Hannah’s Comments (group member since Jul 14, 2020)

Hannah’s comments from the Albion Web Series group.

I read Make Your Home Among Strangers (a previous Common Reading Experience book) while traveling through the Balkans. The book was about a first generation college student from Miami, FL who attended a small private college in the North. Her experience of college was so different that my own and challenged me to listen to the experience of someone different. It was also timely, as I was interacting with people who had lived through the Bosnian War, Yugoslavian government, etc. It helped me process that there are people living an entirely different experience who lived on campus, not just around the world.

I found it really beautiful how giving birth triggered her memory and made her think about the generation before her. The difference between Thi and her mother's experiences in child birth are so vast but there were also resonate similarities of fear and pain that seemed to connect Thi to her mother's story.