Lost No More recap

Back in the fall, when the One Book, One Philadelphia selection was announced, Amanda decided that we would have an OBOP event at the local library. This was not the first time we had such an event; last year, since the selection was an immigrant memoir, we solicited autobiographies from our students. As "What is the What" is also the tale of an immigrant, we asked our students for their stories again.

All of us worked hard on getting students to contribute. They responded with stories of their journeys here, observations of American life, and funny anecdotes. In the two weeks before the event, we worked on editing the essays to prepare them for the event. Oumar and Steve translated some of them from French and Spanish. Meanwhile, Mary started a project about graphic novel memoirs, and selected pieces from Art Club participants to be included at the event.

On the Saturday of the event, Mary, Steve, Amy, and staff from the office gathered at the library to set the space up. We put the artwork and information about our organization up around the room. Audience members trickled, and then poured in. We knew some of them as students and teachers from the school, and others were friends, colleagues and acquaintances, but many of them had come because they had heard of it somewhere. After all, Isabelle had been publicizing the event for weeks, and Rosara had designed a beautiful poster.

As more people came in, they filled the chairs and started to stand around the room. At 2 pm, we began. Amanda talked about what we did, and I introduced the students' stories, and we began performing them. While most students were not available to come read their stories, one brave student did read another student's story.

After all of the stories were performed, the second part of our program began. Our guest speaker, Macharia Yuot, is a runner who came from Sudan, like the narrator of "What is the What." We started by showing a segment about him that aired on ESPN. Then Macharia stood up to speak.

The audience sat rapt with attention as Macharia spoke. After he shared the lessons he learned since coming to Philadelphia, the audience eagerly asked him questions about Sudan and his experience in the United States. It was clear that everybody there, young and old, found him to be a great inspiration.

We ended the program at 3:30, but many of the audience members stayed to talk to Macharia and to us. It was terrific to see the community taking an interest in these stories. All in all, about a hundred people came out in all. We look forward to seeing many of them in the future!