This month we read about Sharbat Gula, who for years was known only as "the Afghan girl" after appearing on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in 1985. This image shows Sharbat in the original photo taken in 1985, and the photo taken in 2002 when National Geographic located her again.
Magnus Wennmann, a photojournalist from Stockholm, shot a series of photos on the refugee children fleeing Syria. Click the image above to see more photos and read the children's stories.
Photographer Steve McCurry has taken many photos in Afghanistan other than the portraits of Sharbat Gula. Click the image above to see some of them.
WARNING: While the first fifty images contain no disturbing content, there are several pictures toward the end of the gallery that show people injured or killed in violent conflict. If you wish to avoid seeing these difficult images, stay toward the front of the gallery.
Anabel Cotto, one of the first students to read "A Life Revealed" with the ELP Bookclub, could understand Sharbat Gula's surprise at discovering she was an icon. The man pictured in the photo above wearing a white hat and looking at the camera was Anabel's grandfather, and until Anabel accidentally discovered the book the photo appeared in she had no idea the picture existed. She felt strange knowing her grandfather had been part of history. How do you think you would feel if you discovered a photo of an older relative at an important historical event?
A very short video featuring photographer Scott McCurry telling the story of his famous photo and how they found Sharbat Gula all those years later.
This is the television special made by the team from National Geographic Television & Film's Explorer that is mentioned in the article. This link is for Part 3, which is about fifteen minutes long.
Interested in knowing more? Check out these other readings. We won't necessarily talk about them in book club, but they'll help you learn more.
The Story Behind the World's Most Famous Photograph by Jake Wallis Simons
Click the link above to read more about photographer Scott McCurry and his work.
Afghanistan: Shooting Under Fire by Steve McCurry
In the late 1970s, photographer Steve McCurry disguised himself in Afghan clothes and crossed illegally into Afghanistan just before the Soviet Invasion. In this short blog entry, he recalls his experience there. Click the link above.
Afghan Girl's Story Sparks School-Fund Donations
National Geographic created a fund in honor of Sharbat Gula to help pay for educational opportunities for girls in Afghanistan. Eventually, they expanded to include boys and became the Afghan's Children's Fund. Click the link above to read about the founding of the charity.
Afghan Refugee on 1984 National Geographic Cover Embroiled in ID Row by Jon Boone
Sharbat Gula fled Afghanistan to Pakistan, where she lives as a refugee. The Pakistani government recently discovered she had illegally received a national ID card, and Gula's photo from her ID card has become a symbol of the hostility felt by many Pakistanis toward Afghan refugees living in their country. Read an article about this issue by clicking the link above.
All by My Selfie: National Geographic Photographers Muse on the Word of the Year
In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary chose "selfie" as the word of the year. Several National Geographic photographers responded to that choice in words and with pictures. Click on the link above to read more.
Click here to go to National Geographic's fact page on Pakistan. The page also features photos and maps.
Click here to read (and watch a short video) about the Decoy Experiment, which demonstrates how a photograph is shaped more by the person behind the camera than by what's in front of it. How does this affect your opinion of Steve McCurry's photo of Sharbat Gula?
Click on the image above to see the photos Steve McCurry took in 2002 when National Geographic located Sharbat Gula.
Want a little audio? Click on the image above to listen to a reading of "A Life Revealed."
A group of Syrian girls, ages 14 to 18, documented what life in the Za'atari Camp for refugees in Jordan. Click the images to see more of their photos and read their commentary.
Steve McCurry has also shot a lot of photographs in Pakistan. Click on the image above to see some of them.
You can click on the image above to go to this image at Mirci's Flickr site and explore more of their photos.
This is the television special made by the team from National Geographic Television & Film's Explorer that is mentioned in the article. This link is for Part 1, which is about fifteen minutes long.
This is the television special made by the team from National Geographic Television & Film's Explorer that is mentioned in the article. This link is for Part 2, which is about fifteen minutes long.
This is the television special made by the team from National Geographic Television & Film's Explorer that is mentioned in the article. This link is for Part 4, which is about eight minutes long.
Click the image above to watch a short documentary film by a 17 year-old Syrian girl living in a refugee camp in Jordan.
A selection of items you can check out to read more about the refugee experience.
Of Beetles and Angels by
Now in a paperback edition, this acclaimed memoir tells the unforgettable story of a young boy's journey from a refugee camp in Sudan to Chicago, where his family survived on welfare. Mawi followed his father's advice to "treat people . . . as though they were angels sent from heaven, " and realized his dream of a full-tuition scholarship to Harvard University. Updated with 14 black-and-white photos and a new epilogue.
