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Representation of minorities in the media is powerful in shaping the public’s perceptions of a community or group. Some well-known Asian stereotypes are that they are good at math, tiger moms, and foreigners. In the literature review, I found that in addition to those common stereotypes, Asians were commonly portrayed as model minority myth, kung fu master, dragon lady/lotus blossom, and family-oriented. Using a quantitative content analysis approach, I examined how Asian Americans are portrayed in American sitcoms and searched for positive and negative representations. I analyzed 24 episodes of Fresh Off The Boat, which aired from 2015 to 2020 about an Asian American family living in Florida in the 1990s. Stereotypes were present throughout the show, and I found those stereotypes produced positive, negative, and neutral representations of Asian Americans. This research was conducted in COMM 460 under the guidance of Dr. Adria Goldman.

Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States and report experiencing high rates of discrimination. However, Asian Americans are inaccurately often considered to be “model minorities”. The combination of the model minority experience and associated cultural values of avoiding discord may be associated with variations in the ethnic-racial socialization of parents with their children. We recruited a sample of Asian American parents of children between the ages of 8 and 17 (N = 90) who completed questionnaires online. Results indicated that parental experience of racial microaggressions were positively associated with Preparation for Bias and Promotion of Mistrust of their child. Parental internalized model minority beliefs and internalizing symptoms were positively associated with child’s Preparation for Bias and Cultural Socialization. Findings from this study suggest that the messages communicated to Asian American children through socialization play a role in the child’s experiences of internalizing symptoms.

This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of counterspeech strategies employed on Twitter in response to anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research delves into the communicative strategies, emotional tones, and geospatial distribution of counterspeech, specifically focusing on its effectiveness in the United States. A supervised machine learning was employed to classify counterspeech tweets and counterspeech strategies based on empirical typology. By analyzing 106,388 tweets associated with the hashtag #StopAsianHate collected from November 2021 to May 2022, this research provides insights into the varied effectiveness of counterspeech strategies. The analysis revealed that though counterspeakers were using more negative tones in counterspeech tweets, the tweets with visual media and positive emotional tone received more engagement on Twitter through retweets and favorites compared to those with a negative or neutral tone. This study also breaks new ground by recognizing that higher level of racial diversity does not facilitate higher level of counterspeech against hate speech and hate crime. Additionally, this study highlights the varying degrees of participation in counterspeech across different ethnic groups within Asian American community and underscores the importance of tailored strategies in addressing hate speech. Recognizing this distinction proved essential in crafting evidence-based guidance for community and individual interventions while fostering support from allies of diverse racial backgrounds.

While Asian American social studies scholars have explored issues related to curriculum and Asian American students’ and teachers’ needs (An, 2020, 2022; Gao, 2020; Rodriguez, 2019), none have yet examined Asian American adoptees. Asian American adoptees’ racial and ethnic identity development journeys are qualitatively different from those of their non-adopted Asian American peers (Baden et al., 2012), so culturally responsive social studies instruction might look different for them than it would for their non-adopted peers. To begin to fill the gap, this study explored the central research question, “How do Asian American adoptees perceive the relationship between their social studies experiences and their own racial and ethnic identity development?” It also explored two sub-questions: 1) “How do Asian American adoptees identify with their own ethnic groups?” and 2) “How do Asian American adoptees identify with a broader Asian American racial identity?” This study operated from three theoretical frameworks: Baden et al.’s reculturation (2012), Phinney’s three-stage ethnic identity formation (1989, 1993), and culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy (Gay, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Using an instrumental case study that also drew on phenomenology, this study utilized data from semi-structured interviews with five participants, all Asian American adoptees.Findings suggested that social studies’ role in the participants’ racial and ethnic identity development journeys was minimal. Overall, the participants experienced social studies instruction that presented a narrow picture of Asian American history and reinforced the master narrative. To be more fulfilling to their ethnic and racial identities, participants wanted more instructional time to be spent on Asian and Asian American history, lessons taught on their birth countries’ histories and cultures, and lessons that expanded outside of token, conflict-based events. Participants conceptualized connection to their ethnic identities in various ways but were less certain about connection to a broader Asian American racial identity. If social studies teachers heed participants’ suggestions, social studies courses may be able to facilitate stronger connection to participants’ racial and ethnic identities.

Music education is often synonymous with Western Music education, or more specifically, Classical music education. Music theory and analysis surrounding the styles of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven have been central to the pedagogy of a collegiate musical background, while expertise in Carnatic, Gamelan, or African drumming—to name a few—is seen as nonessential. This research project aims to uncover the reasons why (higher) music education is so narrowly focused and provides the skeletal framework for a practical method to begin constructing diverse, holistic curricula. While the overarching goal is to diversify music education in all cultures, the project focuses on the Asian American and Korean diasporas. After a literature review that outlines the need to alter the state of music academia through these diasporas, the project provides an example course design that could be annexed into most degree plans, and assume little-to-no musical knowledge outside Western practices. A survey is also provided with a sample set of participants, detailing how faculty and other educational institutions could use data from relevant demographics (such as a student pool) to develop their own curricula. The implications of this project's survey data suggest that reeducation would have to develop slowly, for the sake of both educational institutions and students alike.

The purpose of this research is to understand how violence acts as a preceding event to a change in Asian adoptees' identities. I use the word 'violence' to encompass a wide range of experiences and events including 20th-century US-Asia wars, hate crimes, mass shootings, sexual violence, bullying, microaggressions, harassment, and more. This research includes violence that is experienced on not only an interpersonal level such as direct physical and psychological violence, but also on a cultural and collective level. In trying to understand this relationship between violence and identity, I use Identity Theory to analyze the contents of eleven interviews with Asian adoptees from Korea, China and Vietnam living in the US. I found that violence influenced identity changes in four major ways: vicarious victimhood, solidarity with other minorities, racial discrimination, and exclusion by other Asians.

In this thesis, I argue the Model Minority Stereotype (MMS) of Asian Americans is a systematic hermeneutical injustice, and I justify a previously unrecognized distinction within the literature: positive and negative hermeneutical injustices. To show that the MMS is a systematic hermeneutical injustice, I argue that: (1) the MMS renders a significant area of one’s interests difficult to interpret by collective understanding (the hermeneutical disadvantage); (2) this hermeneutical disadvantage excludes Asian American’s from equal hermeneutical participation (the hermeneutical marginalization and injustice); and (3) the resultant hermeneutical injustice contributes to continuing structural prejudice against Asian Americans and is part of a larger pattern of social powerlessness (the ‘systematic’ part of a systematic hermeneutical injustice). The distinction between a positive and negative systematic hermeneutical injustice is whether the hermeneutical disadvantage occurs because of the imposition of a hermeneutical resource or the lack of a hermeneutical resource.

