"Carry On: Poetry by Young Immigrants" (Various Contributors)

TITLE: Carry On: Poetry by Young Immigrants
AUTHOR: Various Contributors (Translated by Susan Ouriuo, Illustrated by Rogé Girard)
PUBLISHER: Toronto, ON: Owlkids Books, 2021, (36 pages).

Immigration is the lifeline of diversity. With globalization and travel, people are increasingly moving across continents with ease. Many have also emigrated from their birth countries for various reasons. Some are economic while others are plainly to escape from poverty or persecution. Some countries open their doors only to specific foreign talents to compensate for their lack of skills in that area. Others do so for humanitarian reasons. Having families in a foreign country is another factor. Not wanting to be separated from their loved ones, they put in the paperwork to bring them them over to be reunited in their new country of choice. For all the economic benefits to the destination countries, there are challenges of adaptation and integration. This is especially so when locals feel threatened and insecure due to the introduction of immigrants who were willing to work more for mich less. Locals fear that immigration would strain their welfare systems and social safety nets. Tensions could also arise due to language or cultural difficulties. 

For all the political and economic concerns, perhaps the most challenging of all are the social implications. It is not often that we hear how many young immigrants feel. They are often not directly responsible for what their parents or guardians make on their behalf. This book contains poems written by 15 young immigrants on how they feel about leaving their countries of origin and their struggles to adapt to their new countries. The book is a compilation of poems, portraits, and thoughts from young immigrants in a high school in Quebec, Canada. They speak of how decisions made for them by adults had impacted them both physically and emotionally. They come from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America. It is a powerful collection of thoughts and emotions about how young immigrants fear, feel, and hopes about the future. The fears of the new country come with the sadness of leaving their homes of origin. The poems reveal the need to adapt to the external things like new weather changes, strange surroundings, different cultures, identity crises, comparing memories of the past with the conflicted views about the future. 

Then there are the portraits which are there for readers to appreciate the fact that immigrants are ordinary folks like you and me. There is no space for arrogance or any arrogant bigotry that elevates local rights at the expense of all others. Immigrants need understanding rather than contempt. We are all in this world together. The Christian message of loving our neighbour can be appropriately practiced through our welcome of immigrants, wherever they are. We need more love. Poems express emotions in ways that prose cannot do. There is no need to explain the words for the expressions enable readers to nuance the emotions in many dimensions. Like the poem of Ariel Kegeles which expresses a longing for a past that is now gone or Olhin Natolla's comparison of a a noisy celebration back home to a subdued occasion in the new country. Almost every poem showcases a longing for the past and some form of trepidation for the future. Most heart-breaking of all is the separation for family and loved ones. Young children draw pictures. Teenagers write poems. These are ways to express the human emotion due to immigration and separation. I must commend the poets for their courage to put into words in their non-native tongue. Perhaps, such efforts are nothing compared to their physical relocation and emotional separation from one country to another. They have given the world a window into their world and their feelings. I believe that being able to identify where they are, how they feel, and what they are hoping for will not only help society at large to empathize with immigrants, but also to be reminded that we are all temporary residents in this world. Let us do our best to be as welcoming of one another as possible. We never know when will that day come when we need to be relocated to another foreign land. I like to conclude with this popular phrase which I paraphrase here: There are no strangers in this world; just friends we have yet to meet. Perhaps, this book has revealed friends in our neighbourhood that we have yet to meet.

ROGÉ is the illustrator of more than twenty children’s books and is the recipient of several awards, including a Governor General’s Award for illustration and a New York Times book award. All the contributors are from  Paul-Gérin-Lajoie-d’Outremont high school in Montreal, Quebec.

Rating: 4 stars of 5.

conrade

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This book has been provided courtesy of Owlkids Books and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.