This past week I had a conversation with my mom about how I learned about Asian American history. There is no doubt in my mind that had my mom not prompted and prodded me to write my history papers on different parts of Asian American history, I would have learned nothing about the history of my own people in America.
In particular, I asked her if she remembered when she told me about the Vincent Chin murder. She thought that it was in high school, which is kind of reasonable considering it was a brutal hate crime. BUT, I am fairly certain that I was in 5th or 6th grade. I specifically remembering thinking how dumb the whole thing seemed - dumb being my 5th or 6th grade way of contemplating hate crimes.
I wonder about how I will share stories of Asian American with my children. I think that our stories still fall outside of the mainstream and don't always receive the attention and care that is needed. I think that hearing about things through the voices of family, imagining things that my grandparents might have gone through - those are all important ways of sharing our past with our children.
I already have some books, but the stories are so hard to find. And some of the stories are so sad! I think it's important to teach my children about things like Japanese internment ("Baseball saved us" comes to mind), but at the same time, it's such a hard conversation to start. Especially with a four year old who asks WHY to just about anything I say. (I can picture it now, "Why did FDR think that Japanese Americans were spies?")
How do you plan on teaching your children about Asian American history? What questions are you nervous about answering?
~ eliaday