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September 11: Making the Global Connection for Young
People
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2011-09-10 23:23:20
As I watched the events of September 11, 2001 unfold, I thought of all the people around the world who have experienced
terrorism and war. Having grown up feeling safe within my own borders, I now felt a part of this sad and vulnerable
community. The words and gestures of condolence from all parts of the United States and virtually all the nations of the
world meant a great deal to me, as I came to realize how many people cared about us as if we were part of their community
as well. This terrible tragedy closed the distance between cultures and languages, and I felt it was important in my classroom
to make the connection between our experience on September 11, 2001 and the experiences of our fellow human beings
throughout the globe, now and in the recent past. For more than four years I have served as the assistant host of “Los Vientos
del Pueblo,” a program of Latin American and Spanish music, poetry, and history on WRPI. The program currently runs on
Sundays from 2-6 pm, and this week, we will make the connection between the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington,
and Pennsylvania, and the terror the Chilean people experienced as a result of the military coup on September 11, 1973 that
toppled a democratically elected government. The coup, unfortunately sponsored by the CIA, resulted in the death of more
than 3,000 Chileans, the imprisonment and torture of some 30,000, and the exile for political or economic reasons of a tenth
of the country’s population. The brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet lasted 17 years, ending only because of the
courage and sacrifice of countless Chileans who contested his rule in a 1988 plebiscite originally designed as a show of
14 Cows
FOR AMERICA
Carmen Agra
support for him. Those who, like me, were moved by the international
community’s sympathetic response to the 2001 terror attacks will find much to appreciate and share in Carmen Agra
Deedy’s picture book /4 Cows for America, illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez and published by Atlanta-based Peachtree
Publishers in 2009. 14 Cows for America is based on the story of Kenyan doctor Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, who was a
medical student in the United States at the time of the attacks. He returned shortly afterward to practice in his Maasai village
and told the story of the terrorist attacks. The villagers decided, as a gesture of condolence, to donate some of their cows “to
America.” In fact, the cows were not shipped directly to the United States but were sent to a reserve in Kenya where they
would live out their lives as symbols of peace and understanding. For the Maasai, whose cattle are considered the principal
measure of wealth, the donation represented a sacrifice designed to show, in Deedy’s concluding words, “there is no nation
so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort.” For older children and
SARAH DARER LITTMAN
teenagers, Sarah Darer Littman’s 2010 novel Life, After, published by. Scholastic, makes the
global connection in a different but no less effective way. Fifteen-year-old Daniela Bensimon lives in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, the older daughter of a Jewish family that is sliding into poverty as a result of the 2002 economic collapse. Her
friends’ families are emigrating one by one, but Dani’s father has been paralyzed by depression ever since his beloved
younger sister and her unborn child were killed in the 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA, the Argentine-Israeli Mutual
Association. In all, 85 people died in the bombing and hundreds more were injured in that country’s deadliest—and still
unsolved—terrorist attack. After Dani’s mother is injured in a bread riot, the Bensimons finally depart for the New York
metropolitan area. There, Dani encounters classmates Jon and Jessica Nathanson, twins whose father died in the World
Trade Center and who have responded in different ways to his loss. Dani connects initially with mildly autistic Jon, who
welcomes her and helps teach her English, but ultimately it is Dani’s relationship with the angry, still grieving Jessica, that
enables her to reach both her depressed father and her new friends whose lives were forever changed by terrorism. Just as 14
Cows for America shows how we all can comfort each other, regardless of where we happen to live, Life, After shows that
we are not alone in our experience of suffering. Disclosure: Received both books as review copies from the publishers.
