Never Give Up How could a former refugee get a full ride to the University of Harvard? In Mawi Asgedom’s memoir , Of Beetles & Angels, Mawi and his family move from a small refugee camp in Sudan to a large city in America to start a brand new life. While in Chicago, Mawi and his family learn many different lessons and overcome many obstacles to become better people and fit in. Mawi navigates the obstacles of his early life in refugee camp, bullies and losing family in his life. These obstacles motivated him to become a better person and get an education.
One obstacle that Mawi has to overcome was his early life in Sudan. Some of the biggest problems there were the teachers at his school and all of the fighting. “Get up! Hold your hands together! Now interlock your fingers so the knuckles are exposed” (5). These were instructions from the teachers so they could smack his knuckles with a metal ruler. This was hard for Mawi because it happened almost every day and he couldn’t stop the teacher from hitting him. On top of that he always had to protect himself from his classmates. “Some of the other kids tried to push us around, so Tewolde and I quickly mastered Sudanese-style fight” (6). Mawi had to have the nerve to get up in the morning every day to go to a school where he was pretty much gettong beaten by his
…show more content…
“‘African booty scratcher! Scratch that booty!’’ Black donkey! You’re so ugly!’” (34). These were some of the names that Mawi was called everyday, this name calling quickly lead to fights. “I don’t remember what I had done to infuriate Sam; maybe it was something that Tewolde had done, and I was going to pay for it. Whatever the reason, Sam wanted to teach me a lesson” (35). This obstacle was a big one because everyday he would get called mean names and get in fights in and out of school. No matter what people did to Mawi, he still got good