Fu, Danling (2003). An Island of English: Teaching ESL in Chinatown. Reviewed by Clarissa Thompson, University of Colorado at Boulder

	Fu, Danling (2003). An Island of English: Teaching ESL in Chinatown. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 192 pages $21 (Paper)     ISBN: 0-325-00481-1 Reviewed by Clarissa Thompson University of Colorado at Boulder May 26, 2004 In An Island of English: Teaching ESL in Chinatown, Danling Fu writes about her five years in a New York City middle school, where for two days a month she provided support and professional development for those teachers working with students newly arrived from China. I approached my reading of this book from several perspectives. First, I read as a novice, someone with no experience but a sincere interest in knowing more about the issues and practices involved in teaching ESL. As a teacher and teacher educator, I also turned to this book with my ever-present curiosity about how teaching happens, particularly how different subject matters or areas are tackled from a pedagogical perspective, and what I – and perhaps also my preservice teachers – could learn about teaching and working with ESL students. An Island of English is a readable and accessible book and I was satisfied both in terms of the general things I learned about Chinatown and its immigrant community and in terms of the more specific things I learned about working with students who are just learning to read and write in English. I was especially interested in the story Fu tells of the broader community in which her work in this one particular school is situated. She describes New York’s Chinatown, giving some history and background, and then writes more specifically about the immigrant population and life in Chinatown today. She discusses how parents, either one or both, come to the United States and leave their young children behind in China for years (with grandparents or other older relatives) while they earn enough money to pay back the debts they incurred when moving over here and also earn the money needed to subsequently bring their children over here. For years, the children still in China anticipate the marvel of America and await the time when they will get to come here. Upon arrival though, the children are shocked to discover what it is really like for them and their families: parents working all the time (parents who they barely know anymore, having not seen them for years, in some cases), no one to care for them at home, and living in cramped and squalid conditions. Throughout the book, Fu includes examples of the students’ writing, in particular their writing about the differences between China and America, and their writing about what it feels like to have left China. I miss China too much. I miss all my relatives, teachers, and friends, uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents in China. There was so much to do in China: games, swimming, parks, and oceans, bicycling. When we didn’t have school, we ran all over the hills and fields, so much fun. Here we are locked in cage-like-apartment and live like caged-birds with bars in the windows, from which, all you can see was other old buildings and their barred windows. (p. 4) School is another strange and frightening place for these new immigrant children, in part because many of them did not receive much formal schooling in China before coming to the United States, and in part because they are suddenly asked to both learn and learn in a language that is truly foreign to them. Once Fu has set the stage for the immigrant children’s schooling, she dives into some of the recommendations she makes while working at the middle school and discusses the various strategies they design to engage the students in the work of school and the task of learning to read, write and communicate in this new place and this new language. For example, she writes about the fact that only during school are these students exposed to either the English language or information about the cultural and historical world of America – as their home lives and home community of Chinatown operate solely in Chinese. So, Fu recommends that the Chinese Language Arts class, which traditionally focused on Chinese culture and history, switch its focus to American culture and history. Her recommendations, the thinking behind them, and the manner in which they unfold in daily classroom life are described well and the reader gets a clear picture of both the what and the why of the changes. Through Fu’s narrative and descriptions of the school, we are also able to see the results: the students’ increasing engagement in school and developing competence as readers and writers of English. For me, as a secondary English educator, the chapters that I found the most powerful and engaging were those that focused on the teaching of writing. The goals and purposes for writing that Fu and her teachers want to establish for the immigrant students are the same as those that I discuss with my preservice teachers. Fu writes that ... just like any other students who are developing their writing skills, the beginning ESL students need frequent opportunities to write and need to write to express themselves through many ways and different genres in order to develop their writing competence and language skills. (p. 98). Echoing people like Atwell (1998), Romano (1987) and Zemelman and Daniels (1988), Fu argues that students should use writing to develop and communicate their thinking, ideas and meaning. She describes the strategies that the teachers use to teach writing, the different genres in which students work (memoir, reading response papers, essays, non-fiction projects, and poetry) and throughout these chapters includes compelling examples of student writing from a variety of levels and genres. In many ways, Fu’s book tells a sad story: the uprooting of young children from a place where they were comfortable and the isolation and sadness that they feel both in school and in New York. At the same time, though, it is a story of hope and success. The teachers and the students that she writes about work tremendously hard: the teachers to learn how best to help these students they are working with, and the students to increase their language skills and learn how to better communicate their own thoughts and ideas: about the subjects they are tackling in school and about their place in this new community they have joined. References Atwell, N. (1998). In the middle: New understandings about writing, reading, and learning. (2nd Edition). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Romano, T. (1987). Clearing the way: Working with teenage writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Zemelman, S. & Daniels, H. (1988). A community of writers: Teaching writing in junior and senior high school. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. About the Reviewer Clarissa Thompson is Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests are in the areas of English teacher preparation, the process of learning to teach English, and the pedagogy of teacher education.