top of page
This site was designed with the
.com
website builder. Create your website today.Start Now
Search
  • Writer's picturesivretmr
    • Oct 13, 2019
    • 9 min read

Separate Is Never Equal

Updated: Oct 14, 2019

A story about a family's fight for change and the desegregation of schools in California. This book educates readers on the Mendez v. Westminster School District case, a case that is forgotten in history.


What is this story about?


This story is about a girl named, Sylvia Mendez, and her family. After being told she and her brothers must attend the Mexican school, not being allowed to attend the school closest to their home, her family takes a stand. The book follows her family's fight in court, which is known today as The Mendez v. Westminster School District case. This case, which fought for the desegregation of schools for over five thousand students in the area, paved the way for Brown v. Board of Education, further changing education across the whole country.

Meet the Author/Illustrator:

Duncan Tonatiuh


Duncan Tonatiuh is an award-winning author and illustrator of several children's books. He has received several Pura Belpré awards, The Robert F. Sibert Medal, The Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children's Book Award, The Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and The Américas Award. Some of his books include: Dear Primo, Diego River: His World and Ours, and Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote. Duncan grew up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and attended the Parson School of Design in New York City. He currently resides in Mexico. Visit his website: http://www.duncantonatiuh.com/chth.html to find out more about his work.




My Critique/Review:


Before reading this book, I knew it was a big award winner, so I had high expectations for it. It did not disappoint! This book was so eye-opening, educational, and real. It touched on the topic of segregation that we typically see, however, it took readers down a path that is unknown to most. I love how the author chose to talk about Sylvia Mendez and her family, as this is a story that is not talked about in schools and typically forgotten. Duncan Tonatiuh did a wonderful job of not only representing the events through words, but he was able to tell the story through his illustrations as well. One of my favorite parts of the book is the last page where Duncan includes images of Sylvia, her parents, and her school. This page is so powerful as it gives a face to the family, as well as, shows the physical difference between the white school and the Mexican school that she was forced to attend. This supports the idea of school segregation that this book and court case are based on. Lastly, this book meets my expectations of a good children's book because it is relatable, empowering, incorporates a real issue still seen today, and educates readers, making it an important read for students.


Thoughts:

Before reading this book, I was tasked with reading about CRT (Critical Race Theory), to help me analyze children's books. CRT encourages readers to critically examine society relating to race and power. Furthermore, counter-storytelling and graphic life writing are ideas that fall under CRT. Counter-storytelling describes books that tell stories about people that are not often told, teaching readers to challenge and expose stories of racial privilege. Graphic life writing is using images and texts to construct a life story, using picture books as an example of this (Marshall, 2016, pg. 79-80). By learning about CRT and counter-storytelling, I felt more prepared to critically read this book, analyzing the author/illustrator, plot, setting, and characters. This story, is from the perspective of Sylvia's family, a Latino family living in California. The story starts off at the integrated public school, before taking readers back to the beginning of the fight. The rest of the book takes place in the Mexican school, the courtroom, and on the streets of California. The book follows Sylvia's family as they advocate for the desegregation of schools. It shows her father's journey meeting other families in the same situation, the long trial in court, and the after effect. Lastly, Duncan Tonatiuh is a Mexican-American, showing the connection and importance of this case to his heritage.

When thinking about CRT and analyzing this picture book, I chose to focus on the three illustrations below. When analyzing the images, I noticed the different aspects that Duncan Tonatiuh chose to add. According to the article by Marshall, "he references the Chicano Arts Movement and its use of art as a strategy for political commentary: she writes that 'art as a vehicle for social justice'" (2016, pg. 81). Some aspects that Duncan was inspired to include were: making all the characters in profile view, having the ears look like a three, and the hand placement/pointing of the characters (which can be seen on page 28). Lastly, aside from gathering inspiration from the Mixtecs, Duncan created these illustrations with collage. This style of art creates the textures that are seen in the images.

I chose this graphic to depict the illustrator recognizing racism. Here, Sylvia and her brothers are not allowed in the swimming pool and are seen standing outside the gate looking in (Tonatiuh, 2014, pg. 18-19). What really shocked me in this image is the sign in front of the pool. To me as a reader, this shows the decision of the illustrator to almost compare people of Mexican descent to dogs. This image is very powerful for readers as it depicts the ideas and feelings of many Americans in relation to racism.

Next, I chose this image to depict how Duncan combats racism. Here, there is a white man handing out newspapers that say, "Ruling Gives Mexican Children Equal Rights" (Tonatiuh, 2014, pg. 30-31). I think by the illustrator choosing to make the newspaper man white, really adds to this image of combating racism. Readers can also see Sylvia in this image. This is the first image after the court ruling in favor of the Mendez family. I think this is a powerful image of Sylvia first realizing the effects of what her family fought for. Here, we see characters from many backgrounds coming together and depicting society overcoming racism. I think this is a powerful image because it's almost like a breath of fresh air for the Mendez family. They were not able to resist racism in one day, rather, it took months and months of advocacy to change society, but now they are seeing the effects.

