Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation
by Edwidge Danticat
A girl’s story reaches her detained mother.
For you if
your kid has heard about families kept apart and wants to know what you can do.
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$19 MSRP · Hardcover
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Saya's mother is in an immigration detention center, and the only way Saya can reach her is through stories. The two pass them back and forth by phone and by letter, and when Saya writes her own, it ends up in the newspaper and in the hands of people who can do something. Told in Danticat's gentle prose with Leslie Staub's warm paintings, it is a book about children whose families are separated by law, and the power of telling the story yourself.
Where This Book Lives
- Topics
- us immigration detention
Danticat is in the catalog with Breath, Eyes, Memory and Brother, I'm Dying; this is the picture-book door into her. Gentle enough for a 5-year-old, and a good conversation starter about immigration detention without graphic detail.
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Kirikou and the Sorceress(1998)
dir. Michel Ocelot
Same theme: Courage
The tiny hero who asks why she’s cruel.
In a West African village, a newborn boy named Kirikou speaks, walks and sets out to save his people from Karaba, the sorceress who has dried up their spring. The question he keeps asking is why she is so cruel. The answer changes how the story ends. It is based on West African folktales and runs about 70 minutes.
Why it’s here: The film turns a fairy tale about a tiny hero into a story about asking why the villain does what she does. What's punk is that Kirikou wins by understanding, not by force. What's pedagogical is the question itself, which is one a kid can carry out of the theatre. A good pick for a family watch. Note: the film is sometimes critiqued for its stereotyped portrayal of West Africa, written by a French director, and it includes non-sexual nudity.
Where to watch: Prime Video (subscription); rent ~$0.99Letterboxd ↗
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Number the Stars
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The Nazis are rounding up Jews. Her family hides her best friend.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
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Christopher Paul Curtis
A funny family road trip to Birmingham. Then 1963 arrives.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
And Tango Makes Three
Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
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✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Amal Unbound
Aisha Saeed
The debt wasn't hers. The cage is.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the grown-up bookshelf
Same idea, written for a grown-up. Good for the adult in the room, too.
Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company
Alice Driver
Cheap chicken has a body count.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon
Comic books save the world (kinda).
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Caramelo
Sandra Cisneros
Every summer to Mexico. They always bring the past.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The People of Paper
Salvador Plascencia
Characters who know they're in a novel. They revolt.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST