By: Lexi Plumley
As a Filipino American, there weren’t a lot of Filipino children’s books. There were books that had our folk tales and certain ghost stories, but they weren’t for children. Aunties and uncles would tell you these stories, grandparents would tell you these stories verbally, but there weren’t really any, physical picture books when I was growing up in the 90s. I do remember there were two instances where I ended up reading the same book during different times in my life.
I don’t think there was a single physical book that I ever got to read throughout my entire childhood that had to do with anything of Asian descent. Everything was white or black. I read a lot of black children’s stories growing up, but I didn’t get to read anything whatsoever from my Filipino heritage. [Storytelling] was done through family members or other Filipino people who also had the same type of stories, just told differently. Again, they’re all folk tales from our culture.
I was in fifth grade and heard somebody read this book called, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. It’s a Japanese children’s book about the events that happened in Hiroshima, where a bunch of kids who had radiation poisoning were in hospitals. There are a lot of terrible things [in the story], but it was painted very beautifully. The book is about a girl who got very, very sick. In Japanese culture, if you make a thousand paper cranes, you get to make a wish. I remember reading that when I was in fifth grade, and I thought the story was wonderful. It was the first time I’d seen an Asian person in a book. I was like, “This is wild!”
In seventh grade, in junior high, I took a creative writing class, and they read the exact same book. As we were reading the book and learning the history about those events, we were supposed to make a thousand cranes to then send to Japan. This was to put the cranes at her monument because she was a real person who went through these things. She was trying to make the thousand cranes, but didn’t end up finishing them before she passed on. I think her classmates and things decided to make that monument, and there’s a giant statue of her holding a paper crane in that city.
Every year for the anniversary of either her death or the events that happened, people bring a bunch of paper cranes to the monument and place them there. That’s what we did as a group of eight 12-year-olds. We made a thousand paper cranes. Our creative writing teacher, Mr. Jacobs, sent them to Japan.
They [the people of Hiroshima] sent us back a letter and a picture of our cranes sitting at this at the base of the monument. Sadako became my favorite book. It is something that I always suggested to people. When I was a preschool teacher, I read it to my kids even though they were way too young to really understand the gravitas of the book. The fact is that there wasn’t any Asian representation in my class, so as a teacher, so I wanted to present that to the kids. I showed them how to make paper cranes.
I’ve talked to a lot of other Filipino friends of mine that are all in the same age range. We all read that same book. Sadako is the first Asian book that we ever read growing up, and we’re all in our mid-thirties now.
I didn’t start really seeing books about Filipino children or Filipino culture until I was in college. I think the first one was the most famous Filipino American children book, Cora Cooks Pancit, by Dorina Lazo Gilmore. I was 18 or 19 at the time.
I have to look and see where Asian stories are in our library system, because we should have more of those. I’ve seen ones explaining Lunar New Year, but there should be more books, more children’s books, especially for Filipino Americans. I feel like we have a lot more Chinese, Japanese, and Thailand books, and ones from India too. We’re lacking in the Filipino department, and it makes me sad.
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By: Maria Lagasca
I’m going to tell you the first book where I felt seen as not only an Asian girl, but an Asian girl who didn’t speak English very well. English is not my first language. It’s always been a struggle for me. The first book I ever read, and still read once a year, is called In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord. It’s a little chapter book. On the cover, at the top, is a picture of Jackie Robinson, and at the bottom is a little Asian girl listening to a baseball game on the radio.
It’s a really good book. It’s set after World War 2, and he girl, named Shirley Temple Wong, is in middle school. She immigrates to Brooklyn, New York from China, and she does not speak English very well. On top of that, she doesn’t have a support system besides the people in her classroom.
Shirley doesn’t have formal instruction in English. She learns from the people around her. She struggles to fit in and deal with some of the stereotypes and some of the economic stress that most immigrants face. And yeah, she’s sassy! That’s what I loved about her. She’s bullied, but one thing she knew was to stick up for herself. She didn’t need English for that.
She ends up befriending and forgiving the bully. I don’t know. In the Asian culture, you don’t bow down. I was raised to be proud of who I was and to never be fearful, even though I was [afraid], so the idea of forgiving a bully was very new to me. Shirley ends up being friends with the bully, and they end up playing baseball.
Another thing I liked about her was that she was a tomboy. She ended up playing baseball, which is what I did. I had two brothers. I got their hand-me-downs. I did whatever my brothers did, and I ended up gravitating towards sports. She made me feel very seen, and the mini stories of her parents not being able to navigate the grocery store and her having to go with her mom to translate. She doesn’t know English very well, but she’s the hope for her family. It’s like a burden for her. It’s something I think you don’t understand until you’re a grown up. When you get to high school, you start wondering, “How long am I gonna do this? How long am I gonna be my parents’ translator? How long am I gonna be taking care of them? When am I able to live my life outside of this home?” I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just that your family becomes dependent on you, and it turns into this forever expectation. It becomes this idea of no “self,” which is relevant in Asian culture. You’re raised to give up the “self.”
Go be a doctor, be a lawyer, be a nurse, and then you have to come back and give it all to your family. It’s complex. Shirley navigated all that, and I don’t think I or anybody around me could have explained it better. I still struggle to explain it without that book.
In the midst of everything, Shirley looks up to Jackie Robinson, knowing his struggles. She starts realizing she’s come to The US with the dream that this is a better life, that it’s all going to be fairy tales and it’s perfect. Then she comes to realize that while she’s navigating her identity, these other people who are skilled, like the best baseball player at that time, were judged by the color of their skin.
Shirley realizes that it’s not just immigrants going through the struggles of acceptance. I grew up in a predominantly African American neighborhood, and the people that accepted me the most were the were the Pakistani kids and the black kids, not even my own Asian people. I think it’s because I’m darker and my family’s darker.
I think that my family was considered poor, so they deemed us lower class. All the other families were like, “Don’t hang out with anybody lower class than you.” Lower class means having less money, being darker, or your parents have blue collar jobs. I was accepted most by the Southeast Asians, the ones who were dark skinned, and my African American community all throughout high school.
It helped me realize how my struggle is sometimes minimal compared to others. I know I’m not the only one. Growing up, you look up to people that are just fantastic. I remember Michelle Kwan, probably the first Asian icon of the US. Everybody gravitated towards Michelle Kwan. And I gravitated toward her because I grew up figure skating. My mom wanted me to be either a nurse, a lawyer, or Michelle Kwan.