Community based youth programs play a significant role in promoting positive youth identity development outside of the classroom. This can be particularly important for racialized groups such as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). Based on ethnographic research conducted at Asian American LEAD, this thesis explores the effect of a five week summer program on AAPI youth identity development. Data collection methods include participant observation, a pre- and post- survey, and semi-structured interviews with staff, participants, and program alumni. The research findings highlight how ethnic and racial identity development is fostered through the creation of safe spaces, shared struggles with peers and staff, and recognition of one's AAPI identity.

This project aims to enhance our understanding of political participation within the United States by more carefully and systematically examining political participation within the Asian American community. Previously, prominent theories of political participation have been created with Anglo-Americans in mind, resulting in incomplete or unsatisfactory applications to racial and ethnic minority groups. By updating our understanding of what participation looks like and by formulating a racially aware theory, I seek to improve upon these previous explanations of the participatory habits of voters. I first expand upon the Resource model offered by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995), both by updating the conceptualization of the dependent variable, political participation, to reflect recent technological advances, and including key variables I believe that are missing from the original. My first empirical chapter compares the original Resource model to the updated model, I name the Unified Resource Model, via an Asian American survey sample. There I find strong support for my suggested changes, before speaking with members of the Asian American community via focus groups in my second empirical chapter. Finally, in my third empirical chapter, I retest the Unified Resource Model in a hybrid quantitative-qualitative online community. Throughout this study, generational status and nativity status are significant predictors of the numbers of acts one is likely to participate in politically, and while organizational involvement behaved similarly in 2016, qualitative research suggests that this may no longer be true. All three empirical chapters support the expanded conceptualization of political participation to include social media usage.

There is significant theoretical and historical support for the idea that Asian American racial stereotypes are manipulations of White supremacy that are used to enrich anti-Black ideologies. Additionally, empirical research has supported the significant and negative impact that racial discrimination and stereotyping has had on the Asian American experience. Throughout U.S. history, Asian Americans have been racially triangulated vis-à-vis Black and White people as a template for understanding societal racial hierarchies. Specifically, Asian Americans are valorized relative to Black Americans yet are ostracized from civic participation and seen as forever foreigners. According to Racial Triangulation Theory, this pits the interest of Asian Americans against those of Black Americans in a competition for the privileges and opportunities ascribed to White people as a function of White supremacy. However, little to no research has examined the internalization of racial stereotypes within the Asian American community and how this internalization influences perceptions of anti-Blackness. The present effort utilized Racial Triangulation Theory, Asian Critical Race Theory, and Social Identity Theory to examine how internalized racism (i.e., model minority myth and perpetual foreigner stereotype) influences endorsement of Symbolic Racism and support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Findings indicate overall support of the notion that the internalization of racism within Asian Americans predicts perceptions of anti-Blackness. While Social Dominance Orientation was not found to mediate this relationship; moderation analyses revealed a nuanced influence of Ethnic Identity and Other-Group Orientation on the relationship between internalization of racism and anti-Black sentiment. Future research directions and limitations are discussed.

In this dissertation, I explore chronic pain experiences among Filipino-American U.S. military veterans. Chronic pain remains the most diagnosed medical condition in the U.S., with veterans experiencing chronic pain at disproportionately higher rates (40%) compared to the civilian general population (25%). Among veterans, chronic pain is a condition overwhelmingly tied to U.S. military service. More conceptually, I explore how histories of colonization and war come to reside and persist in peoples’ bodies as felt pain. I examine these topics as they relate to Filipinos, the multiple colonialisms of the Philippines, and how the afterlife of American colonization and militarization of the Philippines informs health outcomes among Filipino-Americans today. I used ethnographic methods to carry out this anthropological research. First, I conducted semi-structured interviews with a wide range of stakeholder groups. I also volunteered and conducted in-person participant observation in community-based settings. In addition, I wrote up field notes for interviews and in-person events. Finally, I conducted historical and archival research. I make a case for how, among socially marginalized people, expressions of pain—bodily, psychic, and emotional—often point to deeper dynamics of ongoing harm, both historically and in the present. Given this, I propose an expanded framework for examining chronic pain as a bio-psycho-social-structural-historical condition, and argue for the importance of attending to the specificities of individual histories in pain care.

This dissertation analyzes three projects by artist TT Takemoto: "Looking for Jiro" (2011), "Semiotics of Sab" (2016), and "Ever Wanting (for Margaret Chung)" (2021). Each chapter parses the distinct visual vocabularies and methodologies created by Takemoto for the artworks in relation to Jiro Onuma (1904-1990), Sab Shimono (b. 1937), and Margaret Chung (1889-1959). In chapter one, I explore how "Looking for Jiro" takes up Japanese American incarceration and queer sexuality with artistic methods based in performance and film. I contend that within the slippages of queer failure, "Looking for Jiro" sutures these histories from the past to create relationality with the present and future. Chapter two examines how "Semiotics of Sab" takes up visual and aural stereotyping perpetuated by Hollywood films by drawing from the film archive of gay Asian American actor, Sab Shimono. In conversation with genre-shaping methods from structuralist and feminist experimental film, the chapter shows how "Semiotics of Sab" offers a queer and Asian American intervention to grapple with stereotyping in the US. Lastly, in the final chapter, I discuss "Ever Wanting (for Margaret Chung)" to explore the implicit policing of identity as tied to homophobia and racism in the early twentieth century. The chapter shows how the artwork’s contrasting filmic techniques create a visual vocabulary that reflect the complexities of American heroism.The analyses in this dissertation show how Takemoto’s methods have historical implications for US visual culture and art history. The past is an impetus for each project and the artworks deftly reveal the visual culture redactions and misrepresentations of queer Asian Americans and how those patterns persist in the present. Ultimately, I argue that Takemoto’s artworks critique US history, not to complete the picture, which is dynamic and incomplete, but to disrupt what exists and present space for asking questions of sedimented histories that are foundational to present US ideologies.

In the United States, Chinese American students participate in public school string orchestras at a disproportionately high rate. With considerable changes in both mass media and social media landscape throughout their upbringing, as well as the rapid rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic as they were becoming adults, the Chinese American music students in this study possessed unique sets of experiences that affect both their musical and cultural identities. The purpose of this narrative inquiry is to consider the influences of transnational contexts, the processes of Asianization, and Chinese parenting on musical identity and racial identity formation of seven Chinese American former middle school (grades 6 through grade 8) string orchestra students. My stories as an ethnically Chinese immigrant who studied and teach music in the United States are incorporated throughout, to provide perspectives and enrich my understanding of the seven participants’ narratives. I interwove the stories of seven young adult Chinese Americans and my own stories (warp threads) with the social and historical forces at play (weft threads) to create a narrative tapestry. All participants in this study reported being aware of the various Asian stereotypes since elementary school. This awareness had affected their decisions to start or stop playing their string instruments. Being in the string orchestra or playing string instruments and the self-perception of being Asian or Chinese are two factors that often influence one another. The Asianization stereotypes, transnational contexts, and Chinese parenting affected the participants’ sense of identity as Chinese Americans; in turn, the struggle to understand themselves racially affected their musical, social, and emotional lives.

