Over the last several months, we have been horrified to watch the uptick in hate crimes, harassment, and violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. The NYPD reported that in 2020, hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian sentiment jumped 1,900%, and the reporting database Stop AAPI Hate received over 2,800 reports of anti-Asian discrimination between March and December 2020. While politicians’ racist rhetoric has fanned the flames of hate, we know that this is not an isolated moment, but rather a continuation of a long history of discrimination against Asian Americans.
Lee & Low’s very first book, Baseball Saved Us, takes place in a Japanese concentration camp. Then, as now, Asian Americans were scapegoated and demonized, painted as foreigners while their contributions to America were erased. Many decades later, the resurgence of those same impulses is heartbreaking and unacceptable.
Lee & Low Books is proud to be an Asian American-owned company. We are in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community—our friends, our neighbors, our authors and illustrators, our publishing peers—and assert our commitment to using our publishing platform to amplify voices from within the AAPI community. We commit to publishing books that illuminate America’s history of Asian American discrimination, alongside books that celebrate AAPI contributions. And we recommit to an intersectional approach to fighting racism that leaves no one behind.
Places to donate:
Resources to learn more:
- Asian Author Alliance
- Angry Asian Man
- Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
- Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
Recommended children’s books:
