Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The 1903 poem “The New Colossus” by American-Jewish poet Emma Lazarus is inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The Statue of Liberty is located near Ellis Island, a common entry point for immigrants making their way into the United States from 1892 to 1954. What do you think Lazarus means when she refers to the Statue of Liberty as the “Mother of Exiles”? What does she mean by “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”?