This dissertation examines two important aspects of health inequalities, comprised of three empirical studies about 1) perceived racial discrimination and mental health among Asian Americans and 2) the connection between health and residential moves into different housing tenure among U.S. older adults. The first empirical chapter begins the inquiry about how Asians experience, perceive, and report racial discrimination using the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS), a widely used survey measure of discrimination. I conduct cognitive interviews with 10 Korean American young adults to examine the sources of discrepancies found in the EDS in capturing discrimination experiences among Asian Americans. In the second empirical chapter, I build on the findings from the first empirical chapter and conduct a survey experiment. I compare the levels of racial discrimination reported from two groups of participants: one group assigned to the vignettes describing discrimination that Asians experience frequently versus the other group assigned to vignettes based on the EDS. Furthermore, I explore the connection between the level of perceived racial discrimination and the participant’s level of depression. I also test whether this association varies by gender. In the last empirical chapter, I examine how health status is connected to residential moves into different housing tenure at older ages. Utilizing data from the 8 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 2001 to 2015, I conduct discrete-time event history analysis to examine whether the presence of acute/chronic health conditions and poor self-rated health are associated with residential moves into owned versus non-owned housing. This dissertation concludes by discussing the main findings and implications of the three chapters and considering directions for future research.

Neoliberalism continues to plague higher education and shape how institutions operate day to day. Often, the adoption of such logics thwart racial justice efforts. In addition, one of the many functions of neoliberalism is how the political ideology leads to the commodification of labor. As a result, racially diverse populations, including Asian Americans experience significant challenges, including being reduced and extracted for their racialized labor for capitalistic gain.There is a dearth of research regarding Asian American advocacy initiatives in higher education, and even less scholarship examined through neoliberal logics. This case study seeks to understand how neoliberalism shapes Asian American advocacy initiatives at one large, public, higher education institution located in California. Findings from this study reveal insights towards how Asian American advocacy initiatives are shaped by neoliberalism, which include neoliberal racial gaslighting, labor extraction, and continuous instability. In addition, the findings of this study identify how Asian American advocacy initiatives navigate and respond to neoliberal logics, such as assembling support for Asian Americans with university parts, building capacity, and working to center coalition.

This dissertation examines Asian American tech workers as racialized and intersectional subjects within the high-tech industry. Although STEM fields and occupations are often considered Asian-concentrated domains, Asian immigrant and Asian American workers are rarely studied as workers who are impacted by racial discrimination or have strategies to mitigate potential racism. Through interviews with 59 Asian American tech workers, this research expands on and questions our current theoretical understanding of race, gender, and organizations for Asian American workers. First, I establish the ways in which Asian American tech workers discount anti-Asian discriminations in the workplace and offer a new theoretical framework, racial strategies, to understand how they mitigate or address racism. I find that Asian American tech workers employ four racial strategies to deflect or confront racism in the workplace. Three of the strategies: racial maneuvering, essentializing, and distancing intentionally discount the role of race and racism within Asian Americans’ professional lives. A fourth racial strategy, dissenting, acknowledges racism, but those who use this strategy are often so frustrated by the white-dominated racial organizations they work for that they leave mainstream organizations altogether. Next, I ask how competing gender and racial identities among Asian American women are realized in tech culture. I find that academic institutions, recruitment processes, and professional diversity initiatives reinforce the rhetoric that gender inequality is the highest priority inequality to address and that is the most directly relevant inequality to Asian American women tech workers’ experiences. Racial inequality, on the other hand, is an inequality reserved for “other” racial minorities and does not, for the most part, affect the professional careers of Asian American tech workers. As a result, Asian American women develop a strong gender and a weak racial identity. In the last empirical chapter, I explore Asian American tech workers’ boundaries for racial group membership and its perceived benefits. I demonstrate that Asian Americans are active participants in their group-making process, that they apply strict requirements to prevent Asian immigrant workers from receiving membership, and that they police the behaviors of other Asian American tech workers in order to remain in good racial standing within high-tech organizations. These intentional choices reinforce racial stereotypes of Asian American as “honorary whites” and Model Minorities by ensuring their behaviors align with stereotypical work ethic and technical competencies. By studying and theorizing about Asian Americans as racial subjects in occupations, I demonstrate how an upwardly mobile and “successful” racial minority is nevertheless shaped by racism.

This dissertation analyzes a selection of photomontages by contemporary artists Tomie Arai (b. 1949-), Yong Soon Min (b. 1953-), and Ann Le (b. 1981-) that reimagine 20th-century U.S. wars and militarism in the Asia Pacific Arena. These artists use forms of collage to look back on the Cold War and to disrupt U.S. Cold War historical narratives of U.S. rescue and liberation of Asia. Using feminist epistemological approaches, they reveal diasporic memories of survival, resistance, and futurity. Their artworks reinterpret and reclaim public and private photographs through the artistic strategy of photomontage, which entails the juxtaposition and reconfiguration of photographic materials. I argue that Arai’s, Min’s, and Le’s artworks serve as alternative sites of remembrance that critique the Japanese American incarceration during World War II and U.S. militarism in Asia during the Cold War, Korean War, and the Vietnam War. In this project, I offer the concept of “ethical memory works” to describe how such Asian diasporic cultural productions engage in the complex politics of memory and the ethics of care - for the past, one’s community, and other communities. I suggest ethical memory works are defined by ethical remembering, speculative storytelling, and feminist acts of care.

Disordered eating in college-age women is well-documented. Less is known about minoritized populations and disordered eating for college-age women, especially Asian American women. As Asian Americans are often subjected to the “model minority” myth, less research has been dedicated to understanding disordered eating for this population. Small, everyday slights motivated by the model minority myth and other racial stereotypes are known as microaggressions. Asian American women hold an intersectional identity that places them at risk for experiencing microaggressions from their identity as both a woman and as an Asian American. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between gendered racial microaggressions, appearance investment, and disordered eating among female Asian American students in the US. The study results provide more information about critical factors that could be explored in further research, as well as highlighting how unique, intersectional experiences predict the development of disordered eating and body image concerns. Significant findings suggest that gendered racial microaggression experiences predict disordered eating for Asian American college women, as higher reports of gendered racial microaggressions predicted increased disordered eating levels when accounting for demographic variables. Additionally, higher levels of appearance investment also predicted increased disordered eating. This study provides evidence related to how unique experiences of gendered racial microaggressions relate to disordered eating and body image investment for this population.

