Zhiqiang Fang ventured into the library during an open house at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School, where his younger son is a student. After weaving through several shelves, he found what he was looking for: a few of the many books he helped donate to the school, marked by bookplate stickers on the inside cover he had a hand in designing.
Fang, president of the Chinese American Association of Cambridge, grabbed his son to show him the bookplates displaying the years they were added to the collection.
“It crossed a few couple of years, one book from one year and another book from another year. Exciting for me at that time,” Fang said. “I kind of felt proud.”
Fang and the CAAC are responsible for adding more than 2,000 books centered on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) to the libraries of the 17 public schools in Cambridge through their annual AAPI book drive, now in its fifth year.
The CAAC formed following the March 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, where six of the eight victims were of Asian descent. The book drive has been a staple of the association from the start; when it began, it drew inspiration from other groups, including Belmont’s Chinese American Association and One Book One World in Chicago. Neither of those groups has held one since 2022; the Cambridge association is in its fifth.
Fundraising cycles have varied. Sponsors and individual donors raised over $12,000 for the inaugural book drive in 2021-22, distributing nearly 1,000 books to 33 schools in Cambridge and Somerville. Final totals have been smaller in following cycles, ranging between roughly $5,000 and $8,000. More money raised means more books for the libraries.
Since its current fundraising cycle started in May, the CAAC has amassed only $4,000, half its fundraising goal, and the drive ends in a few weeks.
“I want more folks [to] get involved,” Fang said. “But I don’t really know how.”
When the book drive starts, librarians across the district request books they want to add to their shelves, which can depend on each school’s student demographics, said Sarah Novogrodsky, CPS director of library media services. Those books are then compiled into a wishlist she sends back to the CAAC. Once fundraising is done in February, the money is distributed to the schools to buy the books they selected, in time for library displays at the start of May to commemorate AAPI Heritage Month. Last year, the funds were also used to invite Asian American author Kelly Yang to visit the school libraries.
This cycle’s list includes 39 titles with dozens of AAPI backgrounds represented and encompasses picture books, graphic novels, prose novels and biographies.
A few of the authors on the wishlist are local to Massachusetts, including writer Rajani LaRocca, whose books center on Desi characters. She said she did not see many children’s books focused on Indian American characters, so she started writing them herself and published her first in 2019. LaRocca called her book on the list, “Some of Us,” a celebration of immigrants and their contributions.
“This past year or so, it’s just been kind of hard to deal with everything that’s been going on in the news,” said LaRocca, who immigrated from India with her family and became a naturalized citizen at 15 years old. “But I’m just glad that this book exists, and I’m so honored and glad that it will get into the hands of kids.”
The MLK School’s largest student demographics are Asian and multi-race, and it hosts a Chinese immersion program. Its library might have more books with AAPI characters, subjects or authors to better reflect the school population. Where other schools with a smaller Asian population may not have as many of those books, the CAAC’s book drive helps fill those gaps in those collections.
“All these kids are coming from lots and lots of different lived realities,” Novogrodsky said. “It’s really powerful … to be able to just go to the shelves and put that book in the kid’s hand.”
The book drive has several individual donors, but fundraising efforts are typically led by sponsors. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a frequent large donor alongside local business owners, including Mike Park, the broker at Splice Realty in Cambridge. Park has sponsored nearly every book drive.
“It’s good for everyone to have their culture and heritage chronicled or written down and visible,” Park said.
The book drive’s impact has trickled down to parents like Cheryl Sadeli Franco. Her children are half-Indonesian Chinese and attend the MLK school, and she has made an effort in her own book collection at home to emphasize that side of their heritage.
“We’re trying to raise them just to be appreciative of each culture. They’re still young at this point,” Franco said. “We’re just very grateful that the people are really nice and inclusive and welcoming, and what we teach them at home is not so much different from what they get in school … They don’t know it yet, but I know it.”
The past four book drives have yielded over 2,240 books combined. Fang takes pride in the books the CAAC has put in Cambridge’s school libraries, but the work he has done does not feel significant, he said. Looking at his son’s school library and the thousands of books it holds, only a fraction came from the book drive.
“We spend a lot of effort to fundraise, to run the book drive,” Fang said. “In terms of the library itself, it’s still a small effort, a very small portion of the book collection.”
This story is part of a partnership between Cambridge Day and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
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