Bangkok!

March was a busy month. I spent two weeks in Southeast Asia presenting in international schools. First stop was Bangkok. I had a day and a half to recover from jet lag and see a few of the sights, including the gorgeous Buddhist temple, Wat Po,

where I met some fascinating characters:

One of the most amazing things about being in Thailand was that it was not winter.

March 11 and 12 I visited the beautiful Concordian International School, a tri-lingual (English, Thai and Mandarin) institution for Thai-Chinese students. At the request of librarian Erin Sieck, who wanted to make the connection with the school's mission to create global citizens, I began with a presentation to parents of my "Mirrors and Lenses" talk on using children's books to spark conversations about race. It was a fascinating exercise to translate the American point of view into something that had resonance for these Thai, Chinese and Korean parents seeking to help their children build positive ethnic identities.

The response of parents who stayed to talk to me afterwards demonstrated that the discussion of majority vs. minority racial identities had significant applications in Thailand as well as in the U.S.

In sessions with middle schoolers, I presented titles chosen by teachers for each grade, After Gandhi, Africa is Not a Country, and my graphic novel, The Legend of Hong Kil Dong...

and shared the always popular "Draw an Asian Dragon" exercise.

Skills for Welcoming Difference, Part I

During our "New Neighbors" presentation at International Reading Association (see previous post) we discussed skills for welcoming new arrivals. Such skills can be

• consciously chosen as effective strategies for interacting across culture, race and other difference; 
• adopted as guidelines for individuals or groups; 
• used as evaluation criteria for projects and events; and
• modeled for others.

Here are a few:

1. "How Fascinating!"

When author Margy Burns Knight and I present our book, Africa is Not a Country, to young elementary students, we frequently hear a similar response when we get to the entry describing three girls walking to school in Cairo, Egypt. Because she's always running late, we explain, one of the students has stopped to pick up breakfast on the way: beans in pita bread. Predictably, we hear a chorus of "Ewwww!"

We recognize the opportunity for a teachable moment. Stopping the presentation, I call attention to the response and discuss how we sometimes feel anxiety when we encounter something unfamiliar, and  react by labeling it "weird."

"But that's like taking a big step away from the new situation or person," I point out, "and you might miss discovering something wonderful, maybe a new friend." I challenge the students to notice whenever they feel that "Weird!" response coming on, and substitute the phrase, "How fascinating!"

We resume the slide show, and soon the entire class is responding with enthusiasm to their first encounters with the daily lives of children in African countries - "How fascinating!"

At this point, of course, it's just a silly exercise, but with practice, we can actually retrain our brain's responses to welcome new ideas, experiences and people.



2. Cultural Humility


The practice of yoga often includes an introduction to the concept of "Beginner Mind," in which one assumes a complete lack of knowledge and approaches a situation with a completely open mind. This is a useful choice to make when interacting with people whose backgrounds are very different from yours.

Especially those of us raised as members of dominant cultures may unwittingly harbor assumptions of our culture's superiority, and unbeknownst to ourselves, make comparisons and judgments about a different culture. As the host culture, we may think of ourselves as the ones with the most to give. An attitude of cultural humility allows us to suspend these evaluations and simply be open to receiving and discovering the newness in front of us.

3. Examining Difference through the Lens of Commonality

When planning connections between diverse communities - in this case long-term residents with new arrivals - it's useful to start with what we have in common. For example, in a discussion following a shared book such as A Path of Stars, we can start talking about relationships with grandparents, family stories, journeys, the love of the natural world - all universal aspects of the human experience.

This approach sets up important understandings that foster a respectful exchange among equals:

• Everyone has a story; every story matters.
• We have far more in common than we do differences.
• We can explore and appreciate our differences without making anyone alien or exotic.

Kony 12 and Images of Africa

Today high school and college students across the nation will be covering their communities with posters demanding the arrest of Uganda's Joseph Kony for his abductions of children into his Lord's Resistance Army, in an action entitled "Cover the Night," organized by Invisible Children through a video that's gone viral. 


Margy Burns Knight, co-author of Africa is Not a Country (which I illustrated), wrote this April 4 post for Teaching Tolerance, suggesting that we make this a teachable moment and take the time to examine the complexities of the situation - such as the on-the-ground realities in Uganda, the implicit messages of the video, the impact of viral campaigns, and the aims of Invisible Children, to name a few. 


"... if we introduce complicated situations such as the LRA as 'stopping the bad Africans,' we set our children up to assume they can save Africa—or worse—that they should be the saviors of Africa," Margy writes. 

Boston University's African Studies Center has created an excellent study guide, "React and Respond: The Phenomenon of Kony 12," including a brief history, detailed guidelines for teaching the material and analyzing the video, and extensive resources. The guide identifies these core stereotypes/generalities which may be activated by an uncritical response to the video: 

1. Violent crises are part of the “African condition.”  

2. Africa is all the same. Africa is often seen as homogenous, and a place of the exotic, primordial loyalties (tribalism), poverty, underdevelopment, and corrupt and ineffective governments, as well as a tendency towards violence. 

3. Africa and Africans have little capacity to solve problems.

"Countries in Africa, like countries around the world, have human rights problems," Margy writes. "Our children should learn about them. But it sells short our children’s intelligence and the good human rights work going on around the world to teach it in flashy, dubious viral movies. Why not teach what people in Uganda think about Kony 2012? Our children, and the world about which we’re trying to teach them, deserve better."

Africa is Not a Country, Redux

Last January, author Margy Burns Knight and I spent a week-long residency at Fiske Elementary School in Lexington, MA, where we led 400+ students in the creation of a book about their daily life, entitled Our Corner of the World. With the help of the faculty, staff, and parents (especially Cynthia Wimer and Songyi Kim!), each class participated in writing the text, I illustrated their stories in full color, and each student contributed a b&w spot drawing. The book was printed and every student received a personal copy.

Our Corner of the World was a response to our own book, Africa is Not a Country, written by Mark Melnicove and Margy and illustrated by me, about the daily lives of children in 25 of Africa's countries (then 53, now 54, since the Republic of South Sudan became a nation on July 9, 2011).

Market in Benin, illustration from Africa is Not a Country

Since the completion of the Fiske book, the two books have been sent, through people who had personal connections with schools, to students in seven African countries: Uganda, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Tanzania, Benin, Kenya, and Zambia. Here's the book being delivered to the head of a school in the rural community of Simikanka, Zambia:

Lest anyone think the book and the information is no longer needed, here's a teabag my brother found last month and passed on to me:













For a closeup:


(This from a tea company in the nation that colonized a number of Africa's countries!)

For more on the book and the topic, see the inaugural post of this blog, as well as this one about how the book was created, and this one about programs Margy and I do in schools.