October is Global Diversity Month!
Celebrating global diversity is a chance for everyone to learn about and embrace other cultures from all around the world. It can be done in a group setting or on your own; in your office, department, or at home. It also gives us a chance to promote a greater understanding of our differences and encourages conversations about these differences, as well as the many things we all have in common. Below is a list of activities you can do to celebrate global diversity this month.
Recipes from the AC Family
One of our favorite ways to celebrate anything here at AC is with food! What better way to learn about your fellow AC family members than to try out recipes submitted to us from their very own kitchens?
Plantain Fritters from Barbara Joelle Wahi (Recipe from Ghana, West Africa) - get the recipe here
Cholent from Mary Gonzalez (Jewish Recipe) - get the recipe here
Armadillo Eggs on the Grill (Texas Recipe) - get the recipe here
Käsespätzle (German Recipe) - get the recipe here
Loaded Potato Soup - get the recipe here
International Watch Party
Grab your favorite movie snacks and head to the couch! You can choose one night a week to check out an international film with family and/or friends, or start up a new series on your own. Though Hollywood is known to be one of the largest film powerhouses in the world, so many other countries have excellent films (and bingeworthy shows) to offer. Here are a few to get you started:
Movies
Parasite (South Korea) - R
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks. Greed and class discrimination threatens the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.
The Breadwinner (Ireland) - PG-13
Parvana is an 11-year-old girl who lives under Taliban rule in Afghanistan in 2001. After the wrongful arrest of her father, Parvana cuts off her hair and dresses like a boy to support her family. Working alongside a friend, she soon discovers a new world of freedom and danger.
Howl's Moving Castle (Japan) - G
Sophie has an uneventful life at her late father's hat shop, but all that changes when she befriends wizard Howl, who lives in a magical flying castle. However, the evil Witch of Waste takes issue with their budding relationship and casts a spell on young Sophie, which ages her prematurely. Now Howl must use all his magical talents to battle the jealous hag and return Sophie to her former youth and beauty.
TV Shows
3% (Brazil) - TV-MA
In the distant future, most of the population lives in poverty in an area known as the Inland. There is an elite group, though, that is chosen to live in a virtual paradise, the Offshore. Every year, each 20-year-old gets a chance to make it to the island paradise by taking a series of tests. Only three percent of the candidates succeed and qualify to leave the impoverished Inland area. One of the newest residents of the Offshore is Michele, a naive young woman with no family who has a strong sense of justice.
Broadchurch (UK) - TV-MA
When the corpse of an 11-year-old British boy, Danny Latimer, is found bloodied and dirty on an idyllic beach, a small Dorset community becomes the focus of a police investigation and media madness. Out-of-town Detective Inspector Alec Hardy gets the point position over Detective Sgt. Ellie Miller -- who feels the job should have been hers. Now she must engage in an efficient working relationship with taciturn Hardy. Slowly, more members of the community of Broadchurch are drawn into the investigation, with a telephone engineer drawing great attention when he admits to a special connection to the case. While dealing with so much unwelcome attention, Danny's family tries to cope with its grief. When a suspect is named and charged, the ensuing trial sees the defendant promising to expose more of the townspeople's secrets.
Kim's Convenience (Canada) - TV-14
Kim are Korean Canadian convenience store owners who have worked hard to give their now-twenty-something children, Janet and Jung, a better life in Canada. This single camera comedy finds laughter in the trials of running a literal 'Mom and Pop' shop while raising kids in a culture not quite your own.
Read a New Book
Reading can transport you to a totally different world and enables you to travel to far off places without ever leaving the comfort of your home. Here are a few book suggestions to add to your reading list:
Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband—these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach.
But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told.
Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life—her future—is hers to fight for.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemí’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa
Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home.
Amal, the granddaughter of the old village patriarch, a bright, sensitive girl, makes it out of the camps, only to return years later, to marry and bear a child. Through her eyes, with her evolving vision, we get the story of her brothers, one who is kidnapped to be raised Jewish, one who will end with bombs strapped to his middle. But of the many interwoven stories, stretching backward and forward in time, none is more important than Amal's own. Her story is one of love and loss, of childhood and marriage and parenthood, and finally the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.
