Belonging: the inherent and the sought after.
Belonging is something that happens to us unconsciously for the most part. We belong to the people we come from - our families, our language, our regional and neighborhood culture, our religious culture, our food, our gathering rituals. We belong without trying. It is a gift, and sometimes the aggravation we avoid. Belonging can bring pride or shame, an embrace or a departure. This month’s two books hold belonging at their core.
September 15-October 15 marks Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States. Every year, I try to find new resources to talk to my students about honoring Hispanic heritage. In my eighteen years of teaching, roughly have of my students have been Hispanic. Therefore, honoring my students’ culture, heritage and language is something that I strive to do well. Last year, I discovered a children’s picture book that taught me about a topic I hadn’t read much about - desegregation of Hispanic children in California in the 1940’s. Since I’m currently living and teaching in Southern California to a classroom of majority Mexican American students, this book immediately stood out as a top runner for our classroom discussions for Hispanic Heritage Month. Separate is Never Equal is written by Duncan Tonatiuh, is both a Mexican and American writer and an interesting person to learn from. I had the privilege of sitting in on a webinar with 12x12 Challenge (a picture book writer’s online community which I love). Every second of Duncan’s talk was fascinating. He explained the journey and evolution of his signature artwork, and the Pre-Columbian origins of specific illustration techniques he uses from the Mixtec codices, according to his website. One of my favorite features of his illustrations are the ears, which are a scroll at the top and bottom. You can see the codex reference’s origin in the Britsh Museum’s website here. If you click that link, you can see that the position, scale, shapes of the characters from the codices are the direct influences on Duncan’s work in Separate is Never Equal. His work is a teaser to entice readers to learn more about desegregation of Hispanic children in the United States, and the history of Mixtec codices. If you accept Duncan’s invitation to be curious about history, you will not be disappointed in your discoveries.
Separate is Never Equal approaches the idea of belonging in the first page, where Sylvia Mendez, our main character and historical figure, is told to “Go back to the Mexican school.” Westminster elementary school was a place that Sylvia Mendez’ family had fought to have the right to enroll her in. While Sylvia Mendez wasn’t welcomed with the embrace of belonging at this white school with resources, she and her family fought to keep her out of the clapboard run down Mexican school that the district tried to force her to stay at. Sylvia’s family began the conversation in their community about the fight to belong at the white school, and desegregate schools. This book tells the story of how Sylvia’s father met a lawyer, David Marcus, who had been working for integration locally in the public pools. A lawsuit was filed, and a trial was held in Los Angeles, just a few hours from where I currently live and teach. This was a mind-blowing shock to my students when we read this story as we looked on the map, found its proximity and calculated years that this occurred. This trial took place just 76 years before we had this discussion- just one lifetime before. My students were fired up, angry, sad, proud, and excited over the belonging that legally is theirs today, and that didn’t belong to them had they been born just one or two generations before. The trial was won, and awarded open enrollment to all students “regardless of lineage.” Belonging had been legally won. The cultural belonging was still a fight for Sylvia, and many students who have come after. Belonging was something that Sylvia’s parents had fought to change for her and other students who were excluded from a good education.
Belonging is a repeated theme in I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez. This 340 page novel is serving as this month’s adult book pairing. This novel grabs your interest from the first line, “What surprised me most about seeing my sister dead is the lingering smirk on her face.” Wow. This book was a page turner! We follow Julia, the main character’s search to get to know her sister after her passing. Julia had always seen Olga as dowdy, obedient and fulfilling all of the traditional roles of a Mexican American woman, pleasing their Ama and Apa. Julia’s feeling of unrest about really knowing her sister and the accidental discovery of clues to Olga’s dual life lead Julia on a search to know her sister. Julia openly rebelled against cultural expectations from her family, and discovers that Olga defied them to the maximum in secret. The belonging, and avoidance of belonging in this book is central to the events and discoveries that Julia makes about Olga. It leaves the readers with lots of questions about familial and cultural pressures on children to honor their parents' expectations. Children want to belong, as we all do. Belonging brings comfort, happiness and familiarity. This novel challenged me as a parent to think about the expectations I have of my child, and the effects of those expectations. Children conform or rebel to belong - in a family, with peers, with a lover. This gripping novel is written as a young adult novel, but I found it to be a powerful mirror for parental expectations.
Belonging comes at a cost. It costs you to chose to both maintain and defy cultural norms, expectations and duties. What, as a parent, am I supporting my child in? Breaking the belonging barrier to empower him? Supporting him with a strong sense of family belonging? How can I support my son’s biracial sense of belonging? These are some questions I’ve wrestled with after reading this book pairing of I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez and Separate is Never Equal is written by Duncan Tonatiuh.
Some powerful questions to discuss this month’s book pairing with your little reader are:
Where do you feel like you most belong?
What are the things you feel you have to do to belong in our family?
What happened when there was a time you didn’t feel like you belonged?
How can I help you feel like you belong?
Is there a space/place/group of people you don’t feel you belong to, but would like to?
Who can we help feel like they belong?
Happy reading this month, bookworms.
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