A Cultural Study of Chinese American Women’s Self-Identification and Education

Abstract

This qualitative research aims to investigate the process of how Chinese American women develop their identities while growing up in the United States as daughters of Chinese immigrants. Specifically, the author explores the following questions: How do Chinese American women come to identify themselves as Chinese American, and act this identity in their everyday lives? How does the process of self-identification interact with their interpretations of how they are perceived and recognized? How do they incorporate educational messages from their family and schooling into their own understandings of the social world they live in? How have their understandings of their identity changed along the path with their encountering different social contexts and institutions? Through collecting personal accounts by interviews, the researcher intends to unravel the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and ethnicity, and illustrate how that would affect these Chinese American women’s educational experience and life outcomes accordingly.

Keywords

Chinese American / immigrant / minority / race/ethnicity / identity