- Press Release
Young Poet Honored in Annual Creative Writing Contest Celebrating Immigrants
CHICAGO, June 12, 2024—The American Immigration Council will honor Angela Du, a 5th grader attending the Chapin School in New York City, with its 27th annual Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest, which explores the immigrant experience.
Angela is deeply influenced by her own experience as a child of an immigrant family. She remembers vividly the stories that her father told her about his journey from China to America. Angela shares her perspective about the challenges that immigrant families face and how they are an essential part of this country in her award-winning poem, titled, “Stories of Us.” Read it here.
The Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest challenges fifth graders across the country to reflect on and write about one of two themes: “Why I Am Glad America Is a Nation of Immigrants” or "What Does It Mean to be A Welcoming Nation?"
The contest begins at the local level, with regional contests run by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) chapters. Each chapter sends its first-place winning entry to the American Immigration Council for the national contest.
Angela was nominated by the AILA New York chapter. She will be reading her poem at the 2024 Immigration Impact Award ceremony, hosted by the American Immigration Council, this Friday, June 14, at the Marriott Marquis, in Chicago, Illinois.
With rising anti-immigrant laws and tensions throughout the country around the words “immigration,” “asylum,” and “the border,” the American Immigration Council’s Center for Inclusion and Belonging continues to champion educational opportunities to drive home the importance of making the United States a country where all people are welcomed and included.
The Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest is made possible due to the generous support of the MurthyNAYAK Foundation.
Angela, her family, and representatives from the Council are available to speak about the contest.
Assets: Review Angela’s poem here, as well as some family photos.
###
For more information, contact:
Elyssa Pachico at the American Immigration Council at 503-850-8407 (cell) or [email protected]
About the American Immigration Council
The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance change—litigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications. In January 2022, the Council and New American Economy merged to combine a broad suite of advocacy tools to better expand and protect the rights of immigrants, more fully ensure immigrants’ ability to succeed economically, and help make the communities they settle in more welcoming. Follow the latest Council news and information on ImmigrationImpact.com and X @immcouncil.