Choosing a college major is an important decision, setting the academic trajectory for undergraduate students. Therefore, extensive researched has been conducted to understand the influential factors in their college major decision-making process. While existing research posits personal interests as the main influential factor, studies have found that parental influence and other external factors play a critical role in Asian American students’ decisions. For these students who are heavily influenced by external factors, the impact of their decision on their overall college experience is unknown. Because Korean and Chinese American college students reported experiencing lower levels of sense of belonging compared to their Asian ethnic peers (Li, 2018) despite having among the highest rate of degree attainment, this study focused on the experiences of East Asian American college students. Using a phenomenological approach, this study explored the potential contribution of college major decision on the overall college experience and sense of belonging for nine second-generation East Asian American students. To guide the study, a conceptual framework incorporating Astin’s (1991) Input-Environment-Output Model, Accapadi’s (2012) Point of Entry Model for Asian American Identity Consciousness, and Cultural Identity Theory was constructed. The findings supported existing literature that personal interest was a significant factor in participants’ college major decision, but parental influence and cultural values were found to also play an integral role in this decision and continued to impact the ways in which participants navigated their undergraduate career. While mixed findings were discovered regarding participants’ belonging in their major, participants largely experienced belonging through the social connections built on campus. Overall, the findings of the study revealed the complexities that participants had to navigate through in their college major decision and demonstrated the interconnectedness of their decision with their academic and social experience and overall sense of belonging. Furthermore, these findings indicate the need for further research on the experiences of East Asian American students and Asian American students broadly to better support this student population.

Paper House is a collection of creative nonfiction essays about coming of age as an Asian American biracial and bisexual woman in China. The narrator goes to China to teach English in rural Shanxi Province for 2 years and struggles with her own loss of Chinese culture, and the loss of her Chinese grandmother who died before she was born. Through her daily life in China and visiting places her grandmother lived, the narrator tries to understand a homeland that she’s been displaced from. Additionally, she attempts to navigate her in-between identities — biracial and bisexual within cultural contexts she is largely unfamiliar with, endeavoring to find a place where she feels like she belongs. Being perceived as an outsider, and the growing distance from her U.S.-based girlfriend amplifies loneliness. Ultimately, the narrator learns to accept care from strangers, her cat, and a constellation of women, and gains knowledge of self from family and ancestors. The prose holds tension between absence and abundance and moves patiently through scenes and images with a lyrical voice.

Asian-Americans and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islanders (NHOPIs) experience health and healthcare disparities compared to their white counterparts. In both communities, which are often jointly described as Asian-American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs), college students represent a vulnerable subpopulation in regard to mental health outcomes and healthcare. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the mental health outcomes and experiences of Asian-American and NHOPI undergraduate students. This dissertation sought to evaluate how race, gender, and the intersection of the two affect the mental health outcomes and lived experiences of Asian-American and NHOPI undergraduate students.Three separate, but interconnected, studies using both qualitative and quantitative methods were completed. First, a secondary data analysis of the Healthy Minds dataset (2018-2019) provided a characterization of depression, anxiety, and psychological well-being outcomes for Asian-American and NHOPI undergraduate students across the United States. Second, a qualitative semi-structured interview study was conducted among Asian-American undergraduate students; this allowed me to explore and analyze their lived experiences of filial piety and how it intersected with mental health, race, gender, and other macro-level factors. Finally, a cross-sectional quantitative survey of Asian-American and white undergraduate students was launched. This survey was developed using survey input from research experts in public health, survey methodology, and/or Asian-American health and input from focus groups with Asian-American undergraduates. The survey collected information on filial piety and mental health to determine how race, gender, and the intersection of the two impacted filial piety, depression, anxiety, and psychological well-being. This research had three main conclusions. First, the mental health outcomes of AAPI undergraduate students are heterogenous. Differences between Asian-American and NHOPI students were found for depression-related outcomes; additionally, differences across gender and ethnicity were documented for Asian-American college students in both qualitative and quantitative studies. Second, the lived experience of filial piety influences the mental health outcomes and experiences of Asian-American college students. Lastly, intersectionality theory and principles, such as the use of non-additive assumptions, incorporation of reflexivity, and focus on macro- and multi-level analyses, strengthened this research. The results of these studies suggest that increased attention to the heterogeneity of “AAPI” college students in mental health research would improve our understanding of their health outcomes, particularly for vulnerable subpopulations such as NHOPIs and Asian-American cisgender women. Additionally, the results from the filial piety studies have the potential to contribute to culturally humble and targeted care for Asian-Americans, or care that is cognizant, respectful, and created specifically for Asian-American populations and their cultures. As such, this research is a small, but important, contribution to understanding and mitigating mental health inequities for marginalized communities.

Inspired by internationally acclaimed pianist Yuja Wang’s controversial comedic performance in 2018 as well as activist efforts by other musicians, scholars, and arts administrators, this document will compile findings from interviews I conduct as well as existing literature on the participation of Asians and Asian Americans in the classical music industry. Points of interest include narratives that challenge or reinforce the existing balance of agency and structure described by scholars such as Mari Yoshihara, Grace Wang, and Mina Yang. According to them, Asian and Asian American classical musicians experience a distinct type of marginalization at the crossroads of high representation and a homogenized image. Despite this environment, these musicians continue to make music, at times downplaying their adversity. This document intends to explore the narratives of Asian and Asian American musicians’ tenacity. It will also expand the scant but increasing number of studies on this topic. A potential future use of this document includes efforts toward building more equitable systems and practices in classical music culture.

This study is a multiple case study of two Korean immigrant families: a multigenerational household and a nuclear household. I examined biliteracy language practices, their perceptions on gaining bi/multiliteracy, and intergenerational nurturing and support for the younger generations’ biliteracy development in their home contexts. This study was framed by sociocultural theory with a critical perspective (Street, 1993; Vygotsky, 2012), multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, 2009), the continua of biliteracy (Hornberger, 2003; Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000), and translanguaging (García, 2009; García & Li, 2014). The findings indicate that each family demonstrated unique and dynamic language practices along with the complex interplay of language ideologies, perceptions, past experiences, and power relations. Accordingly, each family’s support for their child’s biliteracy development varied. In the three-generation household, biliteracy is the norm for their daily language practice; however, the family’s monolingual ideology and understanding of bilingualism resulted in fewer intergenerational interactions to support the younger generation’s biliteracy development. The nuclear family, despite fewer opportunities to interact with the grandparents, demonstrated multilingual ideology and flexible bilingualism which resulted in the dynamic language practices among the parents and child. Both families have shown the complex interplay of factors around the use of English and Korean in the home context as well as diverse ways of supporting the younger generations’ biliteracy development. The implications from this study call attention to the necessity for meaningful support for multicultural and multilingual families’ maintenance of cultural and linguistic heritage in the family, school, and community with appropriate government policy enactment.

The Mann-Labrash Osteological Collection at the University of Hawai’i John A. Burns School of Medicine houses over 230 skeletal remains amassed through the Willed Body Program. Of these donors, seventy-eight were of East and Southeast Asian American and Pacific Islander descent. This unique collection offers an exciting opportunity for skeletal analyses of these populations left understudied in the body of anthropological scientific literature. This thesis explores the dietary causes of dental disease and dental restorations from the past to the present. Additionally, macroscopic analyses and Chi-square statistical tests determined which sex cohorts utilized dental restorative prostheses in life. Also addressed are the socioeconomic determinants of dental care access among these underrepresented groups. Lastly, because of the marginal availability of East and Southeast Asian American and Pacific Islander skeletal remains in US reference collections, an examination of death ideologies and organ donor hesitancies held by these communities are reviewed.

