through personal accounts, fictionalised or autobiographical that
can really help with an understanding of what migration and societal
change means. This month we are highlighting three of them.
The first is a fictional account from the time when the Berlin Wall went
up overnight, separating Western Europe from Eastern Europe under
the Soviet regime. The second is a biographical account, written in
free verse, of the life of a Russian émigré to the USA who chose to
fight for the rights of women within the society she lived. The last is an
autobiographical/biographical account of the life of three generations
of women living in China.
Mama once said the most wonderful thing about
the young is our ability to make things normal.
That whatever life does to us, no matter how
strange, it isn’t long before insanity seems ordinary,
as if upside down is the way things should be.
That didn’t make sense to me at first, but over
the next four years after the wall went up, I saw it
happen more and more. Most children barely noticed
the wall any longer. They played hoops beneath the
eyes of armed border guards in their watchtowers,
rolled marbles in the shade of the wall, and learned
to do as they were told without asking questions.
A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen is an historical novel
which examines what happened when the Berlin Wall went up
overnight in 1961, splitting families on either side of the divide.
Gerta, her mother and brother are stuck on the East German side
of the wall, her father and other brother are in West Berlin having
gone to look for work. Over the next 4 years life gets worse for
Gerta and when she sees her father standing on the West Berlin
viewing platform miming digging she has to make a choice – will
she learn to accept the world she lives in where East German
soldiers aim their guns inwards at their own citizens or risk death
trying to escape? Aimed at 9-13 year olds this story is a great
introduction to the Cold War and life in East Berlin in the 1960s.
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