In these times, art and community will be all the more important, all the more necessary and all the more powerful.
It’s not every day that you are contacted by an author whose work you admire, but that is exactly what happened to me.
One day, I logged into LinkedIn and saw a request to connect with Mr. Nagara.
I was so surprised that I showed my wife right away.
If you are aware of Mr. Nagara’s work, you surely know why.
A is for Activist and Counting on Community are books that not only give you the opportunity to teach your children the alphabet and counting but, more importantly, they are books that teach your young children about resistance and the role that individuals and communities play in it. For parents like myself, finding powerful and accessible ways to engage my children early on with the struggle for equity and justice is not always easy, but it is invaluable.
These books serve as primers for the kind of worldview and understanding of history that I want my children to have.
For all of those reasons, I was honored when Mr. Nagara asked me to review his latest book My Night in the Planetarium.
My Night in the Planetarium is a compelling and visually stunning book in the same vein as Mr. Nagara’s previous standout books. Every page grabs you and holds you within the world that Mr. Nagara has created.
But this world is not one of fiction but a true story, the author’s own story, and a story of resistance. It is a history lesson about the colonialism that once gripped Indonesia, about the resistance that led to liberation, and about the dictator that later took hold. Most importantly, it is a story about how the tools of resistance can take many forms. How art can be used to heal, to organize, and to liberate.
It’s a story of how even young children, if given the opportunity, can play a vital role in resistance movements, and how ultimately the power of the people always overcomes.
As with Mr. Nagara’s other works, it is the perfect companion to the lessons my wife and I hope to instill in our children.
It is a story of a heroism that is often overlooked. The heroism of ordinary people.
As my children grow older and enter school, we will surely have to supplement the history they learn in their classrooms with tales of the history of struggle and sacrifice that have slowly pushed this country and others forward.
Although My Night in the Planetarium takes place in Indonesia in the past, it couldn’t be more timely today in the U.S. as we wait in terror, breath held, for our reality star President-Elect to take office. Now as much as ever, we need all of the tools of struggle, and I am glad that my children will have Mr. Nagara’s stories to guide them.
What books are you using to prepare your children?