Claiming Chinese Identity

by Elionne L. W. Belden

Overview

This study of first generation Chinese youth and their parents who have immigrated to Houston reveals the ways in which this group resists assimilation into the dominant Western milieu and instead accommodates itself as a paracommunity with the culture of its host city. Chinese parents counter Western influence on their children by enrolling them in Chinese language schools, having them participate in Chinese community events, and encouraging them to develop a network of Chinese friends.
The study presents a detailed ethnography of a Chinese language school. It traces the negotiations between traditional Chinese beliefs-in particular, unquestioned submission to authority, kinship systems, and the denial of the singular self-and the developed sense of self in Western individualism. This study of identity reformation clearly indicates that there is space within the dialectics of immigration and the related cultural processes that enables the immigrant community to resist the image of all diasporic people as liminars and hybrids. The Chinese in this study do not sacrifice their past and their values in order to reformulate themselves for the present. Rather, they are determined to create a self-referential identity within a living and growing Chinese culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815329916
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/01/1997
Series:	Studies in Asian Americans
Pages:	194
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface — Acknowledgments — List of Abbreviations — Note on Transliteration — Same and — Introduction — Evolution of Chinese — What is Valued? — Historical Setting: Beginnings of the Chinese Diaspora — Why a Chinese School? And Why Evergreen? — Hermeneutics — The Other: Informant or Anthropologist? — Philosophical Thought and Religion — The Ghost of China Past — A Conscious Choice of — Identity Claimed—Not Merely Inherited — Do We Care What People Think of Us? — The Evergreen Youth Club — Parents Trying to Raise Chinese Kids in the West — Conclusion — Are You a Different Chinese in Houston? — Afterword — Bibliography — Index.

Editorial Reviews

A study of first generation Chinese youth and their parents in the Houston, Texas area, revealing the ways in which this group resist assimilation. Presents a detailed ethnography of a Chinese language school, tracing negotiations between traditional Chinese beliefs, such as submission to authority and the importance of family, and the developed sense of self in Western individualism. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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