The Refugee Hotel by
The Refugee Hotel is a groundbreaking collection of photography and interviews that documents the arrival of refugees in the United States. A lavishly designed book, its stunning images are coupled with moving testimonies from people describing their first days in the U.S., the lives they’ve left behind, and the new communities they’ve since created. Among the narrators: PSAW WAH BAW, who was forced to flee her village in Burma amidst armed conflict. She describes how her family left their village with just five cups of rice, beginning an arduous journey toward resettlement that would take them through Bangkok, Tokyo, Illinois, and Texas. PASTOR NOEL, who fled the civil war in Burundi in 1972 for a refugee camp in Congo. When war erupted in Congo in 1996, Noel was once again forced from his home. He now lives in Mobile, Alabama, and is a central figure in the African refugee community. FELIX, a South Sudanese man who joined the rebel army as a teenager but eventually fled to a refugee camp in Kenya. Felix now lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he works with Habitat for Humanity to assist African refugees in purchasing their own homes.
Learning to Die in Miami by
In his 2003 National Book Award–winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire narrated his coming of age in Cuba just before and during the Castro revolution. That book literally ends in midair as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother leave Havana on an airplane—along with thousands of other children—to begin their new life in Miami in 1962. It would be years before he would see his mother again. He would never again see his beloved father. Learning to Die in Miami opens as the plane lands and Carlos faces, with trepidation and excitement, his new life. He quickly realizes that in order for his new American self to emerge, his Cuban self must "die." And so, with great enterprise and purpose, he begins his journey. We follow Carlos as he adjusts to life in his new home. Faced with learning English, attending American schools, and an uncertain future, young Carlos confronts the age-old immigrant’s plight: being surrounded by American bounty, but not able to partake right away. The abundance America has to offer excites him and, regardless of how grim his living situation becomes, he eagerly forges ahead with his own personal assimilation program, shedding the vestiges of his old life almost immediately, even changing his name to Charles. Cuba becomes a remote and vague idea in the back of his mind, something he used to know well, but now it "had ceased to be part of the world." But as Carlos comes to grips with his strange surroundings, he must also struggle with everyday issues of growing up. His constant movement between foster homes and the eventual realization that his parents are far away in Cuba bring on an acute awareness that his life has irrevocably changed. Flashing back and forth between past and future, we watch as Carlos balances the divide between his past and present homes and finds his way in this strange new world, one that seems to hold the exhilarating promise of infinite possibilities and one that he will eventually claim as his own. An exorcism and an ode, Learning to Die in Miami is a celebration of renewal—of those times when we’re certain we have died and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.
Living as a Refugee in America by
Children in Crisis offers authoritative portraits of young people living, coping, and surviving under some of the most difficult circumstances on the planet today. From AIDS in South Africa to post-Chernobyl illnesses to life on the streets in Rio and in Sudanese refugee camps to child labor in India and life as an Afghan refugee in the United States, each title provides a moving picture of worldwide crises and the people who weather them. the words come from firsthand interviews and other primary sources, and the pictures are actual photographs of the featured subjects. Through these primary source words and photos, readers will become personally acquainted with-and caught up in the life of-a young person and his or her family as they live through contemporary crises that most of us would otherwise experience secondhand through news accounts.
The Day of the Pelican by
[PRINT] 2013 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award Meli Lleshi is positive that her drawing of her teacher with his pelican nose started it all. The Lleshis are Albanians living in Kosovo, a country trying to fight off Serbian oppressors, and suddenly they are homeless refugees. Old and young alike, they find their courage tested by hunger, illness, the long, arduous journey, and danger on every side. Then, unexpectedly, they are brought to America by a church group and begin a new life in a small Vermont town. The events of 9/11 bringmore challenges for this Muslim family--but this country is their home now and there can be no turning back.A compassionate, powerful novel by a master storyteller.
