A Beautiful Revolution - Eyes that Kiss in the Corners

“When I was growing up, I didn’t have any books with characters that looked like me. So I used to wish that I looked different. I would look in the mirror and lift up my eyelid like this. Because all the people I saw in books and movies had really big eyes and I didn’t. That’s why I wrote this book, because I do not think any kids should grow up wishing that they looked different. I hope that you all look in the mirror and know how beautiful you are and how powerful you are.”

-Joanna Ho, during the Youtube Original to various children

There came a cry within my heart. It wasn’t by far the first time this happened, but I always hoped it would be the last.

This particular time was during a breather moment at one of my schools. We were telling jokes of puns and knocks, knocks. Then a student took his eyes by his fingertips, pointing one up and one down, “My mother was Chinese, my father was Japanese. So which way do my eyes go?”He then slanted his eyes zigzag.

The children all giggled at the boy, but upon turning to me at the front of the class, they went ghost silent.

They saw my own eyes wide.

No one spoke until I broke the silence with the stoniest voice I ever felt inside me, “None…of you…will…ever…do…that…again.”

A few looked down. A couple muttered, “Yes, Ma’am.” Finally the boy released his eyes, “It was just a joke!”

“It…was…a…bad…one. A really bad one.”

I turned around, breathing in. Hundreds of memories came back. Memories of people asking rude questions, memories of people spray painting outside our house, memories of people breaking hearts by bullying my siblings for their ethnicity.

“Ms. Grippo…?” I heard a child ask.

I returned to gaze at all them. I didn’t focus on any one child, but all of them. They all needed my attention for this.

“How would any of you like if someone did something like that to you?”

“About what??” He asked me and perhaps himself. He was getting upset.

I breathed, “I’m not mad at you, at any of you. I just know you’re better than prejudice. That you can see clearer than that. Now think. What if someone made a cruel joke about the way you look or a custom you have or anything about being who you are. About your ethnicity….”

The boy did know for his own identity was no stranger to prejudice. He nodded, but chimed in one more time, “But we don’t know anyone like that…I mean, no one is Asian in this classroom.”

I breathed again, “That sounds awfully familiar in the most inhumane parts of history. I don’t know someone like that…why should I care? Again, what if someone said this to you? If you start those stupid attitudes now, their danger is almost impossible to get rid of later…”

He nodded, “I understand.”

I sighed, “It’s important that do, but let me share something with you…” They breathed a sigh too, and got eager for a story. “I have a beautiful family. And 3 of my family members - my brothers and sister - are from South Korea. We are the same family, same heart. But my eyes…well, their eyes are not like mine at all and mine are not like theirs…you see…their eyes are……..”

….And that brings me today gorgeously enveloping book - Eyes that Kiss in the Corners written by Joanna Ho and Illustrated by Dung Ho.

Joanna Ho is an American writer and the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan and China. She is also an educator with a passion for anti-bias, anti-racism and equity work. This book was meant to be an act of representation for children who need to see themselves in storybooks.

Dung (pronounced Dzung) Ho lives and is from Vietnam. She finds inspiration in nature of plants and loves to draw interesting characters. The gentle mixture of bright, kind people as well dreamlike details make this book a celebration.

You see, it’s not exactly a story, but lyrical pondering to self and familial love. The narrator, a young girl, begins to realize she doesn’t have eyes like all her friends. Upon this epiphany, with the help of her mother, her Amah (grandmother) and little sister, she comes to understand something beyond her family’s physical beauty and deep into cultural familial beauty.

She looks into all her family’s eyes…

Her mother represents miraculous safety as she laughs with her on the floor and as she reads her bedtime stories: “My Mama is my sun and sky.”

Her Amah is seeing impaired, but the author makes clear there is more than one way of seeing. She knows her granddaughter by heart and can even read her mind. She gives her stories of her of her past and nature: “I see Guanyin with the Monkey King sitting on a lotus, serene, baubles of lychee on trees, and mountains that reach for the sea.”

Her baby sister is in love with life and adores the narrator, ready to play, ready to light her up, “I hope she looks at me like that forever. Because when she looks at me in that Mei-Mei way, I feel like I can fly.”

And then the author comes back to herself, combining the love she feels for family and ethnicity, “My eyes crinkle into crescent moons and sparkle like the stars. Gold fleck dance and twirl while stories whirl in their oolong pools, carrying tales of the past and hope for the future.”

I actually had seen the cover of this book throughout the various visits to libraries and bookstores. It always spoke to me though I did not bring it home with me until this weekend. I don’t know why, but I realized these kinds of books are, what the author calls, “a revolution”…

We didn’t have them as children, my dear siblings, so when hate speech and hate acts came at my family, there was no representation. We had to make our stories to bind us together, our own philosophies to be stronger than the world. An incredible struggle, but one no child should have to experience.

“There eyes are…” I thought hard. And then just went with my own heart, “There eyes are parts of nature. That means that because of the amazing snow and mountains in Asia, they narrowed their eyes to see into the brightest of the sun. And there are eyes are parts in stories that traveled continents to get home and to fight to be treated with equity here in America.”

I knew I went completely over their heads. So I turned to my phone and held up a picture of my siblings. I pointed to each sibling.

“They all see the world differently, they all our powerful in their own story, and I learn from them. This one is the one who taught to be brave when others are not. This one is the one who taught me how to swim and teach. This is the one who taught how to tell stories and build better lives. And yes, our eyes are not the same as our hearts, but I don’t want to forget them, because their eyes are…”

And the boy chimed in, “beautiful."

So yesterday…I picked up a copy of Eyes that Kiss in the Corners, and now I will have the revolution of representation to share should this ever happen again.

But hopefully, because books like those of Joanna Ho and Dung Ho exist, more will follow. And more will become beautiful to us not only when feel things through the same heart, but we see things through another’s eyes.