6

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Karen Cushman
Karen Cushman
16 days ago

I’m so moved by these sto­ries and por­traits of young peo­ple brav­ing a new coun­try and new lan­guage. I wish them well.