In the late 19th century, Asians were seen as foreigners who were called the "yellow peril" by Americans because they were seen "as perpetual foreigners who threatened the U.S. economy, society, and nation" (Tzu-Chun Wu, 2017, p. 1). Eventually, the model minority myth was coined and referenced as "Asians comprise the…

According to the U.S. Refugee Processing Center (RPC), over three million refugees have resettled in the United States since 1975 (U.S. Dept. of State, 2018). The purpose of this research was to obtain a deeper understanding of what refugees learn through their cultural experiences as they adjust to their new surroundings. Viewed through the…

As anti-Black ideologies continue to prevail in Asian American communities, this autoethnography explores how two Southeast Asian American (SEAA) scholar-activists and community organizers contended with anti-Blackness, racism, and social justice research in their cross-racial and cross-ethnic solidarity community-organizing and educational…

In conducting qualitative research, scholars often grapple with positionality. Researcher positionality refers to how various social identities (i.e. gender, race, class, ethnicity, ability, geographical location) influence research methods. It examines the impact of researchers' social identities on their understanding of the research design,…

Although scholars have studied migrant children who translate for their families, less is known about how these experiences matter for life-long literacy experiences. This article argues that child language brokers develop advanced skills in literacy and rhetoric from which they draw throughout their lives, in multiple contexts.

Although Iowa is commonly associated with cornfields and White farmers, Southeast Asian refugees have a remarkable history in this region that is largely unacknowledged. The recognition of this history, through inclusion in the school curriculum and the popular imagination, could be a powerful way to disrupt normative Whiteness and xenophobia in…

Activist research that conducts social investigation and analysis can be the key first step in organising at the grassroots and movement building. This paper critically analyses two research reports titled 'The Foreign Exchange of Hate' (Sabrang/Coalition against Genocide 2002) and 'In Bad Faith' (Awaaz South Asia Watch 2004) produced by…

Asian Americans are projected to be the fasting-growing race in the next three decades. Yet the underrepresentation of Asian American leaders with universal understanding of minorities and underserved populations in P-12 education make up approximately 1% of the population that is disproportionate to the 7% of Asian American students in public…

This article provides an analysis of Asian American gang violence within the context of racialization and the legacy of imperialism. The analysis is grounded in a specific study of the Van Nuys (CA) Asian Boys gang and the particularities of Asian American gang violence in Southern California during the 1990s. Drawing from historical writings on…

The Hmong people are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia. Hmong Americans came to this country as refugees from Laos. Serving as the fabric of the Hmong community, the "1.5 generation" is the unique generation of those born in Laos or Thai refugee camps and transported to America in their childhood. They represent the link between their…

Instead of suppressing the anger and pain associated with war and genocide, Asian American refugees in higher education can be supported to engage their families' traumas to help them better navigate college life.

This article introduces a mobile Global Positioning System app created by refugee girls in the United States as a social justice- and community-oriented media art project that provides visual and oral countermapping stories that reflect an anticolonial orientation in their presentation of the city of Buffalo, New York. Through collaborative work…

During the 1980s, an influx of Cambodian Americans resettled in the United States due to the Cambodian genocide. Those Cambodian refugees who came to the United States as either infants, children or adolescents due to warfare, are members of the 1.5 generation. This thesis examines the educational trajectory of 1.5 generation Cambodian Americans…

In elementary classrooms, teaching immigration often begins and ends at Ellis Island--without discussions of racist migration policies or engagement with current issues. Although contemporary immigration is rarely discussed with elementary students, the number of young people from immigrant and/or refugee backgrounds in the U.S. continues to rise.…

Hmong Americans are originally a preliterate, seminomadic, and agrarian ethnic hill tribe from Southeast Asia and have now been in the United States for the last four decades. From the 1960s to the mid 1970s, the Hmong joined forces with the U.S. during the Secret War in Laos. After the U.S. pulled out of Laos in 1975, the new Laotian regime began…