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White Americans tend to raise children in nuclear families—just parents and kids—but in many cultures and many immigrant groups, extended families are deeply involved. Only One Year, one of our new Spring books, is about a Chinese American family sending their two-year-old boy to live for a year in China, with his grandparents and surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins. In a new BookTalk, author Andrea Cheng talks about the families who inspired her to write this book, as well as cultural differences, siblings, and her own family.

Check out the whole interview and tell us what you think. Have you lived apart from your parents or children? Is this something you would consider? How does your family deal with distance?

A CNN report looks at the success of Asian American students in high school:

There are a few good things it brings up, in addition to looking at nurture (culture, parental influence) instead of just nature (genetics, biology), like the fact that test-taking and intelligence aren’t perfectly correlated. Perhaps most importantly, it points out the vast diversity with the group we call “Asian American”; Asia is huge, and Asian Americans come from a variety of cultures with their own expectations, priorities, and assumptions. It’s a helpful reminder that labels tell part of the story but never the whole story.

I know, I know, salad isn’t a food we usually associate with Thanksgiving. (Stuffing is not salad. Nor is green bean casserole.) But in my reading this week, I came across a quote disagreeing with the concept of America as a melting pot. Instead, “Everyone keeps their different shapes and forms but still contributes something to the salad.” I like that; it’s both more accurate and a better ideal.

I’m still not going to eat salad on Thanksgiving, but we can give thanks for the great Salad Bowl of America, imperfect though it is.

And whence comes that great quote, you ask? From this great City Room post on a unique new college education program in a Connecticut prison. Selected for their essays and academic potential, these incarcerated students take classes from Wesleyan University professors, using the same syllabi and the same standards of grading as are used on Wesleyan’s campus. The classes are the same, but the students bring a much different perspective: a view from inside a justice system with, among other things, much higher rates of incarceration for Blacks and Latinos than for whites.

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog is coming out soon, featuring their first African American princess, a waitress in 1920s New Orleans, and it’s really great that we’ve come that far . . . but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be very careful looks taken at the movie. Here’s a post looking at the skin and hair colors seen in the trailer, and the biracial American experience.

Also dealing with the biracial experience is Lou Jing, a Chinese singer—the daughter of a Chinese woman and an African American man—who faced criticism for her skin color after appearing on a an “American Idol”-style show. Racialicious shares some pretty horrible expressions of racism that have been lobbed at Lou Jing in online forums.

Meanwhile, today is Unviersal Children’s Day and the twentieth anniversary of the Convention for the Rights of the Child, but the condition of many children is still bleak, particularly in developing nations and among ethnic minorities, such as the Roma in Europe.

A friend of mine was on the subway near three middle school-aged kids—an Asian boy, a Latina, and a Middle Eastern girl wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by many Muslim women.

The boy turned to the Middle Eastern girl and asked, “Why do you wear that thing on your head?”

The Latina interrupted. “It’s, like, her culture, don’t you know that?”

They proceeded to have a perfectly friendly discussion of the practicalities of wearing a hijab—for instance, that she can take it off at home, and therefore is able to brush her hair.

How about that—kids can talk openly about culture. They can ask questions.

Sometimes progress marches, and sometimes it takes the subway.