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ASIAN AMERICAN AND LATINA/O
COLLEGE STUDENTS' LIFE STORIES
Balancing Two Worlds: Asian American College Students Tell Their Life Stories. Edited by Andrew Garrod and Robert Kilkenny. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiii + 270 pp. Photos and notes. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
Mi Voz, Mi Vida: Latino College Students Tell Their Life Stories. Edited by Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny, and Christina Gómez. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiii + 262 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
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Despite the predominance of a black-white racial framework in the United States, demographic trends point to the reality that Asian Americans and Latinos are two of the fastest growing populations in the country. According to the 2000 census, Asians and Pacific Islanders were 4.2 percent and Latinos were 12.5 percent of the U.S. population.1 In addition, Asian Americans and Latinos are highly visible in institutions of higher education; in 2000, Asian Americans made up 5.9 percent and Hispanics 8.9 percent of students enrolled in all institutions of higher education.2 Regardless of this growing presence, stereotypes abound about these two groups, with media images portraying Asian Americans as model minority superachievers and Latinos as undesirable immigrants. These two edited collections provide important contributions to the literature of ethnic studies and education by centering these students' voices to challenge stereotypes and push beyond a black-white racial binary. |
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For both collections, students enrolled in Andrew Garrod's education course at Dartmouth College were provided with guiding questions related to their relationships, awareness of racial and ethnic identity, parental expectations, academic success, and political activism. The Latino students were also enrolled in a sociology course taught by Christina Gómez. Students were initially free to develop a narrative that evolved through individual meetings with Garrod and later editing by Robert Kilkenny. What emerges are two collections of essays detailing the complex struggles that these students undergo as they seek to make meaning of their lives. |
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In Balancing Two Worlds, fourteen Asian American students—eight men and six women representing Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Burmese, Pakistani, Indian, and multiracial backgrounds—share their struggles to understand their complex identities amidst external pressures such as stereotypes of being model minorities and foreigners, cultural conflicts with immigrant parents, religious influences, and traditional expectations along lines of gender and sexuality. Focused primarily on the stories of 1.5- and second-generation Asian Americans (who come to the United States at a young age or are born in the U.S. to immigrant parents), cultural conflicts take center stage. Students detail their struggles with their parents, longings for more affectionate relationships and deeper understandings that are obstructed by cultural chasms. Particularly as the students enter adolescence and seek acceptance from their mainly white peers, these conflicts intensify. The authors also critique their parents' traditional gendered expectations and messages about the proper role of an Asian American woman in marriage and regarding familial obligations. Each student negotiates this struggle differently: there is some level of criticism based in their western Americanized values combined with great sensitivity to their parents' perspective. |
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