Description
Book SynopsisAn engaging ethnography of Korean American immigrant families navigating the United States Both scholarship and popular culture on Asian American immigrant families have long focused on intergenerational cultural conflict and stereotypes about tiger mothers and model minority students. This book turns the tables on the conventional imagination of the Asian American immigrant family, arguing that, in fact, families are often on the same page about the challenges and difficulties navigating the U.S.'s racialized landscape. The book draws on a survey with over 200 Korean American teens and over one hundred parents to provide context, then focusing on the stories of five families with young adults in order to go in-depth, and shed light on today's dynamics in these families. The book argues that Korean American immigrant parents and their children today are thinking in shifting ways about how each member of the family can best succeed in the U.S. Rather than being marked by a generational
Trade ReviewConventional or stereotypical discourse surrounding Asian American families, Korean Americans in particular, in both popular and scholarly literature indicates that immigrant parents, even at the sacrifice of their own future, pressure their children to be successful academically or professionally while ignoring other aspects of their children’s growth … Okazaki and Abelmann's research reveals a very different picture from that simplified portrait of Korean Americans. -- Choice
In this must-read book, Okazaki and Abelman rigorously capture portraits of how Korean American immigrant parents and their childrenmake family work. These vivid portraits provide stereotype-breaking depictions based on lived reality riddled with nativism and racism andnotsimplistic accounts of 'Tiger Moms,' high expectations, and Asian immigrant success. This riveting book powerfully turns the Model Minority Stereotype on its head! -- Gilberto Q. Conchas,UC Irvine
