people, just like you and me
1 5 by Caroline
A few months ago I visited the Museum
And it hit me, in that moment, that these
of Modern Art in Manhattan. It’s one of
were real people. Parents who scrape
my favorite museums, and not just
together anything they can find for their
because I get in for free. There’s just
children, children who want to learn
something so vibrant and alive about it:
reading and spelling and multiplication.
the colors, the people, the history that
People want to live, not just survive.
doesn’t feel so faraway as history should.
They’re the same as us.
During my visit, I found an exhibit that struck a resonant chord with me.
I left the MoMA inspired, and shaken, and ready to take on the world. I was
In the center of the room was a house
going to find ways to, as a mostly broke
constructed of some heavy-duty metal and
college student, fight for these people, get
plastic. It looked like someplace a child
them the food and water and shelter they
would play; in fact, some bored kids were
need and deserve.
running in and out, their parents otherwise engrossed in the photographs lining the black walls.
People want to live, not just survive. They’re the same as us. Within a week, I had promptly forgotten everything I had promised myself. Life went on around me, everything moving at a rapid New York clip. There were weddings to attend and exams to ace and friends to meet. There was so little time.
A map of the world, constructed from
And then I went to the library. I hadn’t
different colored electrical wires, circuit
been all summer, busy with an internship,
boards, and speakers provided a
but school started again and left me with a
soundtrack to the room. The exhibit was
rare hour to browse the stacks and
about refugees and the conditions they
actually read what I had found. I pulled
live in. An entire school is housed in a
books off the shelves, novels, young adult
midsize cardboard box, a five-person
fiction, and then stumbled upon a
family can live comfortably in a 188-
collection of short stories by Viet Thanh
square foot emergency temporary shelter.
Nguyen, entitled The Refugees.
Skinny kids faded into the dismal backdrops of their villages, but their eyes shone bright through the photographic paper and straight in my direction.
