Professional Resource Review

“Issues of Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Quality in Asian-American Picture Books, 1983-1993”
By Violet H. Harada

Although this journal article is really outdated, I found in my own search that the ideas running through it are still present in picture books now. It seems as though although there are way more Asian-American books present in our society, there are numerous books that are written by the same authors who have written popular books previously. A lot of the books that I found on Asian-American cultures were folktales or books about history. I am now going to back up my findings with the similar findings of Harada’s article.

In 1976, the Council on Interracial Books for Children did a study that eleven Asian-American book writers read and analyze a total of thirty-six books (published from 1945-1976) where one or more of the main characters were Asian American. (Pg. 136, Harada, 1995) The research found that a lot of the stories were about Chinese Americans, there were a lot of the same authors (about 17%), about 70% were picture books, and all but two of the books were “racist, sexist, and elitist.” (Pg. 137, Harada, 1995). I agree with the fact that there are a lot of popular authors that a lot of people choose to read their stories because they know they are credible authors. I think there have been giant leaps on the issues of stereotyping as well as sexist when it comes to literature more recently written, including the picture books that I have reviewed myself.

Then in 1983, there was another study that was done more recently that focused on three issues: authenticity vs. stereotyping, outsider vs. insider point of view, and lastly, the quality of literature. (Pg. 138, Harada, 1995) I found this fascinating because these are issues we have dealt with all throughout the semester, and these are clearly issues that have been around for a while. This study was created by Lyn Miller-Lachman by Esther Jenkins, and the Council on Interracial Books for Children, then done by six school librarians “with experience as library book reviewers for the Hawaii Department of Education” (Pg. 139, Harada, 1995) Surprisingly, this study had similar findings as the study done in 1976. Chinese Americans were the most represented, but in this study they used books of both Asian and non-Asian decent. (About half and half) This study found that there was an increase in Asian American writers, but a lot of the books studied were also by the same writers. (Pg. 140, Harada, 1995)

The good thing about the more recent study is the fact that stereotyping has become much less prominent in books, and there are a lot more positive roles for Asian American characters. (Pg. 140, Harada, 1995) There are numerous more positive changes in the books written more recently, but I think that stereotyping was the biggest problem with the first set of books, so it is the main thing I took out of the article, especially when there was such a decrease in stereotyping, making the books so much more positive. The rest of the article goes on to talk about the increase of Asian American writers, the more numerous stories about Korean and Vietnamese American characters, and the increase in authentic literature, written from and by an insider’s point of view. (Pg. 146, Harada, 1995)

The main thing that I took from this article was the fact that children need to be exposed to multi-racial literature starting from a young age, because as stated in the article, “Research has shown that very young children between the ages of three and four are already aware of the status assigned by race and sex. Their perceptions are shaped both by experience with significant adults and by the messages they receive from their environment.” (Pg. 135, Harada, 1995) Just that last fragment of the sentence screams to me: environment=school, including day care and stretching to what children are exposed to at home.

Harada, Violet H. "Issues of Ethnicity, Authenticity, and Quality in Asian-American Picture Books, 1983-1993." Youth Services in Libraries 9 (1995): 135-47.