My Favorite Chaperone By Jean Davies Okimoto

In My Favorite Chaperone by Jean Davies Okimoto, Maya Alazova, a young immigrant, and her family must adjust to life as immigrants in America. Her younger brother Nurzhan faces bullying at school for his accent, Maya struggles to fit in with her American peers, and Mama and Papa learn to accept that American culture is different than in their home country of Kazakhstan. Being an immigrant in America is as challenging today as it has always been. No matter where you’re from, you face discrimination for not speaking English, or your accent, or not being accustomed to American culture. This was true for European and Chinese immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is true of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Hispanic immigrants today.
As young immigrants, Maya and Nurzhan had to adjust to a culture that they’d never experienced before. This involved fitting in with their peers despite their parents’ disapproval and other kids’ bullying. After Maya’s gymnastics meet, she is waiting with her friend Shannon and the boys they each have a crush on, Daniel and David, for the bus that will take them home. The boys begin lifting the girls up and tossing them around. While everyone is laughing and fooling around, Papa drives up to the school. Seeing Maya in Daniel’s arms, although the
Guys from the wrestling team pretending some of us were weights’” (lines 568-570). Mama thinks that the way Maya was fooling around with the boys was flirtatious, when in fact she was just playing. Nurzhan faces challenges too. At school, another boy, Ossie Nishizono, teases him for his accent. In an attempt to resolve this, Nurzhan gets in a fight with Ossie. “Poor Nurzhan, getting in such big trouble. I couldn’t fault him for fighting with Ossie Nishizono. Such a mean boy--he’d been teasing Nurzhan without mercy for not speaking well and mispronouncing things” (lines 214-218). Nurzhan’s peers bully him for not knowing English as well as they