Immigrant/Single family
Fulani was established as the lower tribe of the citizens and contributed to repression and forced displacement. From the beginning of the development of African tribes. Because of ethnic persecution and prejudice, Fulanis is located in every significant African country. Fulani never really has a place to call home, and other West African tribes are forced to be inferior to them. Most Fulanis are in search of a place to strive and not be persecuted by where they originate. Hopefully, they will come to America or Europe to find a place where they are not being abused, and that is not being prejudiced. They come to see that both America and Europe are also prejudiced. But it’s not what tribe you come from, it’s based on your skin color. Most Fulanis claim that these first world countries are the place where you can make your dreams come true and be someone who can make a lot of money, and your children can become someone without any discrimination. Once they can get into the United States, with the baggage of having a green card, by some miracle, they find that life in the country is harder and more complicated than expected. They still make attempts to assimilate into a new world in the latest changes. I have seen that, because of my immigration status, Fulani families are either separated or together.
The sort of non-traditional families profiled in the New Family Values audiobook that I chose for Andrew Solomon was a single-parent / separate family. The family is ready to be profiled and interviewed in the family of my best friend. The family of the single / divorced Andrew Solomon is linked to the family of my best friend. Like most people in other countries, by watching television on how American life is, and that’s all smoke and mirrors, they depict how the USA is like. Wanting to know the experience of the family has been through migration to different countries. I asked my mother’s best friend, and she told me about her experiences. He asked me how he came from Liberia, Sierra Leone, The Netherlands, and the United States to the countries she was in. She has four children, of which, due to uncontrollable circumstances, she had to raise by herself for most of their lives. She made sure her entire family had opportunities she had not grown up.
The family, except for their mother, are US citizens. The mom can not apply for a regular job. She has to provide babysitting for the children around the neighborhood whose parents work during the day. She is making enough to pay the rent and to feed clothes and mouths. She has a hard time settling on time for anything, but she does because she has to, and she doesn’t want ICE to catch her. Her sister and brother are also helping out with things around the house she needs. The children are under the protection of her sister, so if anybody asks who is the legal guardian, it’s her sister. This becomes a big problem when she needs to take them to hosiplate and they ask for the guardian the sister goes
Fatoumata Diallo was born in Guinea, where she lived until she was ten years old, and had to flee because of the brutal persecution and internment of the Fulani people. She felt how it weighed on her family and the ethnic bigotry under which she was raised. She then made her way to Sierra Leone, where she stayed until her early twenties and met her husband, and had to leave forcefully because of the civil war that broke out in Sierra Leone. She was pregnant with her daughter at that time and was able to obtain citizenship in the Netherlands. She became pregnant with her only son again, who is my friend. Her husband left the family to go to the USA to gain citizenship for them. This was the first glimpse of her having to be a single parent raising two children by herself. She and her children came to the USA, ignorant of the reality behind becoming an individual of color in the United States. She found that becoming an immigrant is difficult, but becoming a person of color and Muslim is more complicated. She and her husband got their visas revoked after the birth of their 4th child and their husband was deported to the Netherlands. Since then, she has to work as a babysitter under the books, and she takes care of four children without any help.
My friend’s single-parent family is focused upon separate childbearing. The only son is my friend, and their dad is no longer with them. He had to take responsibility as a houseman and be able to look after his mother and sisters. He had grown fast, and since she had two younger ones to take care of, his mother and his older sister didn’t pay as much for him. Fatoumata Diallo heads the household as she was not in physical touch with her husband, and she needed to be there for her children. Fatoumata holds primary custody of her family. The eldest daughter was forced to grow up quickly, and had to cook, clean, pick up school siblings. This has helped her to grow closer to her family. The second child, who is the only son, had to grow up quickly and become a man and sometimes made him tend to push away from his family as he was the single male in the household. The two little ones are barely aware of their father’s physical appearance and only see their father on Facetime. The family has to deal with separation.
For Fatoumata being a single parent is hard; it wears her down physically and mentally. She said she would feel alone at the time and be overwhelmed to raise children on her own. But, she’s got help and support from family and friends around the community, as there’s a lot of Fulani people in the city. She realized that asking for assistance is healthy, even though she never has time to do so. She has a hard time disciplining kids because there is no male head figure to fill the lead role. She is hoping, for example, to have older nephews and uncles trying to lead her only son to learn how to be a man.
Before coming to America, Fatoumata never thought that race and religion could affect her and her children’s lives. She lived in a place where she was unhappy with her ethnic group and then started moving to the place where it doesn’t matter, and she’ll be able to share her love for her ethnicity and then find out she’s getting a new question, which is race and religion. I can’t believe here in America that one’s identity is based on one’s skin color. This presents a massive problem with Fulani immigrants in America who are then faced with a real bomb dropped on them because they believe they have left the oppression they have suffered, to come to another oppressor in the form of the United States towards people of color. They are forced to assimilate to another place of hate and put it into a different kind of prejudice. This creates various types of people who reside in America as Fulanis: the “successful” Fulanis, and the prideful Fulanis.
Fatoumata told me she’d heard tales of how African American and Muslim cultures were being handled before she came to America, but she thought they were just myths. African Americans are known to be ghetto, unsafe and inadequate influences, and she carried with her the misconception and looked at them like this. She didn’t know that apart from that category, American society is looking at her children. Also, the faith she follows is under criticism because Muslims call it “terrorists” and “danger to society.” Being branded as a ghetto or a terrorist doesn’t show any success. White and high-income people living in big houses show success. It results in Fulanis trying to be successful. They tend to surround themselves with successful people like those with money and wealth so that they won’t be successful.
Prideful Fulanis are the way she often feels, and it means that by the way people view people of color and Muslims, they deem them wrong and don’t belong if you don’t adapt to what the expectations of the white man are. The first experience is all about everybody. Immigrants change their views when they come to America when they encounter something that alters reality, like pe.
Andrew Solomon’s audiobook New Family Values profiled a non-traditional, and I chose to be a single-parent / separate family. Solomon has gone deep into this type of family structure, family structure has changed, economic and legal structures lag, and families need to adapt to their explosive new reality.
Below I have inserted the interview transcript
Me: Hello, I’m here today to interview you today. Can you please state your name and age?
Interviewee: Hello, my name is Alie Diallo and I’m 18 years old.
Me: Okay, I would like to ask you what type of family do you live in?
Interviewee: What do you mean?
Me: What’s your family setting?
Interviewee: I live in a Single/Separate family.
Me: How many undocumented family members do you have?
Interviewee: One, My Mom
Me: How has it been since you guys been here?
Interviewee: It’s been very hard.
Me: Wow, sorry to hear that.
Interviewee: Yeah, we have been trying our best to get through.
Me: Tell me about your family.
Interviewee: I live with my three sisters and my mom.
Me: Okay, where are you from
Interviewee: I’m from Africa, I’m Fulani
Me: When did your family come here?
Interviewee: My family came here in the 2006s
Me: Did your family flee their country because of a specific reason?
Interviewee: My family left for opportunity.
Me: Do you have any more family left back home?
Interviewee: Yes, I do. There are a couple more people left there. I soon hope they come here.
Me: What does your mom do?
Interviewee: She babysits
Me: Thank you for that information
Me: Okay, thank you for your time and have a safe quarantine.
Interviewee: No problem!