Book+Review+(Cul+Res,+Teen)+-+Home+of+the+Brave

//Home of the Brave//  by Katherine Applegate should be required reading for middle-schoolers. If not for the beautiful, first-person free verse which is easily accessible, then for the way Katherine Applegate manages to capture the experience of a young Sudanese refugee's first year in America. This is a story of hope and strength that adults and teenagers will be better people for having read it 1 .

The book chronicles a year in the life of Kek, a teenage Sudanese boy whose father and brother die in a war and whose mother is missing. Kek is sent to live with his aunt and her son, Ganwar in Minnesota. Lonely and sad, but optimistic, Kek maintains hope throughout that his friend Dave from the Refugee Resettlement Center will be able to find his mother. Kek has nothing but his memories of her smiling face and a piece of the dress she was wearing when he last saw her to cling to. As the story goes on, and we learn more about the last time Kek saw his mother, Kek and the reader begin to lose hope that they will be reunited.

Kek manages to hobble together a family for himself. In addition to his aunt and cousin, he befriends Hannah, a girl who lives with her foster family in Kek's apartment building, Lou, an elderly woman trying to hold onto her farm after her husband dies, and his ESL class. All of these people share some of Kek's experiences, but no one shares all of them. Kek teaches them all something as they help Kek navigate his way in this foreign land and realize his coming of age in a place that does not mark manhood with scars.

The reader can not help but empathize with Kek. Because he is so optimistic and appreciative and a contrast to his cousin who says he will always feel like an outsider in America, the book does not feel anti-American, although if the reader wants to, she could read a message of excess. Consider Kek's first trip to Safeway:

The grocery store has rows and rows of color, of light of easy hope. Hannah moves down the aisle, but I stand like a tree rooted firm, my eyes too full of this place, with its answers to prayers <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">on every shelf.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Hannah glances over her shoulder. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">You OK? She asks. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">I reach out and touch a piece of bright green food <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">I've never seen before. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">And then I begin to cry (156).

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The tears are less about all that America has and more about all that Kek and his people have not had. Later, in his ESL class Kek is able to discuss this with his teacher, and she is able to relate:

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Ms. Hernandez pats my hand. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It's just too much sometimes, isn't it? <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">When you had almost nothing. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">And when you know that many people <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">still have so little (162).

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It is not just stores and libraries that Kek can't get his mind around. He does not understand racism. At one point, three boys say something to Kek because he is with his friend Hannah, who is white. When Hannah pulls him inside so he will not fight the boys, he is upset because he is “a man.” He is confused and has difficulty explaining it to Hannah: “Suddenly I feel tired of using words/ that don't belong to me./ Never mind, I say./ I trudge up the stairs.” Later he sits with his cousin on the sofa and watches “the TV machine” with its “happy, easy stories” (173). It is judgmental observations such as this that allow readers to view common elements and experiences from their own lives in a new way.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Peppering the story with memories from his life in Sudan (good and bad), Applegate captures the experience of someone torn away from their own country and trying to assimilate in a new one. Using sparse free-verse, Applegate conveys the confusion and disjointedness of his new life and his struggle with a new language. Kek is not comfortable here, but he is trying while he is racked with feelings of loss and guilt: guilt for surviving the fighting when his father and brother died; guilt for leaving his mother when the men with guns come; guilt for having access to so much food after he watched a baby die of hunger in its mother's arms; guilt for being able to pick a book from among so many in the library when his mother always wanted to learn to read.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This book gives voice to an outsider's view of America. A voice that is not often heard by young people in his position. Kek is astonished by the diversity of his school, but he faces racism. Students often learn side by side without knowing their classmates' stories and struggles. This book may help young people begin to see their world as bigger than themselves.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Although Kek's experience is different from most teenagers, there are common themes such as strength, friendship, and love, that all teenagers can relate to. And a message of hope that all people need.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Hope is a thing made only for people, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">a scrap to hold onto <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">in darkness and in light (p. 246). 1This may seem hyperbolic. Trust me: it's not. Type in the content of your page here.