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DeKALB– During Tuesday’s Asian American Certificate Program Lecture Series, special guest Karen Su discussed the experiences of Asian Americans and the impact of representation in children’s books and literature.
The Asian American Certificate Program Lecture Series is hosted at NIU’s Asian American Resource Center (AARC) and highlights the university’s Asian American Certificate Program.
According to the University of Illinois Chicago’s Global Asian Studies department website, Su is a clinical associate professor of Global Asian Studies at UIC. She serves as principal investigator and project director of the university’s Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions Initiative. The initiative includes four grants, totaling $7.1 million to support programs aimed at improving educational outcomes for Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, English language learners and low-income undergraduate students at UIC.
Outside of her work at UIC, Su has explored children’s picture books featuring Asian Americans. She has authored four biographies about Asian American leaders for the Leaders Like Us book series and earned the 2022 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Illinois Many Voices Prize.
Her lecture focused on the limited and unfair representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature.
“Children of Asian Pacific ancestry are still more likely to find books featuring anthropomorphic animals and creatures of fantasy than people who look like them or their families,” Su said.
Su noted that when Asian Americans are represented in children’s books and literature, oftentimes the depictions are stereotypical.
“The other representation of Asian Americans usually is the model minority myth,” Su said. “Many books have very rich stories about Asian Americans. But the main character will be a genius or a prodigy. And there are smart Asian kids, for sure, but not all of them are smart.”
Su also discussed that visuals can be considered offensive, even when shown without words.
“The other pet peeve I have is seeing East Asian eyes drawn with a line,” Su said. “When it comes to books about Asia, even very outdated ones seem to have resurfaced, much to my chagrin.”
Su concluded the lecture by highlighting organizations working to improve representation in children’s publishing. Among them were the Lee and Low Books, a multicultural children’s book publisher, and Boyds Mills (formerly the Highlights Foundation), an organization that supports authors and illustrators through workshops aimed at improving children’s literature.
“They have done an incredible job in the last 10 years. I’ve seen them really diversified,” Su said. “They have retreats and workshops specifically for African-American, Latinx, Native and Indigenous, Asian American, Muslim, Jewish, LGBTQ voices, etc.”
Blessing Coranez, OHANA Nights Coordinator and junior philosophy major, attended the lecture because of the unique educational opportunities it provides.
“It is very rare for us to be educated in regard to Asian American history, especially in the classrooms,” Coranez said. “A lot of the time, students have to take specific classes just to even learn about these kinds of things.”
The next lecture in the series will be held from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on March 24 at the AARC and is titled “In Search of Japantown in Pre-World War II Chicago: Exceptional Japanese Who Defied Japanese Immigrant Stereotypes.”
(By Northern Star)