"Brick Lane" by Monica Ali

There is always the opportunity to engage a new life to the one that already we walk!

"Brick Lane" tells the story of a woman like many Nanzeen, who like many is not clear for beauty, thin face, and that face was wide "to encompass all concerns." An ordinary woman Nanzeen that, even before birth is doomed. In fact, its history is, "the story as you have been abandoned to your fate." So his life embodies the existence that it is for many women like her who are educated to total submission to her husband.Yet his story suddenly takes a different path from many lives, its parallel. A path made of struggles tacit, of small but also large rebellions, capable slowly destroy the "concrete slab" inside which is segregated. And only now when the weeks, the months, the years slip quickly into his hands, he realizes that at the end of our lives, there is always the possibility of a new innestarne and that really is not the fate to decide for us, but we are masters of our destiny ....

Book review by Liza S.

1st Italian Read-Aloud Club

Country: Italy

Name of partner organization: Tecnopras s.a.s.

Number of participants: 8

Target group: migrants

Date: 23 November 2013

Location: Public Library

Duration: 2 hours

Description of the activity:

Book chosen: ‘Brick Lane’, Monica Ali (novel about a young Bangladeshi woman who lives a dutiful life in an arranged marriage in London until she discovers the possibilities of life in a less restrictive country).
The learners have welcomed the initiative as an opportunity for socialization among migrants and integration in the hosting community.
Despite some embarrassment in the beginning and some learners’ shyness, they liked the idea of reading together aloud the first paragraphs of the book and commenting the content as incitement for talking about themselves (their stories, current situations, etc.).
They feel encouraged to create new opportunities of socialization and cultural exchange. After the Club first meeting, the learners have met once for a cultural visit (to Viterbo, Etruscan site) and twice for watching the movies (‘Moebius’, South Corea, and ‘Hors-la-loi – Men without law’, Africa).

Newsletter # 1

READING AGAINST DISCRIMINATION

Being strong readers and educators engaged in adult learning processes, especially targeted on socially disadvantaged people and social inclusion, several months ago we happened to get this thought: why not using literature and promotion of reading to involve migrant adults in their acquisition of intercultural skills? How to do it would be the second step, that we started to develop after a brief survey on existing experiences.

Reading clubs are not a new practice, and so read-aloud clubs, and we found some rather interesting experieces, however none of them could satisfy completely our educational need. For this reason we decided to propose a project that would allow us to implement reading clubs specifically focused on the promotion of intercultural skill.

The project "READ-OVER  - Read-aloud Clubs to overcome intercultural divide" has been submitted in the framework of the Lifelong Learning Programme, Grundtvig Partnership, in order to develop a tool kit for implementing reading clubs as educational method that educators and trainers in adult education could use to promote intecultural skills, literacy and soft skills in socially disadvantaged adults, particularly migrants.

Reading aloud resumes the storytelling tradition or oral transmission of peoples, by means of which costumes and traditions, events, experiences, myths and legends, values and culture are transmitted. The “space” of the Read-aloud Club becomes a virtual place where to live, to make alive again and to share one’s own cultural identity, at social, racial and religious level. In this common location each participant learns to know the other person, his/her values, way of being, and to accept him/her as different (race, culture…) but same (humanity), to integrate the other in one’s own space of thought and action, in this way there happen a reciprocal enrichment of knowledge and of intercultural/transcultural competences.

Reading aloud has also the function to stimulate the improvement of language. The activity of the Read-aloud Clubs intends to promote literacy of migrants, improving the knowledge of the adoptive language and of the hosting culture, but also literacy of native citizens, improving the knowledge of their mother-tongue and of the hosted cultures. For all participants, the Read-aloud Clubs improve positive attitude towards books and enlarge the literary interests, stimulates to transfer this appreciation in writing, also empowering the writing skills, for example keeping a diary, writing tales, contributing to the blog and the newsletter.

Furthermore, through the Read-aloud Clubs it is developed socialization, relational competences (communication, emotional intelligence, active listening…), sense of belonging, participative citizenship. Learners become part of a small community that can constitute a support at different levels, starting from help in the learning process.

The partnership composed by four organizations from Italy (Tecnopras s.a.s.), France (Élan Interculturel), Romania (ADER-RO) and Estonia (Narva Central Library) will work on this project for 24 months. The financial period started in August this year and will close the 31st of July 2015.

Further news in the project website