My heart sank when the man at the immigration counter gestured to the back room. I was born and raised in America, and this was Miami, where I live, but they weren’t quite ready to let me in yet.

“Please wait in here, Ms Abujaber,” the immigration officer said. My husband, with his very American last name, accompanied me. He was getting used to this. The same thing had happened recently in Canada when I’d flown to Montreal to speak at a book event. That time they held me for 45 minutes. Today we were returning from a literary festival in Jamaica, and I was startled that I was being sent “in back” once again.

The officer behind the counter called me up and said, “Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who’s on our wanted list. We’re going to have to check you out with Washington.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hard to say ... a few minutes,” he said. “We’ll call you when we’re ready for you.” After an hour, Washington still hadn’t decided anything about me. “Isn’t this computerized?”

I asked at the counter. “Can’t you just look me up?”

Just a few more minutes, they assured me.

After an hour and a half, I pulled my cell phone out to call the friends I was supposed to meet that evening. An officer rushed over. “No phones!” he said. “For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.”

“I’m just a university professor,” I said. My voice came out in a squeak.

“Of course you are. And we take people like you out of here in leg irons every day.”

I put my phone away.

My husband and I were getting hungry and tired. Whole families had been brought into the waiting room, and the place was packed with excitable children, exhausted parents, even a flight attendant.

I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: “I’m an American citizen; a novelist; I probably teach English literature to your children.” Or would that all be counted against me?

After two hours in detention, I was approached by one of the officers. “You’re free to go,” he said. No explanation or apologies. For a moment, neither of us moved, we were still in shock.

Then we leaped to our feet.

“Oh, one more thing.” He handed me a tattered photocopy with an address on it. “If you weren’t happy with your treatment, you can write to this agency.”

“Will they respond?” I asked.

“I don’t know --- I don’t know of anyone who’s ever written to them before.” Then he added, “By the way, this will probably keep happening each time you travel internationally.”

“What can I do to keep it from happening again?”

He smiled the empty smile we’d seen all day. “Absolutely nothing.”

After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I’ve heard in response is to change my name. Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn’t stick me in what he called “the ethnic ghetto” --- a separate, secondary shelf in the bookstore. But a name is an integral part of anyone’s personal and professional identity -just like the town you’re born in and the place where you’re raised.

Like my father, I’ll keep the name, but my airport experience has given me a whole new perspective on what diversity and tolerance are supposed to mean. I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard.

1.The author was held at the airport because __________.

A. she and her husband returned from Jamaica.

B. her name was similar to a terrorist’s.

C. she had been held in Montreal.

D. she had spoken at a book event.

2.We learn from the passage that the author would __________ to prevent similar experience from happening again.

A. write to the agency B. change her name

C. avoid traveling abroad D. do nothing

3.Her experiences indicate that there still exists __________ in the US.

A. hatred B. discrimination

C. tolerance D. diversity

4.The author sounds __________ in the last paragraph.

A. impatient B. bitter C. worried D. ironic

She may have lacked a home, but now this teen has top honors.

A 17-year-old student who spent much of high school living around homeless shelters — and sometimes sleeping in her car — today graduated and spoke on behalf of her class at Charles Drew High School in Clayton County, Ga., just outside of Atlanta.

Chelsea Fearce held a 4.466 GPA and scored 1900 on her SATs despite having to use her cellphone to study after the shelter lights were turned off at night.

“I know I have been made stronger.I was homeless.My family slept on cushions on the floor and we were lucky if we got more than one full meal a day.Getting a shower, food and clean clothes was an everyday struggle,” Fearce said in a speech she gave at her graduation ceremony.Fearce overcame her day-to-day struggles by focusing on a better day.“I just told myself to keep working, because the future will not be like this anymore,” she told WSBTV.

Fearce, one of five children, grow up in a family that sometimes had an apartment to live in, but at other times had to live in homeless shelters or even out of their car, if they had one.“You’re worried about your home life and then worried at school.Worry about being a little hungry sometimes and go hungry sometimes.You just have to deal with it.You eat what you can, when you can.”

To our surprise, Fearce overcame the difficulties and even tested high enough to be admitted into college half way through her high school career.She starts college next year at Spelman College as a junior where she is planning to study biology, pre-med (医学预科).“Don’t give up.Do what you have to do right now so that you can have the future that you want,” Fearce said.

1.How did Fearce go on with her study without access to lights?

A. By the car light.

B. By her cellphone.

C. By lights out of shelters.

D. By moonlight.

2.When Fearce starts college at Spelman College, she will _____..

A. have graduated earlier from high school than normal

B. be a 17-year-old student from a poor family

C. have a home without sleeping in her car or shelters

D. have raised enough money to go to college

3.What lesson can we learn from Fearce’s experience?

A. Knowledge can change your fate.

B. Don’t give up, and tomorrow will be better.

C. Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.

D. He that will not work shall not eat.

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