And yet, she persisted

The eldest niecester is now in the double digits, officially a tween.

I've read all manner of horrible studies that show this is when the gender gap can start in school: girls start to take less of an interest in STEM, sports, etc. She already claims she doesn't like math, despite being good at it; and she already refused to join a new soccer team when they moved out of loyalty to her old team but also because she says she doesn't like running anymore.

Yet La Primera Sobrina has all the makings of a future activist to make her parents and tía proud. (Aside from being vocally enthusiastic about the possibility of a female president during the '16 campaign, when the family decided to watch the Star Wars movies, she demanded that they watch Rogue One first because it had a girl as the protagonist.)

So aside from getting her Hidden Figures on Blu-Ray for her birthday, La Mas Cool Tia Del Mundo went on a bender to get ideas for girl-power, age-appropriate books for her. I looked to A Mighty Girl for my inspiration; most of the time their suggestions are excellent, but sometimes they aren't.

I got Sylvia and Aki without actually reading the description; I assumed it was a book about friendship between two girls during WW2 and that the focus was that one of them was Japanese-American and incarcerated. OOPS! Turns out, yes, that's a tiny part of the story, which is based on a real-life friendship between two girls in the '40s, but also more importantly, the real-life Mendez v Westminster case out of California. Mendez was a father's (eventually successful) attempt to desegregate California schools so that his kids didn't have to walk a longer distance to go to the Mexican-only school; it was later cited in Brown v Board of Education that achieved the same goal of integration, this time nationwide.  I was unintentionally trying to highlight her Asian American heritage but accidentally ended up showcasing how important her Mexican American heritage is. TOTALLY amazing book for La Sobrina, given that she is one (and "only" half) of the Latino kids at their Michigan elementary school.

Next up was Women Explorers. I, for one, was inspired by the true tales of women who travelled alone, went mountain-climbing when society told them they shouldn't, and took off to be adventurous.  HOWEVER, every single woman highlighted was either European or white American (even the Mexican heroine), and most of them were also upper-middle class if not outright wealthy. Sacajawea didn't even make a token appearance. I nixed it for La Sobrina on that basis alone. It was inspiring, yes, but didn't deviate from the pre-Third Wave feminist mentality that women's history is by default white women's history.

I also nixed The King's Equal for being too stuck in the tired Poor Girl Changes Royalty theme.I normally approve of Katherine Paterson, but this book was really disappointing. Basically, there's a conceited prince and a beautiful, intelligent but poor villager. They swap places for a year when he becomes king; it changes him, and his obviously future queen did a great job running the kingdom, so they get married. Blah.


Because the kids loved Newsies, I thought We Were There Too might keep the spark of children's activism alive. I, for one, enjoyed it. But I think it is a little dense reading for kids. And most of the "children" whose stories are told throughout American history are actually teenagers, which I thought La Sobrina and her younger siblings maybe wouldn't find as relatable. Where Women Explorers failed, however, We Were There Too had stories from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds as well as socioeconomic classes. It highlighted everything from strikes to helping their families during war, and wasn't intended to be about activism so much as just showing that kids were part of American history too. The only problematic piece was that the first third of the book (early United States history) relied on European settlers' accounts, so the stories are obviously somewhat self-selective, especially in regards to how Native Americans are presented. Part of that is also a larger conversation about the nature of history as a discipline itself: reliance on first-person narratives leaves out oral traditions or conquered cultures who were very much "there too"...

And though A Mighty Girl didn't suggest it, I loved loved loved loved LOVED Wonder Woman. Mi Hermana thinks the niecester might be old enough to watch it, and I agree. I'd read all the reviews of women going to see the film in theatres and breaking down and crying during parts of it, overcome by the rare portrayal of a powerful, bad-ass lady on screen.... I did not expect to do that myself! And yet I did, towards the end, at the moment the goddess Diana finds and channels her inner mental strength to save the world. I don't tend to like DC universe comics or movies as much as Marvel, but this is the one exception. Yes, there are problematic parts: not enough ethnic and racial diversity, the issue of sexy superhero outfits for women alone, some stereotyping of the villains. Still, it's a movie I'd watch and re-watch in the company of kick-ass lady friends, my niece, my she-roes, and anyone else who is down to topple the patriarchy!