No more slanty eyes
This blog was reposted during my website move. It was originally posted on Aug. 6, 2021.
Last week, Juventus Women’s Twitter account gave us a truly masterclass in racism. I have no need to put another image of the offensive tweet here since most of us have seen it by now, but the title of my post here should give you a good idea what it was. And yes, it was a photo.
And LET ME TELL YOU, I was ready for this moment.
For a long while I’ve been collecting my favourite examples of the dreaded slanty eyes stereotype as found in picture books. You know the one I’m talking about. The stereotype that tells us that East Asians don’t have eyeballs. We can’t open our eyes. We just have little Voldemort slits where eyes usually go.
If you think this was a thing of the past, a relic so racist that people couldn’t possibly get away with that kind of thing today, may I direct you to, a) the above Tweet, and b) all the examples below.
I could actually go on and on, but you get the point.
Many people have written beautifully about why the slitty eyes stereotype is problematic. This stereotype is steeped in a long history of racism, which many Asian-Canadians probably have experienced first-hand growing up. I know I wasn’t very big when the first white kid pulled their eyes shut at me and taunted, “easy peasy Japanesey”. What I don’t want is for my own kids to grow up seeing this same stereotype in the books around them. I don’t want them to see that every depiction of people with eyes like theirs looks asleep, absent, squinting, expressionless.
I don’t want them to grow up thinking that their eyes aren’t beautiful, or that having eyes a certain shape means they can’t emote or express perfectly fine.
The best way I know to combat this nonsense is, of course, a book list of excellent books to help drown out the bad stuff out there. Below is a list of my recent favourite picture books (and two early chapters and one graphic novel) featuring East Asian characters.
Enjoy!
My Twitter thread on this subject.