The Prince of Los Cocuyos by
Where am I from? Where do I belong? Who am I? These are the universal questions that have emerged from Richard Blanco's illuminating, story-rich poetry. Now Blanco explores these questions in this vivid account of his coming of age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his effort to contend with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities. These are the stories of that shy yet precocious boy, known as Riqui to his family, who would grow up to be Richard Blanco, acclaimed as the first Latino and first openly gay presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history. Blanco grew up in the grip of two imaginary worlds: the Cuba of the 1950s that his family longed for and Blanco's idealized America, which seemed to exist outside the boundaries of Cuban Miami. The America of his fantasies from TV shows like The Brady Bunch offered a life just as "exotic" as the island paradise that was his birthright. The Prince of los Cocuyos evokes the complexities and glories—and humor—of navigating these worlds and the awakening of Riqui's homosexuality and artist's soul. Coloring books and pig roasts, opera and mambo, Easy Cheese and pork rinds—Riqui negotiates these contradictions and more. His abuela, a bookie, tries to make him un hombre, driving both his sexuality and his artistic inclinations deep into the closet; his first Thanksgiving turkey dinner ends with relatives in a conga line; his suburban backyard is transformed by his abuelo into a veritable farm with chickens and rabbits; and his mother decides to pack toilet paper and a pistol for his childhood pilgrimage to "the promised land" of Walt Disney World. Riqui finally finds his proverbial village as a teenager, working at the family market, El Cocuyito ("The Little Firefly"), lovingly mentored by its employees and customers. A prismatic and lyrical narrative rich with all the textures of Miami during the 1970s and '80s, The Prince of los Cocuyos is a resonant account of how Blanco came into his own sense of an authentic self, one that incorporated his Cuban-ness and his queerness, his American-ness and his artistic drive. Singular and universal, Blanco's story illuminates the experience of becoming through loving and loving through becoming: the way in which we are perpetually shaped by our experiences, our memories, and our stories of community and family.
Refugees by
During the mid-1960s, the laws regulating immigration to both the United States and Canada were rewritten. Traditionally, the majority of immigrants had come from western European countries; the revised immigration acts opened the door for millions of immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Some of the books in the series. The Changing Face of North America: Immigration Since 1965 focus on the immigration experiences of people from a specific country or region, giving a history of immigration and explaining why they came to America and how they have succeeded. Other volumes look at immigration-related issues, such as the status of refugees and the deportation process. Each book contains up-to-date statistical charts and information, and the series has been carefully edited to provide a comprehensive overview of how the arrival of new immigrants has changed the United States and Canada--and how coming to North America has changed the immigrants.
Leaving Vietnam by
This is the story of Tuan and his father, who endure danger and difficulties when they escape by boat from Vietnam, spend days at sea, and then months in refugee camps before making their way to the United States.
The Latehomecomer by
In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family's story after her grandmother's death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang's tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard. Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family's captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. When she was six years old, Yang's family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice. Together with her sister, Kao Kalia Yang is the founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has recently screened The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com.
The Good Braider by
The Good Braider was selected as the 2013 Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year and a book of Outstanding Merit. In spare free verse laced with unforgettable images, Viola's strikingly original voice sings out the story of her family's journey from war-torn Sudan, to Cairo, and finally to Portland, Maine. Here, in the sometimes too close embrace of the local Southern Sudanese Community, she dreams of South Sudan while she tries to navigate the strange world of America--a world where a girl can wear a short skirt, get a tattoo, or even date a boy; a world that puts her into sharp conflict with her traditional mother who, like Viola, is struggling to braid together the strands of a displaced life. Terry Farish's haunting novel is not only a riveting story of escape and survival, but the universal tale of a young immigrant's struggle to build a life on the cusp of two cultures. The author of The Good Braider has donated this book to the Worldreader program.
Human Cargo by
An arresting portrait of the lives of today's refugees and a searching look into their future The word refugee is more often used to invoke a problem than it is to describe a population of millions of people forced to abandon their homes, possessions, and families in order to find a place where they may, quite literally, be allowed to live. In spite of the fact that refugees surround us-the latest UN estimates suggest that 20 million of the world's 6.3 billion people are refugees-few can grasp the scale of their presence or the implications of their growing numbers. Caroline Moorehead has traveled for nearly two years and across four continents to bring us their unforgettable stories. In prose that is at once affecting and informative, we are introduced to the men, women, and children she meets as she travels to Cairo, Guinea, Sicily, the U.S./Mexico border, Lebanon, England, Australia, and Finland. She explains how she came to work and for a time live among refugees, and why she could not escape the pressing need to understand and describe the chain of often terrifying events that mark their lives. Human Cargo is a work of deep and subtle sympathy that completely alters our understanding of what it means to have and lose a place in the world.
Here are some of the things we'll be discussing about this reading.The first set of questions are to test your understanding of the reading. The second set are to make you think a little more about what you read.
Comprehension:
1. In what year was the first picture of Sharbat taken? In what year was the second picture taken?
2. What happened to Sharbat’s parents? How old was she?
3. Is Sharbat married? Does she have children? If so, how many?
4. What is it like in Sharbat’s village?
5. How does Sharbat say that she has survived?
Dicussion:
1. Why do you think the photos of Sharbat Gula became so famous?
2. How do you think it would feel to find out that millions of people had seen a photo of you without you knowing it?
3. Why do you think Sharbat made a three day hike and six hour drive to see the photographer?
4. How do the article's details about Sharbat's life influence the way you see McCurry's photograph?
5. Sharbat was photographed only twice in 17 years and remembers both times vividly. Think about how many photos you have taken this week. Do we take too many photos?