Using Historical Fiction to Connect Past and Present
Shanna Johnson, a middle-school language arts teacher in Grand Rapids, Michigan, had just begun teaching the historical-fiction novel Dragonwings when it took on added relevance during the 2016 presidential election.
The book follows a young Chinese boy at the turn of the 20th century as he migrates to the United States to live with his father. The context of the story and its setting in San Francisco is the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major piece of U.S. legislation that restricted immigration and which, in targeting an ethnic group, set the precedent for subsequent restrictive immigration laws. As Johnson pointed out, the book touches on themes of “racism, discrimination, and the anti-immigration attitude of the nation” that uncannily reflect the hostility and divisiveness of the recent election.
These same historical themes and trends came to the forefront over the course of President Donald Trump’s campaign and transition. His and referenced Japanese American internment as a viable precedent for a possible Muslim registry. Trump loyalists also cheered on his intention to a wall along the border with Mexico andmillions of undocumented immigrants—the latter of which he justified by President Eisenhower’s controversial deportation program, “Operation Wetback.” In his first week in office, Trump a now-blocked executive order that halted the admission of all refugees for 120 days, and stopped entry for nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days. The action, whose stay by a U.S. district judge was upheld earlier this month by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, was issued on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, drawing parallels to the time the U.S. Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.