The recent rise in anti-Asian hate amidst the COVID-19 pandemic provides a novel circumstance within which to investigate Filipino American ethnic and racial identity development. Existing literature on this topic highlights the impact of colonization on present-day Filipinos, regarding their ethnic identification, panethnic consciousness, and responses to discrimination. Most of this research focuses on college-aged and second-generation Filipino Americans. However, victims of the rise in anti-Asian hate include older Asian Americans. Therefore, this study explores Filipino American identity and experiences with racism through 10 interviews with first-generation Filipino Americans, aged 65 and above. The study finds that, although Filipino Americans experience racial discrimination, many are resilient. However, their resilience may reflect internalizations of Filipino cultural values, the colonial mentality, and the model minority myth, as well as the search for a positive identity. Additionally, this study has an unexpected finding that Filipino Americans may collectively construct their identities, with many of their ethnic/racial identities reflecting that of their spouse. Ultimately, the lives and identities of Filipino American involve a dynamic process that adapts and reflects shifting political, social, and cultural contexts.

Since Hmong Americans are considered “Asians,” previous literature has often used them to dismantle the Model Minority Myth by focusing on their low educational attainment. This focus on Hmong American students’ (lack of) educational attainment does not adequately illustrate their assets and agency in navigating higher education. My dissertation intervenes in these deficit and damaging discourses on Hmong American students. Using critical ethnography, I position Hmong American undergraduates with assets that are crucial to equity and diversity in higher education. Specifically, I collected data at a U.S. public four-year university, which included academic student records, questionnaires, interviews, and participant observations of Hmong American undergraduates. My findings highlight Hmong American students as possessing assets to navigate and transform their educational experiences in higher education. Most notably, in an act of transformative resistance to their marginalization on campus and within the Asian American Studies Department, the Hmong American undergraduates created their own student-initiated and student-led course where Hmong history, culture, and knowledge was centered, legitimized, and affirmed. These efforts brought institutional awareness and actionable plans to imbue a sense of ethnic history, culture, and identity within their university. My study has relevant implications for scholars, educators, policymakers, and community members invested in serving diverse communities from critical perspectives so as to nurture their assets. Furthermore, my study also contributes to scholarship on race/ethnicity, education, and ethnic studies by illuminating the experiences of marginalized groups that are often invisible in the academic literature.

Racial-ethnic socialization (RES) has promotive and protective effects for Asian American children, but parental RES remains understudied among Asian American families with preadolescents. The current study draws from a sample of 404 Asian American parents (Mage = 38.4, SD = 7.0, 66% female) with 6- to 12-year-olds (Mage = 8.9, SD = 2.0, 56% boy; parent-report), and examines the role of child and parent factors on parents’ RES engagement. Results revealed that parent generational status predicted parental RES, whereas child age did not. Parents’ cultural maintenance practices were influenced both by their racial-ethnic and American identities in complex ways. Personal experiences of racial discrimination may differentially influence whether first vs. second+ generation parents discuss anti-Asian discrimination with their children. Parents’ racial socialization confidence may influence whether they minimize racism with their children. Findings highlight the importance of considering how Asian American parents’ background and beliefs shape their RES.

Eating disorders pose a significant health problem for a diverse group of people. However, knowledge regarding their origins and appropriate treatments has not expanded, more specifically for Asian Americans. This study aimed to increase the knowledge surrounding an essential component of disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, and potential factors in its development. Specifically, the impact of experiences of daily racism and racial identity development on body dissatisfaction among Asian American college women were examined. Using a non-experimental, quantitative survey design, this study assessed the relationship between perceived daily racism and the racial identity schema Internalization on the endorsement of body dissatisfaction associated with racially defined areas among Asian American college women. Two hypotheses were tested using a multiple regression analysis. While the hypotheses were not fully supported, there was a relationship found between experiences of racism and body dissatisfaction. While the original hypotheses were not fully supported, the data provided valuable knowledge regarding potential factors contributing to body dissatisfaction that could lead to disordered eating. Further research will need to look more closely at additional factors, including the difference in the impact of discrimination from the majority and discrimination from one’s ethnicity.

A well-documented form of prejudice in American history is sexual prejudice against lesbian and gay individuals. Understanding prejudicial attitudes towards lesbian and gay individuals are of concern for psychology researchers and mental health providers because sexual prejudice and adjacent discriminatory behaviors greatly hinders social justice and harms gay and lesbian individuals’ well-being (e.g., Gates, 2014). For lesbian and gay individuals of color in the United States, sexual prejudice concentrated in ethnic enclaves within the American mainstream culture may cause great psychological distress, as these individuals may place high importance on their degree of immersion in these communities of color and their immersion in mainstream White society (Szymanski & Sung, 2010). Research on sexual prejudice in the United States rarely centers Asian-American populations (Szymanski & Sung, 2013) and rarely accounts for acculturative and cultural factors in these populations’ sexual prejudice attitudes. The purpose of the present study was to examine a model of relationships between two facets of acculturation (dominant society immersion and ethnic society immersion), Asian cultural values, and sexual prejudice attitudes (attitudes towards lesbian women and gay men) for heterosexual Asian-American college students. In addition to establishing direct relationships between predictor variables and the outcome of sexual prejudice, the study also examined endorsement of Asian cultural values as a mediator between dominant society immersion (acculturation) and sexual prejudice, and between ethnic society immersion (enculturation) and sexual prejudice. For this population, there exists some research examining how degree of acculturation is correlated with prejudice attitudes, but none in a predictive structural equation model with simultaneous inclusion of both acculturation and enculturation and a mediating cultural values variable. Findings from the study indicated that a direct and an indirect linkage exists between acculturation and sexual prejudice, Asian cultural values is the mediating variable in the indirect linkage between acculturation with sexual prejudice, enculturation was neither linked to endorsement of Asian values nor to sexual prejudice, and Asian cultural values is a strong and more proximal predictor of sexual prejudice attitudes, compared to all examined variables, for this population. Determining predictors and mediating pathways which influence negative attitudes and behaviors toward lesbian and gay individuals is critical for informing clinicians who work with these individuals within the Asian-American community and for developing more culturally appropriate community-wide stigma reduction interventions.

