Talking about Immigration with Alex Kotlowitz and Sonia Nazario

On March 25 in Chicago, Facing History and Ourselves and The Allstate Foundation hosted a Community Conversation featuring journalists Sonia Nazario and Alex Kotlowitz at Whitney Young Magnet High School on Chicago's near west side.  Nearly 400 community members and students came to hear the two journalists in a dialogue about immigration. Sonia Nazario is the author of Enrique’s Journey, which recounts the story of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship to reach his mother in the United States.  Sonia traveled Enrique’s path to the U.S. in writing the book, based upon her Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series in the Los Angeles Times.  

Nazario was joined by Alex Kotlowitz, an award-winning journalist whose best-selling book, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, garnered national recognition for its compassionate and unflinching portrait of Pharoah and Lafayette Rivers and their lives growing up in a public housing project in Chicago.  His most recent book is Never a City So Real. Over the last several years, Kotlowitz has written immigration-focused articles, including an exploration of the debate over illegal immigration in a small Illinois town.  

Kotlowitz began with a story of a Chinese boy’s immigration to the United States, followed by Nazario reading an excerpt from Enrique’s Journey.  This developed into a fascinating discussion about ethics in journalism, the relationship between journalists and their subjects, and the importance of narrative and story when discussing immigration.  

Margot Stern Strom Award-winning teacher Peter Bernthal took the stage to describe some of the ways that his classroom is using Facing History.  Nazario had spent the earlier portion of the day visiting Bernthal’s class at Ames Middle School, where the students were given the opportunity to present their work on Enrique’s Journey.  Students from Alexander Seeskin’s Lakeview High School class, having read Enrique’s Journey and There Are No Children Here, opened the audience Q&A session with wonderfully thoughtful questions.  Kotlowitz and Nazario were a fantastic pair and provided a truly wonderful, thought-provoking evening.