For Fauja Singh, every step forward is a victory.

My brothers and I grew up in South Texas, and any time we went to a bookstore or library, we would scour the shelves for a book with Sikh characters. I can’t tell you how badly we wanted our friends to see positive stories about the people who looked like us. Being rendered invisible made us feel hurt and disappointed.

Thirty years later, when my oldest daughter was born, I started looking at children’s books again and realized that little had changed. Three decades had passed, and I still couldn’t find a single children’s book with people who looked like me. It was then that I decided to take it upon myself. I didn’t want my kids to feel that same pain that we did.

I decided to share the story of a man who changed my life, Fauja Singh. The day that he became the first 100-year-old to complete a 26.2-mile marathon is the same day I signed up to run my first marathon. And, like Fauja, I haven’t stopped running since.

Fauja Singh’s story is about running and aspiring and achieving – and it’s also more than that. It’s exciting to finally have a Sikh protagonist in a mainstream children’s book – but there’s more to it than that, too.

‪Fauja Singh’s life is an inspiring story of perseverance that challenges our assumptions (e.g., racism, ageism, disability), builds inclusion, and helps us reimagine what our heroes can look like. As a racial justice activist who has worked on the frontlines of hate violence for more than a decade, and as an educator who cares deeply about our children’s future, I believe that if our children can learn to see the humanity in those who seem most different from us, then we can learn to see the humanity in everyone we encounter.