When 10 JWU freshman honor students from Associate Professor Ela Lozinski’s English classes volunteered to produce a video for Higher Ground International, they learned more about history, culture and racism than they could have imagined.

The stories of their young Liberian subjects were not easy to hear — recollections of women being raped, children abandoned and dying, pretending to be dead like the bodies around them so they wouldn’t be killed, living in refugee camps and finally, coming to America.

Higher Ground founder and CEO Henrietta White-Holder wanted the video made to educate community members and the Liberians’ own families about their children’s struggles. “In Search of a Better Life: Challenges of West African Youth in America” captures the emotional upheaval of its subjects’ lives.

Students interviewed 12 Liberian immigrants, all about their own ages, who told stories of pain and survival — living through a civil war, escaping and starting over in the U.S. They spoke of feeling lost, ignored and disrespected. Their lives here didn’t turn out as they imagined: The streets aren’t lined with gold and the young refugees don’t fit in anywhere.

“They wanted people to learn about and understand them. They have the same desires and needs as everyone does and don’t want to be ostracized because they look different,” White-Holder said of the Liberian youth.

The project taught students how challenging acclimation to a new environment can be. “All of these people experienced some of the hardest changes that anyone could ever face,” said Daniel Pitman ’14, one of the student videographers. “I learned how strong immigrants have to be to make that first effort to fit in.” The video concludes with students’ pledges to be agents of change.

Lozinski’s group received a $200 grant from Feinstein Community Service Center which the students contributed to Higher Ground. The Providence-based nonprofit provides economic opportunities for young people here and in West Africa.
visit > highergroundintl.org

above: Students, staff and faculty from the Providence Campus along with Liberian immigrants interviewed for an educational DVD include (front, l-r) Simon Vecchioni, Brown volunteer; Joyce Early; (middle, l-r) Susan Connery, director, Feinstein Community Service Center; Elsie Osei, Anthony Abu, Mandy Bassage ‘14, Karolina Mucha ‘14, Patience Landford, Sarah Russo ‘14, Henrietta Holder-White, CEO and founder, Higher Ground International; Grace Moore, Associate Professor Ela Lozinski, and Lisa Early; (back, l-r) Sean Bufalo ‘14, Samuel Aboh, Dannelle Wickham Frank ‘14 and Daniel Pitman ’14.

A man of mystery, horror and Sonnets
James Anderson, PhD, an English professor at JWU’s North Miami Campus, is also a published poet and author. Anderson is a fan of the horror genre. His latest novel, “Alter,” to be released this year, centers on devil worship and is set in Rhode Island, Anderson’s home state.

While in Providence last April, Anderson was interviewed as an expert scholar for “Finding Lovecraft: Life is a Hideous Thing,” a “documentary/ fantasy” about horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. The film is scheduled for completion in May 2012. Anderson also has a book out on Lovecraft (pg. 45), who lived and wrote in Providence in the early 1900s.

His articles about Lovecraft and other horror writers have appeared in literary journals including Studies in Weird Fiction, The Providence Journal and Connecticut Magazine, among others. Anderson’s poetry has appeared in academic journals and won him first prize in the rhyming poetry category in the 76th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in 2008, and second prize in the 2010 Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards Contest.

His second grade classmates were his first audience. “I wrote about how much I hated spelling,” he says. His teacher got such a kick out of it she paraded him around to read it to all the classes. “They all thought it was funny. I guess I got hooked on it then.”