Over Winter Break, our assignment was to read Mary Pipher's book The Middle of Everywhere. Now that we're back in the swing of things, we spent our first monday night discussing it. As hard as reading some of the stories were for me, I really enjoyed the book. Even moreso, I enjoyed our discussion of it. It was amazing to hear all of the different profiles of immigrants' lives. I also liked hearing how these stories affected others as well because I know they affected me. I think my favorite part about the whole discussion though was learning about the experiences of everyone in the class.
I am really glad that we started out our semester on Immigration with this. Mary Pipher managed to get very personal stories from the immigrants she interviewed. As I learned about the different people it broadened my view of the immigrant population in the US. I think it's very important to start out making the issue personal and realistic, so I'm glad we are opening this way.
To be honest, as I read this book I often got pretty discouraged. I loved the book and was so interested in hearing each person's story, but every story reminded me how unappreciative I am sometimes. The thing I was more reminded of is how weak my faith in God is sometimes. I can't even fathom what living through some of these experiences would be, let alone still trusting in God and believeing that it would all be ok. I definitley did a lot of self reflection after reading this, and all in all, I think it turned out to be for the good.
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