I remember thinking in elementary school that if my classmates could just see characters with turbans and beards and brown skin in the books they read then maybe — just maybe — it would help them see my family as more normal and less foreign. I remember looking for these books every single time I went to a bookstore or our school library, and I remember, vividly, walking away disappointed every single time.
When my older daughter was born four years ago, I started looking for children’s books to share with her — and that same feeling of disappointment and invisibility came rushing back. Thirty years had passed since my own childhood, yet nothing had changed. I realized that no one else was going to write the book I wanted in this world. I also realized that until and unless I wrote that book, neither my girls nor their friends would ever encounter positive images of people who look like me.
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