We Are All We Have Curriculum Guide, 5-8

1. Ammi teaches Rania that it is important to ask questions. Have students write interview questions for a family member. Include topics such as favorite family foods or recipes passed down through generations; songs and how they are important to family members; special books; art forms or crafts and other traditions. Invite students to ask their family members if they give permission to record them, and if so, they might use a digital tool such as Audacity to record their answers and create an oral history.
2. Ra-Ra and Fa-Fa rewrite and perform Jack Kerouac’s On the Road by bringing in themselves: their identities, hopes, dreams, and questions on their own “wild road trip to find America” (10). Using resources such as Poets.org; Poetry Foundation; or the school or community library, have them locate a poem that they see themselves in or write their own. Invite them to perform the poem as Spoken Word Poetry. Begin by sharing and discussing videos of Spoken Word Poetry from collections such as Project V.O.I.C.E. (http://www.projectvoice.co/
3. Have students choose a character and create a visual to represent the character’s internal landscape (hopes, dreams, fears, motivations, traits, personality, inner conflicts and struggles) in addition to the external forces at play, including societal and global factors. Students might choose to create an abstract or realistic representation of the character. Ask them to write a journal entry to explore the layers of character.
4. Invite students to curate a box of items and symbols to show what is important to them and to their identities. Encourage them to think about ideas they might keep in a “locked box” or hidden from others and ideas they show the world and why.
5. Learn about Marina Budhos and the historical context for the story by visiting her website: https://marinabudhos.com and sampling from the featured interviews on We Are All We Have.

• Discuss: What is important to Marina Budhos?
• What does the author speak up for? How is she an activist?
• Listen to the ghazals/songs and consider their impact and meaning to the story.
• What is the historical context for the story?

6. Ask students to work in small groups to choose a key scene in the text and portray it through tableau (frozen statue).

• Each small group creates a tableau, positioning their bodies as frozen statues to represent the action of characters in the key scene.
• Groups might consider having one student read the key passage during the performance of the tableau.
• As the group performs, invite the rest of the class (the audience) to brainstorm scenes in the book that come to mind while viewing the tableau.
• For more information on tableaux, view videos at BRAINworks: https://www.brainworks.mcla.edu/curriculum-center or on the Alliance Theatre Institute’s virtual resources for teachers.
• Students might instead decide to explore a developing theme. They might infer themes such as freedom; protection; identity; hidden truth; survival; identity; trust; safety; disappearing and appearing; family; sense of belonging and use tableau to represent the theme in a symbolic way.

7. Challenge students to work in small groups to find a powerful way to show, through visual art, music, movement, storytelling, poetry, or drama, the concepts of disappearing and appearing/restoring and moving from one to the other. Have them consider the idea of a whole story and parts of a story.

• Ideas include: creating a large puzzle of pieces that represent various aspects of a character’s whole story; designing a mask and exploring when a character figuratively wears the mask and why; creating a dance of movements to show appearing and disappearing, enacting a scene or other.

8. Invite students to create an I am From poem to explore their own identities and who they are in the world. Begin by listening to George Ella Lyon read her poem Where I’m From on her author website: http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html. Challenge students to write an I am From poem from the perspective of Rania, Ammi, Carlos, Fatima, Kamal, or a supporting character in the text such as Lidia or Salim Uncle.
9. Invite students to explore their local communities to find institutions that provide help and serve as sanctuaries for immigrants/asylum seekers. Ask students to create interview questions to research volunteerism and how people make a difference.
10. Have students communicate their own hopes and dreams through altered books. Begin by sharing examples and demonstrations such as the following video: https://theartofeducation.edu/videos/video-simple-and-beautiful-altered-book-techniques-for-the-classroom/

1. What do Rania and Fatima want out of their senior year? What do they want out of life? How do they express themselves? Why do you think they are friends? Why do they drift apart?
2. Items from the book serve as symbols: Cape Cod Lighthouse (143), bangle bracelet (12); locked box (49; 68; 190); highway (cover); statue of liberty (67); roads (32); Carlos’ tattoo. Discuss: What does each items symbolize and how are they important to the story?
3. How does Rania grow and change over the course of the story? What experiences and people impact her growth?
4. Describe Rania’s relationship with her mother. In your opinion, what is the most important lesson Rania’s mother teaches her?
5. Do you agree with Ammi’s approach to protecting Kamal and Rania by not telling them the full truth and/or lying at times? Why or why not?
6. Characters keep certain things hidden throughout the story (objects, emotions, secrets, stories of the past, memories, people). Parts of the truth are kept tight in figurative locked boxes. Why do characters do this? In what ways does this hurt or help characters?
7. Do the characters ever get to experience childhood? Or are they always dealing with grown-up responsibilities and issues?
8. What is a key theme in the text and why? Consider evidence for the themes of protection; identify; family; trust; sense of belonging; survival; freedom, hope and more.
9. What are some instances in your own life when you have been lucky or unlucky? How does the author bring up the idea of things being unfair for the characters?
10. How do the arts create community, identity and amplify marginalized voices? Consider Rania’s poetry; gazelles/songs; Carlos’ visual art and more. How do the arts make visible the invisible?

1. What is the significance of the title and what was your process for choosing it?

My editor and I were searching for at title and as we combed through the manuscript this phrase really spoke to us.  For these characters, living with so much uncertainty, what they have is each other.  Rania has her brother, then Carlos, even Fatima, and it is in holding on to each other that they can survive and discover and grow. Rania’s mother also says something similar to her daughter—that in giving up everything in Pakistan, now Rania and Kamal are all she has.

2. What do you imagine Rania is doing now, in today’s world? Has she restored all the parts of her whole self or is she still searching?

She is still searching. She knows more of who she is and the circumstances that led to her and her mother fleeing Pakistan; she knows more about her father; and most of all, she knows the cost to her mother in making her choices.  Armed with her new knowledge, Rania’s figuring out her own place in the world, and able to be a part of her mother’s fight to stay in the USA.