| Name of AAPI Figure | Grace Lin |
| What is the person’s Asian heritage or
ethnicity? | Grace Lin is of asian heritage, her parents lived in
Taiwan, and immigrated to America before Grace was born. |
| Area of Influence | Grace Lin is an author and illustrator of both
children’s fiction, and fairytale books. |
| Date of birth or time period | 18-May-78 |
| How did this individual make a
contribution to their field or to society/culture at large? | Grace Lin contributed to society with her books and
messages. She has helped and still helps children like her to have books that
reflect who they are, not what they are not. Grace Lin has helped inspire
people to do what is right, not what other people want you to do. Through her
books, Grace Lin has taught children to embrace who they are, and where they
came from. She has helped reach out to the world to tell us that asians can
be the main character in wonderful, powerful, inspiring and uplifting stories
too. |
| How does this person inspire you? | Grace Lin inspires me to go out into the world, and
find something that is wrong and then work hard to change that thing because
that is what she did. She thought that there were too few books with asian
people as the main character available in America when she was young, so she
works to fix this problem by writing quality books with asian characters. She
has also introduced Chinese folklore to the American public through some of
her stories. |
| Why did you choose this person? What about
their story speaks to you? | I chose Grace Lin because I like how she took what
she didn’t like about her childhood, and changed it so that other people like
her can have a better childhood. As a child when Grace Lin went to school,
all the books that the teacher read where about a different culture than
hers. And when Grace Lin grew up, she changed the thing that she wanted when
she was young, a book that reflected who she was. Grace Lin’s story speaks to
me in the way that she took a wrong, and made it right, and when she made that
wrong right, she change many asian children’s lives. |
| Submitted by | Kate Tregay |
| Age | 10 |
