One Among Many

Abstract

This research poem is a hybrid representation of qualitative methods and poetic inquiry. My work with African refugees in Sicily focuses on their assimilation process on the island and among a population that paradoxically both resent them and to whom they are invisible. Their marginalization notwithstanding, there are several initiatives offered to refugees to acclimatize them and to make them “good citizens” in their new “home.” Civics class is just one. Assimilation is not a mere abstraction for them. Daily life is difficult for them even after they learn the language. For this poem, I used observation of these classes to “concretize emotions, feelings and moods—the most private kinds of feelings, so as to create experience itself to another person” (Richardson, 1993). Furthermore, Richardson speaks of the (lyric) poems task “to represent actual experiences—episodes, epiphanies, misfortunes, pleasures in such a way that others can experience and feel them” (Richardson, 1994). The writing of this poem involved direct observation and interviews with the refugees resulting in the fragmented representation of vortex of their experience(s) and my observation of their experience(s). I have tried to render both in the most truthful and poetic way possible. I am indebted to Laurel Richardson whose work, among many others, has been my inspiration to use poetry as the truest representation of my work to render the greatest meaning.