This dissertation explores patterns and sources of Asian American students’ educational success, focusing on their greater likelihood of selecting and completing a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) major in college, their lower self-assessed math ability, and their differential patterns of residential segregation by race, income, and household structure. First, using the Educational Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (“ELS”), I show that Asian-white differences in STEM outcomes in college are strongly predicted by Asian students’ stronger academic preparation and greater likelihood of planning to enter STEM occupations in high school, but partially offset by Asian students’ lower self-assessed math ability than whites with similar academic preparation. Moreover, Asian students’ initial choice of STEM majors is more elastic than whites’ with respect to academic achievement in STEM, and they are more likely to initiate STEM majors in college even if they don’t articulate an occupational plan or take advanced STEM courses in high school. Second, I show that the Asian disadvantage in mathematics self-assessment is only pronounced among students who take advanced mathematics courses. Among students who take advanced mathematics courses, Asian students’ lower mathematics self-assessment relative to whites’ is largely driven by the higher level of Asian concentration in the schools in which Asian students are enrolled. However, among students who take nonadvanced mathematics courses, there is a psychological premium in assessing one’s mathematics ability for Asian students relative to whites, especially among the lowest achieving ones. Finally, using census tract-level data from the American Community Survey linked to school district boundaries, I find that the residential segregation of poor Asian households from nonpoor White households is less driven by sorting across school district boundaries than it is for poor Black or Hispanic Households, but that within-race segregation of poor from nonpoor households is greater among Asian households than for other racial and ethnic groups. These findings are consistent with the hypotheses that nonpoor White parents have lower level of resistance toward poor Asian than toward poor Black and poor Hispanic households but are not consistent with the notion that poor Asian parents are able to draw on their unique resources from their ethnic communities for their children to access similar school options as nonpoor Asian parents.

Despite high rates of Asian Americans in interracial romantic partnerships with Whites and the sociohistorical context of interracial relationships and race in the United States, there is limited empirical work regarding Asian Americans’ experiences of navigating race and racial differences in Asian/White romantic relationships. Drawing from the master narrative framework, this mixed-methods study aimed to describe Asian Americans’ experiences in Asian/White interracial relationships, identify master and alternative narratives of addressing racial differences within participants’ responses, and examine how narratives relate to psychological adjustment and relationship quality. Participants (N = 189) were self-identified Asian American young adults in committed relationships with White romantic partners. Using thematic analysis, I found that participants received three forms of cultural socialization about Asian/White relationships: Promoting Ethnic-Racial Pride, White Supremacy and Racism, and Racial De-Emphasis. Cultural socialization also informed four racial tropes about Asian/White relationships: Fetishization of Multiracial Children, Ethnic-Racial Betrayal, Asian Female/White Male Couples, and Asian Male/White Female Couples. Using thematic analysis, I also identified societal narratives of Color-Blindness, Multiculturalism, and Racial Awareness that were internalized in participants’ discussions of race and racial differences in their relationships. Quantitative coding of narrative internalization found that Multiculturalism had the highest mean rating, followed by Color-Blindness and then Racial Awareness. Multiple linear regressions were conducted to determine the main effects of narrative internalization on relationship quality, psychological distress, social belonging, and ethnic-racial identity affect. None of the main effects were significant except for the Multiculturalism narrative on ethnic-racial identity affect (B = .10, SE = .05, p = .04); however, this effect was no longer significant when analyses were repeated with a subsample (n = 186) that excluded inattentive responders (n = 3). Overall, results demonstrate that participants receive multiple, conflicting messages about race and interraciality that complicate how they perceive and discuss race and racial differences in their relationships.

This thesis examines the Asian American journalist experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research was conducted in which Asian American journalists (n=100) partake in a survey and then a smaller sample (n=12) partake in an interview about their experience as both a journalist and an Asian American. Results show that participants felt their career had been negatively impacted by coronavirus due to job losses, pay-cuts, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, and their race/ethnicity. As for their personal lives, results showed that respondents feel they have faced discrimination, harassment, and violent attacks that are related to the poor rhetoric used by both the mainstream media and government when it came to addressing COVID- 19. Results also seemed to reveal that certain Asian Americans were impacted by these factors more than others. Journalists who identified as Indian faced less backlash and harassment.

Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art showcases artwork from artists within the Afro-Caribbean Chinese community and Asian American diaspora. I will primarily focus on artists who have immigrated to America, joining the Asian American community. At the California African-American Museum, the show ran from September 15, 2017, to February 25, 2018, and at the Chinese American Museum, the show ran from September 15, 2017, to March 11, 2018. Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art serves as a case study to animate the different components of the Asian American identity. While several artists within this community solely practice art within the Caribbean, I focus on the artists who moved to the United States as they are included in the Chinese-American diaspora.

Over the life course, socioeconomic resources protect from certain kinds of hardship. In this dissertation I answer the question, why do Asian American men that are highly educated with high paying jobs struggle to develop relationships necessary for management track positions and relationships that act as stress-buffering protection during life’s ups and downs? I interview 35 Asian American men and 15 non-Hispanic, White American men born in the U.S and working in professional occupations in Austin, Texas. I find a process that I call racial optimization, where Asian American men adopted cultural strategies compatible with American racial stereotypes of Asian immigrant labor. These men learned these strategies from watching their families respond to racism and they learned these strategies from the limited representations that they saw of themselves in American society. For these men, these socially expected cultural strategies entailed a singular focus on excelling in the cognitive skills specific to their science, technology, engineering, and medical (STEM) occupations, in order to primarily secure financial security. These men were mostly successful in securing financial stability using this cultural strategy, however this strategy also seemed to limit the kind of work that these men could do as they advanced in their careers. I argue that the exclusion from management the men described in their careers is related to the difficulty these men described in their relationships with friends, dating and in family. Although these men worked for most of their lives toward excelling in the technical skills of their professions, most of them did not see their non-cognitive skills or social capital as something that they could change. Instead, they attributed their relationship difficulties to individual personality, ethnic or family socialization, or to cultural racism against Asians in American society. In this dissertation, I argue that American culture provides a discourse for Asian American men to understand their pursuit of masculinity through specific economic strategies, but this discourse is limited because of their race and has consequences for relationships throughout their work and family lives.

“Meiguo '' is an installation consisting of sculptures and textiles based on memories from my grandmother’s archive. Attempts to grasp the past becomes a departure for new sensibilities of (be)longing. My conceptual framing is informed by racial melancholia theory, craft methods, Asian American literature and poetry. By blurring relationships between inside and outside, I hope to frame the in-between spaces that I occupy within culture, time, and place. Fabrics soaked with pomegranates, onion skins, lemon juice, and rice are joined through long durational sewing methods. Building up the textile with repetition and pattern engages with practices of writing, erasure, and remembering. I question how joining threads locates what cannot be easily translated in words yet acutely felt in the body.

This research study investigates the perceptions, identities, and typecasting issues surrounding Asian American commercial dancers in Los Angeles through personal and historical contexts. My own experience as a commercial dancer in Los Angeles has led to questions about typecasting and how it relates to clichés in auditions and acquiring work and employment in the commercial dance industry. Interviews with professional dancers, a dance agent, a casting director, and a manager add perspective. Through a unique process during the COVID-19 global pandemic, I directed and created a short film exploring the need for connection to mixed heritage in the lives of five artists and performers. In this research study, I investigate my role as an Asian American artist, the importance of honoring the past, and the value of creating a future where the next generation finds space to do the same.

