For this critical ethnographic study of Hmong youth in the American educational system, author Stacey Lee (educational policy studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison) worked with a team of Southeast Asian American graduate students as they conducted in-depth interviews with Hmong students and their families at a Wisconsin high school. They argue that Hmong American youth are marginalized and rendered invisible by the black/white paradigm of race and by the model minority stereotype of Asians, as well as overt anti-Asian racism. They describe educational polices related to English language learners and show how these policies specifically affect Hmong American students. On a hopeful note, the book demonstrates how youth and families challenge invisibility through culturally sustaining pedagogy and community-based educational spaces. Annotation ©2022 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Resisting Asian American Invisibility highlights one groups struggle for educational justice. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in formal and informal educational spaces, this book argues that Hmong American youth are rendered invisible by dominant racial discourses and current educational policies and practices. The book illustrates the way that Hmong American students are erased by the Black and White racial paradigm and the Asian American pan-ethnic category that perpetuates the model minority stereotype. Furthermore, Lee and a team of Southeast Asian American graduate student researchers explore how current educational policies around English learners marginalize Hmong youth. Far from being passive or silent victims, Hmong American communities actively resist their invisibility through various forms of educational advocacy and community-based education. In the tradition of critical ethnography, the author and her research team also look at what these individual and local stories expose about larger social forces, norms, and institutions.
Book Features:
- Focuses on a Southeast Asian American group that has gotten little attention in education literature.
- Highlights the unique histories and educational experiences, concerns, and challenges facing Hmong American students in a Midwest city.
- Examines both school and community-based educational spaces.
- Draws on research conducted as a follow-up study to the authors book, Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, and Immigrant Youth.
