"He told us it had been four months since he had breathed fresh air"

Part 2 of our interview with Sofia Kalogirou at The Florence Project on her work with detained migrant children; plus, links and book club details

Dear readers,

Happy March!

Michelle here. Spring has come to Paris. Our seventeen-month-old baby loves being outside so much she’s been known to lick her shoes. Albert also celebrated his birthday. He’s one of those people for whom shopping is impossible—“I have everything I want,” he says cheerfully, with nary a hint of moral sanctimony—so every year I scramble to come up with something.

This week we share part II of our interview with Sofia Kalogirou, our former student who now works at The Florence Project, one of the country’s leading immigrants’ rights organizations. You can find part I of our interview here, in which Sofia describes what it’s like to explain immigration law to fourteen-year-olds and outlines the challenges she faces working with detained migrant children. 

In part II, she shares the story of a teenage client who fled gang violence in his native Honduras and the changes she witnessed in him after he spent seven months in adult detention. She talks about the joy she …