The Sullivan family drives through the Lincoln Tunnel into New York City. The two girls — Sarah and Ariel — press their faces to the window. They are Irish, they are poor, they are grieving a brother who died before the film began, and they are starting over. Jim Sheridan's In America is narrated by the older daughter, in a voice that is both a child's and not, and your ESL students will hear in it exactly the mixture of wonder and terror that describes every first week in a new language and a new country.
In America (Jim Sheridan, 2002) uses clear, emotionally direct English narrated by a child — which means the vocabulary is accessible while the emotional content is adult and real. The film is about immigration, grief, and the particular courage of starting over, which makes it uniquely relevant for ESL students who may have made exactly the journey the Sullivans make. Students who are living the film's experience will bring something to the discussion that no textbook can manufacture.
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Key Themes for the Classroom
- Immigration and reinvention: The Sullivans arrive in New York and immediately have to become different versions of themselves. Ask ESL students: what version of yourself did you become when you arrived here? What of your old self did you keep?
- Childhood and grief: The family's grief for Frankie — the dead son — is never directly addressed until the film forces them to. Ask students: what is the English vocabulary for grief that you cannot show in public? What words describe carrying something heavy while pretending it isn't there?
- Neighbor as lifeline: Mateo — the Nigerian-American neighbor played by Djimon Hounsou — becomes the family's unexpected connection to their new city. Ask students: who was an unexpected source of help when they arrived somewhere new?
One Scene to Use
The Halloween scene — where the girls go trick-or-treating in their dangerous apartment building while their parents watch with terror — is one of cinema's most perfect images of immigrant parents calculating risk against their children's need for normalcy. After watching it, ask students: what did the parents want to give their daughters in this scene? What were they afraid of? Write the answer in English — two paragraphs, past tense.
One Low-Prep Classroom Activity
Give students the film's central vocabulary: grief, reinvention, neighbor, courage, hope, stranger, home, belonging. Before watching, they write one sentence using each word about what they expect the film to be about. After watching, they revise. The revision is the language learning — seeing how the film used the same words differently than they predicted.
The full ESL lesson plan for In America is ready at filmarobics.com/products/in-america — $29.95.
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Students who work through this unit leave with English vocabulary for the experience of starting over — the most useful vocabulary anyone learning a new language will ever need.
