The Healing Power of Finally Seeing Yourself on the Page

I love that my teenage niece adores books as much as I do, which makes shopping for her such a pleasure. Last Christmas, I loaded her up with new reading material: The Donut Trap (2021) by Julie Tieu, Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous (2021) by Suzanne Park, and the box set of Chloe Gong’s duology, These Violent Delights (2020) and Our Violent Ends (2021). All of these books feature Asian, Asian American and/or Pacific Islander (AAPI) main characters. When I was her age, it would’ve been unheard of to find four such books so easily. The fact that these weren’t the only books I could choose from and that one even features a protagonist from the Cambodian diaspora (The Donut Trap)? Well, I was so delighted I almost kept them for myself.

When I was a young bookworm, I favored fantasy—I am of the Harry Potter Generation—but loved anything that could transport me to another universe, even for a few hours. However, as badly as I wanted to attend Hogwarts, visit Dianna Wynne Jones’ Related Worlds of Chrestomanci, or take down Roald Dahl’s Grand High Witch, it was difficult to imagine myself a natural inhabitant of those worlds, not because magic isn’t real, but because the characters were predominantly white, British (because fantasy), and male.

However, as badly as I wanted to attend Hogwarts, visit Dianna Wynne Jones’ Related Worlds of Chrestomanci, or take down Roald Dahl’s Grand High Witch, it was difficult to imagine myself a natural inhabitant of those worlds, not because magic isn’t real, but because the characters were predominantly white, British, and male.

When women of color did make appearances in fantasy books I read, they were little more than walking tropes that furthered the plot. Parvati Patil and Cho Chang may have gone out with Harry Potter, but more to mark his entry into puberty than to affect the battle against the army of magical fascists. While various white characters in the Harry Potter series experienced complicated narrative arcs of growth and redemption, the Asian character with the largest role was known for crying over one boyfriend, and then another.

Back then, whiteness in the literature I had access to was so prevalent and characters of color with substance so rare that I’d been conditioned to assume white was the default. Even to this day, my default is to picture the characters I read as white, unless explicitly specified otherwise. 

I have always craved books that reflected my experiences. I wanted to see fully fleshed-out young Asian American girls on the page (Cambodian American would’ve been ideal, but even my younger self knew that was unlikely), and not just as some sort of sidekick. As revolutionary and beloved as Claudia Kishi was, Ann M. Martin’s character from The Baby-Sitters Club is just one Japanese American girl in a sea of white characters.

It took me a long time to realize brown kids had just as much of a right to star in our own stories, and it took even longer for it to actually feel possible.

But there is hope: Goodreads’ annual lists show a pretty significant increase in the number of YA books over the last decade, but a quick trip to my local bookstore is all the evidence I need. Within YA, there are increasingly more stories written by and about AAPIs and BIPOC. These were the stories my younger self craved, and stories my grown self reads today, unironically—and not only to discuss with my niece.

Having felt invisible and unrepresented in the books I loved for so long, to see literature finally start to catch up and feature young characters who look like me and share similar experiences, means everything. Teenage Samantha would weep with joy if she saw that some of the  bestselling YA books star AAPI characters.

Even though I’m older than the target demographic for YA, I love reliving that time in my life through these AAPI characters, who get to do things I never felt I could at that age. They make bad—sometimes truly terrible—decisions, but learn from them. They are often overly emotional, but they are passionate and true to their hearts. They fall in and out of love, and in and out of hate. In last year’s Sarah Kuhn’s From Little Tokyo, With Love for example, protagonist Rika Rakuyama is one of the angriest characters I’ve ever read, turning the racist trope of quiet, meek Asian women on its head. Rika’s anger is often borne out of a fiery sense of justice and each time she unleashes her righteous fury, I just want to cheer and give her a high-five because she’s living out my fantasy of being able to truly speak my mind in real time, and not just in my head.

Given center stage, AAPI characters are no longer just accessories to a bigger story. They’ve become complicated and nuanced, no longer defined by their cultural identities or their family’s traumatic past in The Old Country—conflict with their parents now goes beyond the cultural divide. And I am here for it. These stories have been a healing salve after only seeing tragic tropes in what limited representation was available to me in what I read.

Given center stage, AAPI characters are no longer just accessories to a bigger story. They’ve become complicated and nuanced, no longer defined by their cultural identities or their family’s traumatic past in The Old Country—conflict with their parents now goes beyond the cultural divide.

In Loan Le’s A Phở Love Story (2021), the Vietnam War serves as the backdrop, but it is first and foremost—as the title suggests—a love story. The focus is on Bảo Nguyễn and Linh Mai, two Vietnamese American teens whose families’ neighboring phở restaurants have been feuding for as long as anyone can remember. Reading about how they kept their relationship under wraps reminded me of my own secret dating adventures as a teen. To some, the pair’s paranoia when they spend time together may seem extreme, but I immediately recognized it. You never forget sneaking around behind your immigrant parents’ back.

AAPIs (and other BIPOCs) don’t exist to serve white people. So it shouldn’t be a revelation or particularly noteworthy that our literary counterparts now exist without the sole purpose of furthering a white character’s story—but it is. In YA, we’re reaching a point where AAPIs are now the main characters of our own stories, living our best lives, without always having to justify our cultural backgrounds (white characters rarely have to explain their whiteness, so why should we explain ourselves?).

It’s exciting that YA representation has improved since I was a teen, showing readers that everyone’s story matters, not just those about straight, white, cisgender people. But the publishing industry shouldn’t be patting itself on the back quite yet. We’re not in some post-racial, post-whatever society—in fact, there's a lot adults could learn from the kids these stories are written for. Maybe by the time my niece is in her mid 30s we'll have gained some more traction.