It's AANHPI Heritage Month. I was reflecting on high school. I was a multiracial teen of European, Chinese, and Hawaiian descent. Still am. Well, not the teen part.
My high school combined European and American history into one two year course. China got only vague mentions in this course. Hawai'i came up briefly, when it got couped, and then annexed. I've mentioned before that my history teacher announced that they did not know how to pronounce Queen Lili'uokalani's name and were not going to learn. I wish I could tell you that was the moment I decided to do an independent study, but I can't recall.
In my senior year, I did, for one elective credit, an independent study on Hawaiian history. I met with the anthropology teacher, who had agreed to be my advisor. And I presented a paper, along with sources to a committee in order to get my grade.
So even as a teen, I knew there were gaps in what I was being taught, places I was going to have to fill in. There is some weird assumption on the part of some, that while everyone needs to know about the Treaty of Ghent, not everyone needs to know about what was happening in places not predominantly populated by Europeans. Even the American history textbooks cover the US with the European settlers as the main characters and everyone else as supporting players.
There are so many great books - fiction books even, you don't have to read history unless you want to (um, unless you are in school). There are so many great books by Pacific Islanders, by Asian Americans, by Asians, and by native Hawaiians. Some raised in the diaspora like me, some not. There are translated books. (I have been gobbling up translations of books about cats, coffee shop time travel, and dreams.)
Here are some suggestions I made last year for the Pasifika read along: http://www.talkapedia.com/2024/04/pasifika-reading-challenge-suggestions.html
