- A girl coming to the “New World” dealing with America’s early days as colonies, perhaps settling in the Appalachian mountains and exploring the origins of Mountain culture. For real, “Mountain Folk”, in spite of dire poverty and environmental hardship, have amazingly rich culture, especially with music. It’d be really awesome to show how music traditions are passed from generation to generation and form cultural identity.
- A Chinese immigrant girl growing up during the settling of the West. Chinese immigrants played a hugely important role in the development of the west, but they are often under-represented or just forgotten.
- A Native American girl struggling to maintain her cultural identity while attending an Indian school. Granted, it’s a very dark subject matter, but it’s a part of American history that often gets ignored and needs to be explored. I think that you can show the resilience of Native American culture and how it survived in the face of forced assimilation.
- A Black girl living in Alabama during the 1960s, dealing with the Civil Rights Movement. I mean for real, civil rights, Motown music, great 60s fashion, why is this not a doll already? Seriously I thought that would make a great doll when I was eight.
- A Latina coming of age in a major city during the 80s. She should be a girl facing “urban” problems, as well as dealing with the issues of immigration/integration explored by previous dolls but made worse by racism. If you really really want to go radical, she can also deal with the beginnings of the gay rights movement and the emergence of LGBT culture by having a queer older sibling. It’s actually really sad that would be a dangerous, controversial move on behalf of the company, but hey, it needs to be done.
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After much thought, some historical American Girl dolls I'd love to see:
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