Family has always informed my career and my books. This is most obviously true in The American Family: From Obligation to Freedom, which is dedicated to my wife. Brando Akoto, to whom my most recent book (African, American: From Tarzan to Dreams of My Father--Africa in the U.S. Imagination) is dedicated, liked to say that "if you take care of relationships, everything else will take care of itself." My first two books (What Trouble I Have Seen and Beaten Down) are scholarly explorations of troubled families I have also written a history of the Boys & Girls Aid Society of Portland. My general history of Oregon (Oregon's Promise) is dedicated to my Oregon ancestors. My overview of nature loving in the western world (Environmentalism) is dedicated to my second family--the thousands of students I have had the privilege of teaching and learning from over the past quarter century.
Family brought me back to Portland in 1999 and prompted a shift from writing academic monographs to books for broader audiences. My commitments to Wendy and Peter have left me with less time to write than I had when I was single, but they also give me more to say and to celebrate and otherwise enrich my life more than I had thought possible. Soon after my first trip to Ghana in 2010, I co-founded the nonprofit I still head, Yo Ghana! We enable classrooms in the Pacific Northwest and Ghana to educate and inspire each other. That work drew me increasingly into volunteering with at-risk immigrant students, which in turn led to most of my teaching being consumed by a Freshman Inquiry class at Portland State entitled Immigration, Migration, and Belonging. Most of the students are from immigrant families, and we volunteer with vulnerable students across the Portland Metro Area. We are also very involved with story exchanges to promote radical empathy. My students are my heroes.
As much as I have enjoyed writing, I have a hunch that my most important work has happened at other times.
http://www.yoghana.org/
http://davidpetersondelmar.blogspot.com/.
Family brought me back to Portland in 1999 and prompted a shift from writing academic monographs to books for broader audiences. My commitments to Wendy and Peter have left me with less time to write than I had when I was single, but they also give me more to say and to celebrate and otherwise enrich my life more than I had thought possible. Soon after my first trip to Ghana in 2010, I co-founded the nonprofit I still head, Yo Ghana! We enable classrooms in the Pacific Northwest and Ghana to educate and inspire each other. That work drew me increasingly into volunteering with at-risk immigrant students, which in turn led to most of my teaching being consumed by a Freshman Inquiry class at Portland State entitled Immigration, Migration, and Belonging. Most of the students are from immigrant families, and we volunteer with vulnerable students across the Portland Metro Area. We are also very involved with story exchanges to promote radical empathy. My students are my heroes.
As much as I have enjoyed writing, I have a hunch that my most important work has happened at other times.
http://www.yoghana.org/
http://davidpetersondelmar.blogspot.com/.