Thinking About Race While Sitting in the "Asian Area" of the Exhibit Hall

I'm not usually very sensitive about being in the minority, but one thing I noticed immediately when my mom and I set up for the Asilomar Regional Reading Conference last Saturday was that our assigned table was next to a company selling a book called Raggedy Chan. It was a raised-eyebrow moment (turns out this positioning was pure coincidence), but then I got to work.

Raggedy Chan was written by a young biracial woman who was manning her table with her mother, also a Chinese woman around my mom's age. We chatted; they were both very friendly. This was their first conference.

Throughout the day, however, I couldn't help but notice that we were pretty much the only Asian people at the conference. And worse, attendees would walk up and assume that our two tables were part of the same company. One woman stood at the Raggedy Chan table and went on for some time about all the different Cinderella books she had bought in the past, while the other two Asian women were too polite to interrupt. Finally, she asked a question about the Cinderella books and they told her she was at the wrong table. Another woman listened to their spiel first, and then walked right by our table, thinking we were together. I asked her if she was familiar with Shen's Books, and she pointed at the other ladies and replied, "Oh, yes, they just told me all about it."

Is this human nature, or is this willful ignorance? Did our exhibits look like they were together, or did people see a blanket "Asian Area" of the exhibit hall and combine it in their minds? I will never know, but it isn't often that I have the occasion to wonder.