Over the past few years, the STAATUS index survey has asked Americans to name a famous Asian American. For three years in a row the most common response has been “I don’t know.” Number 2 has been Jackie Chan, who is not American, and number 3 has been Bruce Lee, who has been dead for more than fifty years.
I speak with many Asian American kids and adults across the United States, and a common theme that comes up in these conversations is invisibility. This includes feeling overlooked, having others make assumptions about their personalities and skill-sets based on stereotypes, and being regularly mistaken for other Asian people. And, critically, it includes a glaring lack of representation in history and literature instruction. Most Americans do not learn many, if any, Asian American histories and stories in school. In this absence, it’s no wonder that “I don’t know” remains at the top of our nation’s popular consciousness.
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As a teacher, I loved finding books for my classroom library that provided mirrors for my students’ beautiful, complex, and varied identities. This was also one of the hardest parts of my job. There are some experiences and identities that show up frequently in children’s literature, while others rarely show up at all or are focused on a small set of tropes and tragedies, rather than the full breadth and range of human experience.
After I’d left the classroom and had a job training teachers on classroom culture, it became increasingly clear to me that students who had meaningful reflections of themselves in their classrooms had more trusting relationships with their teachers, were more engaged in their learning, and were more likely to say they enjoyed coming to class each day. It was around this time that I first picked up Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. I devoured it, rocked by a sensation that this was my first time…
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