"Why do readers and reviewers assume that a book with Chinese-American characters can encompass all the demographics and personal histories of Chinese America?"- Amy Tan, The opposite of Fate, p. 305.

I think this is an interesting example of what I call racism, but what others would call something else that I have no name for. What I mean is the assumption that if it is not white, it is something so small that one story is the whole one. When I was in high school, I was always confused that every black history month, a black person would recite a Langston Hughes poem on the school news and that was it. As if there weren't even any other black poets or anything. To think that just only poem could speak for the multitude, it was bizarre and narrow.

I also remember what I'd call sexism. A boy mentioned that we had to study women's history in AP (as our teacher said, she wasn't a radical feminist, but hearing about the history of women was a good way to tell what normal people were doing) and this girl was like, that book would be pamphlet thin, and the guy said that we had to read a big book of it. I felt that something was wrong, but being a teenager, I totally didn't know what it was.

I had been exposed to feminism before, as feminist books came with interesting titles like The Beauty Myth, so of course I couldn't leave that alone. I was always fascinated by the library as a kid. I would always get stacks and stacks of books out. Of course, I couldn't match one family of cousins, that has 7 kids, and when they'd go to the library, they'd check out tons of books too. It's really important that kids (and adults) read for pleasure, so they can find out what has been left out of our discourse. By our discourse, I mean school and TV, so I am probably wrong on this subject, but that seems the main way people learn things these days.