Asian American is predicted to be the largest immigrant group by the year 2055. Breast cancer is the primary cancer diagnosis and the second-leading cause of death among Asian-American women. Despite the lengthy presence of Asian immigrants in the US and the recent predictions of increasing breast cancer incidence in this population, the unique cultural needs and psychological responses to cancer survivorship remain relatively unknown. In order to expand the understanding in Asian American breast cancer survivorship, this dissertation applied the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping to examine how stressors experienced by the Asian American breast cancer survivors and their coping use influenced their psychological well-being. Secondary data analysis was conducted on 233 participants (Chinese = 44%, Japanese = 37%, and Vietnamese = 19%) who completed qualitative questionnaires that assessed their physical, emotional, social, and financial stress. Participants also completed standardized measures on their coping strategies used and psychological well-being. The analysis on the relationship between stress and psychological well-being indicated that higher levels of stress (in all four types of stressors) were associated with poor psychological well-being. Moderation of ethnicity on the relationship between stress and psychological well-being was unable to be tested due to low sample size. The analysis of the relationship between coping and psychological well-being revealed ethnic differences in the following coping strategies: expressive suppression, active coping, denial, use of emotional support, use of instrumental support, positive reframing, acceptance, and self-blame. The increased use of all emotion-focused coping strategies of positive valence and problem-focused coping strategies was associated with good psychological well-being (except the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and self-stigma). Furthermore, the increased use of all emotion-focused coping strategies of negative valence was associated with poor psychological well-being. Moderation of ethnicity on the relationship between coping and psychological well-being could not be tested due to low sample size. Mediation of coping on the relationship between stress and psychological well-being could not be tested either, due to low sample size. The findings from this dissertation could advance public health theories and improve doctor-patient communication with Asian American breast cancer survivors.

There are presently nearly 26 million refugees who have been forcibly removed from their homes as a result of war, mass violence, and political instability. These families in exile endure numerous adverse mental health effects during mass conflicts as well as after resettlement in the host country, affecting the individual and their family members and reverberating to generations. A small number of studies have begun to examine intergenerational trauma among Southeast Asian American refugee and immigrant families, including Vietnamese American families. This study sought to further explore the effects of intergenerational trauma through the second-generation Vietnamese American’s (SGVA) perspective. I employ interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as the primary inquiry method to explore SGVAs’ perceptions of parental trauma’s effect on parenting. Eleven participants (8 mothers and 3 fathers) were recruited through a purposive sampling method and were interviewed for an hour to two hours through a semi-structured questionnaire. Data analysis yielded six themes of silence and disclosure, multiple traumas as part of daily life, SGVAs’ lived experience, first-generation Vietnamese Americans’ (FGVA) parenting shaped by culture and war, meaning-making of their family’s experience, and SGVAs’ multiple parenting strategies. The superordinate themes include the integral role of silence, the absence and desire for affection, and the contested spaces with multiple realities. The data offer insights into the lived experiences and meaning making of both affected generations. It explores how trauma continues to live on, manifests, and metabolizes the pain and suffering along with ways to cope and spaces to navigate in the world. The themes are discussed with provisions for clinical practice, policy, and further research.

Korean American Creations and Discontents looks at Korean American subjectivity in Los Angeles after the 1992 Riots/Uprisings. This project begins with the LAPD beating of Rodney King and ends with the fatal Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. This dissertation is necessarily rooted in 1992 and 2020. Using Korean American cultural producers, this project examines the figure of the Korean American entrepreneur and Korean American subjectivity within the boundaries of model minority narratives, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and post-racial rhetoric. Situated in Los Angeles, this project is grounded in the Riots/Uprisings as an event that shaped, transformed, and reified new cultural, racial, economic, and gendered assumptions of multiple categories, identities, and bodies. While some events leading up to the Riots/Uprisings are covered, this project looks more specifically at media representation and the consequences of a media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Moreover, while this project shifts away from the Riots/Uprisings, it remains rooted in them as a spectral haunting, influencing racial dynamics in the contemporary moment, as well as Korean American cultural productions. I look at how 1992 was a pivotal moment that influenced and continues to inform how Korean American cultural producers view themselves and their work, whether consciously or unconsciously. Moreover, my own perspective as a 2nd generation Korean American instrumentally informs my work, appearing most explicitly in personal anecdotes and vignettes, inserted throughout the dissertation. Chapter one takes a broader look at the shifting Asian American figure, looking at how Asian American representation has shifted between yellow peril and model minority narratives, given the historical moment and events that are unfolding. Taking a contemporary look at the increase of Asian American representation in popular culture, I situate this idea of representation as a paradox. Chapter two then looks at the history of Korean immigrants/Americans in Los Angeles, and how generalized tropes of Asian Americans impacted Korean American figures. The second part of this dissertation takes a look at 1.5 or 2nd generation Korean American cultural producers, Justin Chon and his 2017 film Gook, Roy Choi, the creator of the Kogi Truck and the Korean BBQ taco, and Dumbfoundead, a Koreatown-based rapper and media creator. Chapter three looks at Justin Chon and Gook, alongside the 1992 Riots/Uprisings, news media representations, and the media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Chapter four and five examine Roy Choi’s Korean BBQ taco and the Kogi truck and Dumbfoundead, respectiviely, within the context of rising multiculturalism, neoliberalism, and post-racial rhetoric.

This dissertation investigates the use of linguistic resources in the expression of sociocultural and ethnic identity in Taiwanese Americans from Texas (Taiwanese Texans) in order to achieve two outcomes: 1) to describe patterns of linguistic variation for a number of local and national variables and 2) to find connections and meaning between those patterns and the identities of the speakers. Exploring how Taiwanese Texans orient themselves within the cultural models available to them illustrates the link between language and identity, which in turn reveals the impact of assimilation and acculturation on this group. The study utilizes data from two sources: researcher-driven speech collected from sociolinguistic interviews of 30 Taiwanese Texans and reading passages from the Texas English Linguistics Lab archive of five older Anglo Texans. A quantitative analysis shows that Taiwanese Texans do not retain the traditional Texan dialect features of the Anglo Texan speaker baseline. Additionally, while social factors do not predict phonetic variation in a statistically significant manner, Taiwanese Texans have almost categorically adopted four phonetic features—GOOSE fronting, Low Back Merger, TRAP retraction, and Low Back Merger Shift—which together indicate that Taiwanese Texans are orienting toward a chain-shift phonetic pattern, not yet observed in Texan speech: the Third Dialect Shift. A qualitative analysis of the sociolinguistic interviews shows how the usage of socially salient features could indicate a speaker’s alignment toward indexed personae. This reveals how Taiwanese Texans perform ethnicized identities of assimilation to whiteness through the invocation of locally available features that specifically index “white girlhood.” Taiwanese Texans put those resources into service to construct identity alignments during conversation, showing distance from Asianness and orientation toward white norms and white American culture in their negotiation of ethnic identity. This dissertation joins a growing body of sociolinguistic research on language variation that samples Asian Americans, the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States today, contributing to our understanding of the connection between language and identity in a minority population.

