![]() ![]() When Chang asks for help, he runs out of breath before finishing his sentence. Chang is sent to save his brother after he falls down a well, but it is difficult to repeat his brother’s exaggerated name. The protagonist is named Chang which in the story (not in Chinese language) means “little or nothing.” Chang’s first born brother has a long farcical Asian name, made of nonsense orientalized syllables. The folktale seeks to tell the origin of why Chinese names are so short. Unapologetically written by a white woman, Tiki Tiki Tembo is the product of her memory of a Chinese folktale, although the story does not exist in Chinese culture. Tiki Tiki Tembo (1968), a classic in elementary schools, has received more criticism for outright disrespect of Asian culture. ![]() The morality of comparison would only be praised in relation to Asians who are stereotyped as accepting the status quo and living with ancient virtues no non-Asian character would be expected to express gratitude to live on dirt floors and go without food. The lesson children ultimately learn is that Asian poverty must be measured not by the absolute starvation described in the book (the family subsists on a single bowl of rice), but by the relativism that there are always other Asian people worse off than you. Unfortunately, Minli’s girl spirit does not spare her from teaching dangerous stereotypes of Asians. Precisely because she is so shallowly characterized, all young readers are able to see themselves reflected. Students feel excited to learn about another culture and connect with a female protagonist. This book is recommended and rewarded because Minli’s journey has no connection to the real lives of children living in China it offers non-Asian readers a feel good entrypoint to Eastern perspectives. Only when Minli acknowledges that others have even less than her and learns to be happy with what she has, does her village miraculously become prosperous. By the end of her trek, she learns that she was actually fortunate all along because she always had the love of her mother and father. ![]() Minli befriends dragons and nobles and cracks an ancient puzzle. In Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (2009), the protagonist, Minli, journeys to save her family from poverty. The most famous of these titles include Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Tiki Tiki Tembo. ![]() They have a friend who is a spirited animal. These books almost always present flat characters who go on a journey and learn kindness & compassion and the value of family. These books discuss Han Chinese traditions as a representation of the multitudes of Asian experiences. These books are exclusively taught in elementary and middle school, rarely if ever in high school curriculums. The few Asian-American titles included in English curriculums today use orientalized and archaic tropes of Chinese culture to further stereotype and trivilizalize Asian-Americans while providing young readers with a momentary foreign experience. Asian-American stories expose children of all backgrounds to a vision of a society that stands for community roots, intergenerational understanding, and transnational justice as a remedy to the complex histories we have lived. By exposing all children to authentic Asian and Asian-American stories, we can move past the inculcation of individualism in American school children. While representation is an issue we fight for, it is not a shallow representation of Asian-American faces, names and holidays that will mark progress. Some schools have made strides to incorporate diverse voices, but books centering authentic Asian-American experiences are altogether ignored. We have grown up heroizing ambitious men from biographies of Johnny Appleseed to the poems of Robert Frost. In English Language Arts school curriculums, American children have read the same classics of the white American dream for decades. ![]()
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