Accidental Lessons in Gender Inequity in Asia: Ruby's Wish & Ten Little Dumplings

 Every year I share books that show celebrations of the Lunar New Year. This year I came across the picture book Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim Leos (Bridges) and illustrated by Sophie Blackall and wanted to use it for reasons beyond how the family in the story celebrates.  

It is a fictional story that is based on the author's grandmother, who while growing up in China, aspired to attend university but was not expected to because she was a girl.  

I asked students to first consider how people celebrate holidays around the world and we found similarities between their ideas and how Lunar New Year is celebrated.

We watched a clip and looked through the photos from the Sacramento Bee about how Asians in America celebrate: 

Then we had a directed drawing lesson by Grace Lin from her website on how to draw an ox for the year of the ox:

Finally, we read Ruby's Wish and I asked students to think about these points before they listen to the story:

After listening to the story, students used a template in Seesaw to respond to the questions. Students were shocked to learn about the gender bias against females and wanted to learn more.  They wondered if this was still happening, what other countries did this exist, how people were trying to change that mindset worldwide.

This led me to be on the lookout for more books that portray this gender inequality and I found Ten Little Dumplings, a picture book by Larissa Fan and pictures by Cindy Wume.

This is a book, again, based on the author's family, except this time this story takes place in Taiwan.  One boy is supposed to bring great luck to a family and this family has ten sons!  In the end, the reader finds out that the family also had a daughter. It's told from her perspective so the reader wants to go back from the beginning and see if they can spot her in the beautiful illustrations.  

Fan writes at the end that she wonders about "who is left out of the stories we are told and why.  Ten Little Dumplings is my attempts to reveal another viewpoint to a traditional tale, to write in someone who has been left out."  This would pair well with my students who heard Ruby's Wish and they can compare the stories with one another.  This could also launch an inquiry unit for students to go out and seek answers to their wonderings about gender inequality in today's world.  Whenever I share with students the gender inequality in various other parts of the world they think I am talking about hundreds of years ago, not modern-day times.  Stories like these will open up the minds of our students as they explore their thinking about this important issue.

If you've had lessons or used books on this topic with children and middle schoolers, please add your titles and ideas in the comments.