Refugee High: Coming of Age in America by Elly Fishman

Author:Elly Fishman [Fishman, Elly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: education, Inclusive Education, Educational Policy & Reform, General, Multicultural Education, Social Science, Minority Studies, Race & Ethnic Relations, Emigration & Immigration
ISBN: 9781620975091
Google: jyXxDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2021-08-10T23:39:01.922520+00:00

Mariah has a stake in her proposal. School dress has made her unhappy since she entered high school. First, prior to Sullivan, at her previous high school, Mariah was one of only a few Muslim students. When she began her freshman year in 2016, she felt as if the entire school were talking about her headscarf. Her classmates peppered Mariah with questions about Islam. Some whispered “ISIS” when she passed them in the hallways. Mariah, at a loss then, watched how her older sister Farha negotiated the halls. She had always looked up to Farha, and whatever Farha did, Mariah followed suit. Farha, Mariah discovered, took off her hijab when she arrived at school. When Mariah still had her own phone, she saw her sister’s selfies on social media, Farha’s hair cascading down her back. Farha smoked cigarettes behind the school and drove around with boys in their cars. After their parents went to bed, her sister spent hours talking on the phone. Sometimes Mariah stayed up to listen. A month into her freshman year, Mariah decided to remove her hijab, too. She and Farha would arrive at school an hour early and head directly to the girls’ bathroom. There, Mariah would stuff her headscarf in her backpack and, when her classmates asked her where she was from, Mariah, who spoke with a Boricua flare ever since she began learning English from her Puerto Rican middle school classmates, told them she was from Puerto Rico. It seemed few remembered her headscarf.

By the time Mariah enrolled at Sullivan, Farha had left Chicago. She moved out after the girls’ mother challenged them over a Snapchat story she heard about. It showed Farha and Mariah posed in tight tops without their hijabs, and in front of the neighborhood McDonald’s. Farha dropped out of high school and in quick order was engaged to a cousin in Atlanta. The news crushed Mariah. She thought Farha was far too young to marry. She spent weeks cursing her sister, berating her for choosing marriage so young. Farha soon shut Mariah out. “It’s not your business,” she’d say. “I’m making my own choices.”

Mariah heard from another cousin, a young woman who completed two years at Sullivan before dropping out to get married and pregnant. The cousin said that Sullivan was a welcoming place for Muslims, so Mariah decided she’d try the hijab again. She figured it would cheer up her mother, too. Mariah’s battles with her mother over the hijab had nearly ripped her family apart. She wanted to repair the damage.

Her first lunch period at Sullivan was on the late side. At that hour in the fall, light poured sideways into the cafeteria in the geometric shapes of the windows. Mariah surveyed the cafeteria for signs of a crowd she might fit into. It appeared to her that every table hosted a different group. One corner of the room was occupied with a few boys—Rohingya, Iraqi, and African, throwing around a soccer ball across the cafeteria’s blue linoleum floor.

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