Now that the Olympics are officially here, it seems like the Olympics are everywhere - my daughter's class is even doing a unit on the Olympics and sports. They made a little chart and each child got to put up a sticker next to their favorite sport; my daughter chose swimming and diving.
Paula Yoo's biography of Sammy Lee, "Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds" has been in high rotation recently. Except that the book is a little long for an almost-four year old. The story is pretty captivating though. Sammy Lee, a young Korean American growing in in California during the 1940s can only go swimming one day a week when the swimming pools are open to "coloreds." Even so, he becomes inspired to learn how to dive, and starts learning by jumping off a diving board into a sand pit. Sammy, like a lot of us, struggles with his father's pressure to become a doctor and his love for diving. Sammy dreams of being an Olympic champion, but faces many obstacles and personal challenges to get there.
I think that besides the length of the story, I get stumped in explaining to my daughter why Sammy can't go in to the pool when it says whites only. As Asian Americans, we're in this kind of middle ground - we're not black, which is what a lot of children's books about segregation center on, and we're not white. My daughter actually asked me one day what color she was - because books like this one talk about people who are white and people who are black. Asian American doesn't really fit into that discussion, and telling a 3 year old that she is Asian American doesn't really seem to answer her question appropriately.
Regardless, this book is a nice way to talk about Korean Americans and Asian Americans in the context of the Olympics.
~ eliaday
