Learning Centuries of History in One Month

May 1 marked the beginning of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.  Yeah, it’s a mouthful.  On Wednesday night I wrapped fortune cookies in saran wrap to help decorate my teen book display.  Above young adult authors like Mitali Perkins, Marie G. Lee, Paul Yee and Laurence Yep I cut out bits of APAH trivia and pictures of famous Asian Americans.  While I carefully wrapped each cookie a friend passed by to ask me what I was doing. 

“So is this what you and your husband will be doing after work?  Going out to celebrate the month?”

No, I explained.  I just wanted to have a book display to make people aware.

“Good luck with that,” he snickered.  “You know those kids probably won’t be interested in that.” He has a point. We don’t get many Asian American kids or teens walking through.  Most of the kids who come through are inner city kids and it’s hard enough to get them to read books period and they mostly pick up books on African Americans during February so for certain they wouldn’t pick up books on Asian Americans.  So why do it?  Why pull out books and make a display?

I think it’s because more than one group makes up the American experience.  When in school for nine months out of the year we learn what many think of as standard American history and see it through the average white American lens.  Then we learn about world history in a way that speaks of how Europeans colonized most of the world.  Only in certain designated months do we speak of the contributions people of color and women have made to this country.  If our stories were told in class then most young people wouldn’t think that African American history begins with the Montgomery bus boycott, people would know who Cesar Chavez was and realize that although Bruce Lee was a great motion picture star he wasn’t the first Asian American to achieve that accomplishment (that distinction goes to Sessue Hayakawa).

So if anyone cares or not, as each month rolls around I will be putting up a display dedicated to people who the history books sometimes glosses over.  We can’t learn centuries of history in 30 days but we can begin to understand each other by taking it one month at a time.