Lastly, I chose this image because I think it connects to readers and makes them question society. The other two images show racism and how the characters overcome it, however, this image really positions the reader to question racism. This image shows a man of Latino descent who fought for America in WWII, however, after returning home he finds that his children are not allowed to attend 'white schools' (Tonatiuh, 2014, pg. 22). This image is very striking because it makes readers question, "why?". This man fought in the same uniform, sacrificed his life and family time to fight for our country. Does skin color not matter when you are in war, only when you return home to American soil? I think this questioning, created by CRT, encourages students to critically examine these images and from this, they can become activists for combatting racism.

The article by Marshall discusses two other books that fit under CRT, being examples of counter-storytelling: Through My Eyes, a story about Ruby Bridges and When I Was Eight, a story about boarding schools and its effect on Indigenous people (2016, pg. 83-85). The story about Indigenous people really stood out to me and connected with my experiences. This story focuses on the boarding schools and how "the ways in which the living who attended residential schools had integral parts of their identity, including language, killed off". The effects of these schools are still very prominent today. For my graduate Culturally Sustaining Curriculum Project, I am focusing on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribe. From my research and talking with members of the tribe, I have learned that language preservation is their number one problem right now. A couple years ago they opened a language immersion school to try and save their native language, however, the biggest issue they are running into is finding people to teach the language. Today, there are only about 200 surviving fluent speakers. So, this school came at a dire time in order to save the Cherokee language. Furthermore, growing up, I have always heard stories from my dad and grandparents about their experiences living on reservations out west. When my dad was young, my grandpa worked for the Indian Public Health Service as a nurse. My dad started school on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Here, my grandma would describe how hard it was to receive help at the school because of the lack of resources and the motivation of the teachers. Typically, the teachers hired on the reservations were teachers who did not meet certain requirements, were not accepted, or hired in areas off the reservation. So, these teachers would receive benefits to move to the reservation to teach, as many people did not want to do this due to the lack of support, funding, and resources. The materials on the reservation were second-hand textbooks that schools across the country did not want or need anymore, most times being outdated and in bad condition. Furthermore, when my dad’s family moved to Lander, Wyoming, a border town to the Wind River Reservation, they still saw this idea of school segregation and the effects of boarding schools. In Lander, my dad did not go to the reservation school rather, went to the public school in Lander. He mentioned that many natives from the reservation attended his school: “half of the freshman and sophomore class were native”, however, by junior year, most dropped out or transferred to the Indian High School on the reservation. This really surprised me and left me questioning why. From what my dad said, his school was harder and most of the native students struggled as they did not have much family support with homework for example, as most of the parents never finished school themselves. When thinking about this time in relation to the boarding schools, my dad started school about 45 years ago, meaning that most of his classmates' parents attended school during the boarding school era. Furthermore, when I asked about the language and names of his classmates, my dad mentioned that all of the natives spoke English and had very American names with Native American last names such as Wagon, Nosleep, and Little Bear. From my family’s stories and personally getting to visit these reservations, it is so evident that school segregation and boarding school integration still affects the Native American population today. The article states that:

“The legacy of residential school and the dehumanization of Indigenous peoples reaches directly into the families of the present.. There are more Native children in the child welfare system than were in the residential school system at its height because of the cycles of violence and trauma they inflicted on our families” (Marshall, 2016, pg. 86).

It is imperative that we educate students on this side of the history of Native Americans, rather than the “savage”, “wild” indians that we see in movies and media. This proves why it is so important to incorporate these “counter-storytelling” books into the classroom, providing mirrors, windows, and sliding doors into the lives of other underrepresented groups.


Making Connections:


When thinking about how to connect this book to the classroom, there are many directions you could take. You could expand on this book and have students learn more about this court case, letting students explore the court's documentation of the case, which is linked below. You could also incorporate the many interviews with Sylvia and her recount of the events. Some of these are linked below under the useful links section. By doing this, students would expand their knowledge on this important court case, feel more connected and see the real-life impact of this case.

Furthermore, when thinking about what I would do with this book, I think I would focus on the theme of standing up, taking a stand, and being an activist. I would have students explore other books, songs, paintings, etc. with this theme. Some examples that I could include are:

After exploring this theme and what it means to be an activist, students could write about a time they were an activist, maybe standing up for someone else or opposing something they did not agree with. Students could also write about something they want to advocate for and how they could go about this. By doing this, this takes a big theme of the book and expands it across multimodal texts, teaching students the importance of taking a stand.


Useful Links:


Sources:

Duncan Tonatiuh. Photo of Author/Illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh. Reprinted from

DuncanTonatiuh.com, by Duncan Tonatiuh, n.d., Retrieved from


Marshall, E. (2016). Counter-Storytelling through Graphic Life Writing. Language Arts,

94(2), 79-93.


Tonatiuh, D. (2014) Separate Is Never Equal. New York, NY: Abrams Books for Young Readers.

24 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page