These students helped overturn a book ban. Now they’re pushing for a more inclusive education.

Edha Gupta can count on her fingers the number of times she’s learned about Asian Americans in history class — lessons so meager she refers to them as “slivers.”

“It was mostly to do with the California gold rush,” recalls Gupta, a senior at Central York High School in Pennsylvania. She didn’t learn about how India’s history intersected with the United States’ until AP World History, and even then, that was about the spice trade, she says.

When it came to Indian Americans like her, Gupta says, there was “really nothing.”

That lack of representation had a profound impact on Gupta, who said she started rejecting parts of her culture and her identity: “It’s really heartbreaking.”

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