Back in 2018, Caribbean immigrant communities in the UK made international news headlines due to the Windrush Scandal, and this month they're in the news again for similar reasons. The debate, of course, is whether the Jamaicans, who have criminal records, deserve to be deported or not. What I'm fascinated by though, is the way the deportee-convicts are being interviewed, documentary-style, and being afforded so much air time by British journalists. So many of the British rags say that they're "following the stories" of the convicted offenders. Do Caribbean immigrants only deserve to have their stories "followed" by the media when there's controversy and deportation crackdowns involved? Why not follow the stories of immigrant communities all year round? Why not also follow the stories of those immigrants who aren't thieves and drug dealers?
It's so important to start teaching children, from a young age, to see immigrants as human, and the best way to do that is to share the stories of immigrants, as told by themselves...and not just the stories of injustice. Children's books can help readers of all ages to walk in the shoes of people from immigrant communities who, for the most part, are decent, honest, hard-working folk who just want to make a better life for themselves and their families. If your academic institution or library has a subscription to EBSCOhost Novelist, you can access this annotated bibliography I wrote for them in 2019 titled 'Caribbean Immigrants Tell Their Story: 17 Own Voices Picture Books': https://tinyurl.com/u7b28xk.
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