Fighting intolerance by teaching children

When Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, recently tweeted, “Culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” I fumed.

“Somebody else?” As in my immigrant Chinese father, who earned an engineering doctorate in Iowa, and worked on Chicago’s Sears Tower, an iconic skyscraper and soaring symbol of progress. As in my mother, a scientist who researches food safety. “Babies?” As in my parents’ American-born children, me and my siblings.

In the wake of the presidential election, as bigots have become emboldened and hate speech and hate crimes escalated, I’ve been figuring out how to educate my 5½year-old twins about social justice.

In January, as the Martin Luther King holiday approached, we showed them an online video of the civil rights leader.

“Is he alive?” Gege asked.

My husband and I exchanged a look.

“He passed away,” my husband said.

“He was shot and killed,” I added. I didn’t want to gloss over what happened, yet I didn’t want the twins to be fearful of protesting. “Why?” Didi asked. “By bad guys, who didn’t believe people were equal,” I said.

“Villains?” Gege asked. I nodded, even though that term didn’t feel quite right — the simplistic portrayals he knows from cartoons are far removed from the horrors of everyday racism.

I’m not the only parent searching for how to teach my children about our troubled world. Sales of Innosanto Nagara’s “A is for Activist” picture book have nearly doubled in the months since the election, according to his publisher. It’s also been appearing on regional and national bestseller lists.

The Oakland father wrote the book for his son, who is now 6½. “Dr. Seuss made up big words. If you can get excited about that, why not ‘democracy’?” Nagara asked. “It’s about developing a vocabulary and a bigger picture.”

At noon Saturday, March 18, he’ll join the Center for Asian American Media’s book fair and panel of Bay Area authors, including Thi Bui, Stan Yogi, Laura Atkins and Nidhi Chanani at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center. (Tickets $14, free for those younger than 18.)

In the car, the twins have taken to chanting Nagara’s verse for the letter P: “ProPro-Protest! Pow-Pow-Power to the PeePee-People!”

Although I’ve tried to explain the book’s different concepts, sometimes I come up short. Zapatistas, leftist rebels from Mexico’s Chiapas, are depicted as a man with a black mask covering his mouth. “Are they like ninjas?” Gege asked. Sort of ? “They’re warriors,” I said.

“They have sticky hands and feet and can climb walls?” he asked, conflating ninjas, Spider-Man and Zapatistas.

Nagara’s “My Night in the Planetarium,” based on his experience of growing up under a repressive regime in Indonesia, has also resonated with young readers who find parallels to today’s issues.

“There’s no escaping, no sheltering them,” he said. “If you don’t talk about it ahead of time, kids are still going to talk about it among themselves.” “Planetarium” is about using art and theater as a form of resistance, he explained. “Ultimately, we can win.”

Bui, another panelist, advised me to seek out books featuring more than the mainstay heroes. “Heroes are important to kids,” she said. “But you can complement Martin Luther King with other activists from the civil rights movement. They didn’t all get assassinated. Show it as a cast of characters who came together.”

The Berkeley mother’s stunning, deeply moving graphic novel “The Best We Could Do” examines the history of her Vietnamese refugee family. She hopes that readers will gain a greater understanding of refugees past and present. “You might be able to imagine yourself in their shoes and why they made the decisions they did,” she said.

Panelists Yogi and Atkins, co-authors of “Fred Korematsu Stands Up,” have been visiting schools to discuss how the Japanese American activist fought internment.

“We make a point that there’s a lot of ways you can stand up to speak up. You can protest. You can sing. Make artwork,” said Atkins, an Oakland mother.

To that end, along with reading such books to the twins, I made a New Year’s resolution to explore different cultures and faiths with my family. We’re planning to visit Wat Mongkolratanaram’s Thai temple brunch in Berkeley, a Sikh langar meal and a service at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, among others; I’d appreciate suggestions from readers as well.

Over the weekend, we attended a joyous Purim celebration with a Chinese theme. A red paper lantern perched beside a brimming basket of hamantaschen cookies and mishloach manot gifts were packed into Chinese takeout boxes.

Years ago, as a journalist, I learned of Queen Esther, a Jewish exile, when I visited a social justice Bible study at UC Berkeley. For that group, Esther — the wife of a Persian king, who stops a plot to destroy her people — reflected the struggle of assimilation and identity and the fight for belonging.

A timeless story, timely as ever, that the twins now know too.

“There’s no escaping . ... Kids are still going to talk about it among themselves.” Innosanto Nagara, author of “A is for Activist,” on hate and racism