~Jonas Ahlgren, Class of 2024

A Book on Family and New Lives

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.

~Christina Rossetti

Even the hardest of challenges can be overcome with the help of family. American Street by Ibi Zoboi was a joy to read and reinforced the importance of family in my mind through an interesting and thoughtful storyline. While reading American Street, I could tell how much the author was placing importance on family. It challenged me to think about what family means or lack thereof. Through each chapter and scene I found myself pondering what the characters were going through and how they had gotten here.

  In American Street, Fabiola, a sixteen-year-old girl, tries to immigrate from Haiti to the United States. At the beginning of the book, Fabiola’s mother is detained and Fabiola is not, separating the two of them. Fabiola moves to live with her cousins in Detroit in their house on American Street. She meets the rest of her family, her cousins Princess, Chantal, and Primadonna, as well as her aunt Jo. Through the story Fabiola slowly learns to be part of the new home and family given to her; however, at the start, she has trouble fitting into such a new place. 

  In chapter 11, Fabiola is talking to her cousins late at night. “I am not home now. I left it behind. You are home.” Fabiola doesn’t yet feel part of such a new world, a world so different from her hometown of Haiti. Despite the struggles she feels more at home with the help of her family. “Family takes care of each other, I tell myself.” Even from the start, when Fabiola is picked up at the airport by her cousins and aunt, she feels that she needs to trust her family, and they will help her through everything. Without her family in the book, she would be lost and never fit into a new place like Detroit.

  I found that reading American Street was quite enjoyable, but it also made me think a lot. The book was exciting and had its fair share of enjoyable scenes, but the themes presented consistently throughout the book made it so that I couldn’t go a few pages without being reminded of what the book truly meant. The repetitiveness of the themes pounded the message into my head. Another side theme of the book was perseverance. I realized that, just like Fabiola, we will all feel like strangers in a new world. It just takes some determination to overcome these times.

  Before reading this book I might have said that family was important, but now I know that Family is a home, a strength, and forever.