by Julia López-Robertson with Amanda Dunnigan & Rebecca Martin
University of South Carolina
In A Step from Heaven, An Na invites us on the Parks’ journey as a recently arrived Korean family who migrated to the United States (Mi Gook) seeking a better life. Young Ju, our seven year old protagonist, believes that Mi Gook is heaven, but is it? The family’s new life in the United States is full of contradiction and chaos; they desire to belong and fit in while still maintaining their Korean heritage, is this possible? As we continue to serve more immigrant children in our schools, how can we help them cross borders between life inside the home vs. life outside in the world?
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Immigrant students face significant challenges in balancing their home culture and American culture. In 
Emergent bilinguals make up 8.2% of the total population of all children under the age of 18 in South Carolina. While there are many languages spoken by immigrant children in our schools, Spanish is the most widespread language spoken by 40,000 of all emergent bilinguals (
One of the lessons that I have learned as a reader of global literature is to never read a book by itself–to always read a book alongside other books. Over and over, I find that our interpretations and connections change dramatically when we read paired books or read a book within a larger text set or collection. Throughout the next month, my blogs will focus on my experiences of reading books alongside each other, most recently within a graduate course on global literature.
