immigration

Johnson County Library is pleased to announce that Pat Daneman has won the poetry category of our writing contest on the theme of BREAKING FREE with "Congolese Refugee Family Watches Fireworks for the First Time".

Pat Daneman is from Long Island, New York and currently lives in Lenexa, Kansas. She has published fiction and poetry in many print and online magazines, including The American Journal of Poetry, Escape into Life and the Bellevue Poetry Review. Her poems have been anthologized in Best of the Net and New Poetry from the Midwest. She is the author of a chapbook, Where the World

The families of Bitsy and Brad Dickinson-Donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan converge at the Baltimore airport on August 15, 1997.  What brings them together is the arrival of two adopted girls from Korea.  The large, loud, festive Dickinson-Donaldson clan, wearing buttons that proudly display their status—“Mom,” “Dad,” “Grandpa,” etc.—are handed Jin-Ho by the adoption agent.  They keep her Korean name and spend her first few years trying not to Americanize her too much, keeping her bowl hair cut, dressing her in scratchy native costumes, and reminding her constantly of her heritage.  Until Jin