This paper presents an overview of the concepts and strategies in the original composition, The Harbour of Incense, a cycle of three movements for different groups of instruments. Each movement addresses an aspect of the musical cultures of Hong Kong. The first movement Taan Go for Harp Solo explores the sound world of the folk genre saltwater song; the second movement Jat1 Wun2 Sai3 Ngau4 Naam5 Min6 for Flute and Piano highlights the musicality of Cantonese language; the third movement Daa Zaai for Oboe, Clarinet in B-flat, Bassoon, and Percussion, is inspired by the keyi music used in the Taoist funeral. The paper discusses how to bring together Southeast Asian aesthetics and contemporary Western compositional techniques, as well as how to communicate this unique cultural experience to performers and audiences from other backgrounds. It provides the transcriptions of two saltwater songs and an excerpt of keyi music, and illustrate how they inform the structures, textures, and melodic gestures of the composition. The nine tones of Cantonese language are also explored for generating melodic materials, metric plans, and articulation writing.

Racial-ethnic socialization within Asian American families involves the intergenerational transmission of racial and cultural messages and practices, which reflects their unique perspectives and experiences as racial/ethnic minority individuals and families in a racialized society. This qualitative study examines six second-generation East Asian American mothers who are raising children aged five to eight, with the goal of exploring intergenerational influences on their racial-ethnic socialization experiences. Using a set of two interviews, the results show how childhood experiences of immigration, racism, and racial-ethnic socialization shaped parents’ perceptions and experiences of racial-ethnic socialization practices with their children. Particularly, the study presents how parents’ experience of communication and non-communication about race during childhood influenced their ambivalent attitude about race-related communication with their children. The results also indicate the challenges of second-generation mothers in their racial-ethnic socialization practices with their own experiences of identity struggles and conflict with their parents. The findings highlight unique aspects of how second-generation Asian American mothers understand and navigate the familial and societal dynamics that underlie their racial-ethnic socialization practices.

The dissertation consists of a critical analysis as well as the novel Tigers Born in the Same Year. The critical analysis interrogates the relationship between Asian American subject position in the United States, the history of Asian American literatures, and the conflict between inherited binary narratives and nuanced, specific story-telling. In order to move beyond such narratives as struggling with the label "model minority," wrestling between "Asian" and "American," and being "Asian enough," it is necessary to synthesize these literary and sociocultural inheritances with nuanced, specific lenses. From synthesis may arise a new space, one where rather than alienation and measuring up, there can be a sense of home. Tigers Born in the Same Year seeks language for social reckoning through personal discovery, representing a challenge to established narratives while recognizing the need to explore how they were built, the impacts they have, and what exists in the spaces beyond them. In Tigers Born in the Same Year, when 13-year Minyoung Walsh witnesses the molestation of her sister by their older brother, she must make one of three choices: stay silent, fight back, or shout. Based on these three possibilities, three lives are braided together in the novel. All three Mins must reckon with who they have become and why following the illness and passing of their father. Whether or not the Mins in these lives are ultimately able to find a sense of home will largely depend on how they have been able to reckon with themselves, and on building a selfhood through they can live, grow, and seek the choices that will lead them forward. All the while, a fourth Min wanders in an endless bardo, between lives, seeking that same sense of rest, of wholeness, of knowing she has come to the right end of her path.

Crossed Wires: Japanese American Incarceration and the Environmental Frontier focuses on the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. From this historical vantage point, I draw on ecocritical and settler colonial frameworks to theorize the relationship between immigrant and indigenous populations in the United States as they are produced by relations to land and acts of environmental transformation. My project intervenes in discourses of the U.S. carceral state, racialized policing, and border consolidation, and is additionally informed by a growing body of incarceration work in the fields of environmental history and geography. In this dissertation, I posit environmental transformation as a core element of Japanese American incarceration, examining the way the War Relocation Authority's agricultural projects rhetorically and materially sought to reclaim the "frontier" West for the U.S. (white) settler state. I examine how the stakes of the incarceration shift when it becomes not only an act of racial exclusion and war hysteria, but also a conscious reiteration of the settler colonial frontier—a frontier which, in the confines of an incarceration camp, is quickly denuded of its fantasies of a free West. In turn, I explore the ways Japanese Americans narrated their own relationship to their camp environments, imaginatively traversing geologic time, as in Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory; performing cowboy outlaw, as in Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine; and confronting the Native erasures that subtend every frontier “success story.” My project’s primary intervention lies in its ecocritical approach to narratives of Japanese American incarceration, which illuminates the ways that Japanese Americans’ imaginative encounters with their environment express alternative ways of being and belonging in a place. These ways of being foreground Japanese Americans' relation to Native peoples, as guests on their land and as potential allies and accomplices against the U.S. settler colonial state. When U.S. military spaces like Fort Sill can serve as a prison to Native warriors during the nineteenth century, to Japanese Americans in the twentieth, and to border crossers in the twenty-first, examining the intersections between Asian American, Native, and environmental studies is more crucial than ever to imagining radically different futures.

This thesis seeks to understand how community-researcher partnerships negotiate ownership and control of data within community-based public health research projects conducted in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. 10 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 11 participants, 6 researchers and 5 community members. While the literature generally centers the academic perspective, this project, rooted in Asian American Studies, strays away from the literature and centers the community’s voice. The interviews reveal that community members define data ownership as possessing access to and control over data. In the various models of data ownership, these partnerships reveal data’s ability to empower the community to (re)claim narratives and legitimize the community’s voice. Additionally, this project concludes that community-researcher partnerships must build trust and recognize the community’s value through proper compensation. Ultimately, the community must “be selfish” in order to work towards an equitable community-researcher partnership and an equitable model of data ownership.

The hierarchical racial structure in the United States are products of continuous power struggles among ethnoracial groups and have reinforced continuing white racial dominance throughout history, disproportionately limiting socioeconomic mobility and cultural legitimacy of minorities. In such contexts, Asian Americans—the fastest growing immigrant-origin group, one that is characterized by upward social mobility—occupy an ambiguous racial position as a group. Yet, in discussions of Asian Americans’ ethnoracial group positioning, scholars have seldom attended to the increasing ethnic heterogeneity, which have situated Asian Americans in various social structural location, resulting in intra-group tensions and inequalities that further perpetuate the hierarchical racial and ethnic relations in the larger U.S. society. This dissertation project remedies this gap through rigorous statistical analyses of a nationally representative sample of Asian Americans from eight distinctive ethnic backgrounds. Using intermarriage as an indicator for ethnoracial group relations, this project investigates the effects of individual-level group processes on Asian Americans’ ethnically heterogeneous group boundaries and their implications for the larger U.S. race relations. I provide a critical test of claims that correspond to a specific sociological theory and/or concept in each of the three empirical chapters using data from the 2016 National Asian American Survey and the 2008-2016 American Community Survey (pooled 1-year Micro Public Use Data). The first chapter explores how Asian Americans distinguish each ethnic group using cultural sociological concepts of symbolic and social boundaries, and where these boundaries are crossed the most in marriage. Then, I revisit existing theoretical framework of segmented assimilation to investigate how intermarriage outcomes may vary by ethnic membership and provide distinctive paths of marital integration into the larger society. In the last empirical chapter, I explore gendered implications of ethnically heterogeneous intermarriage patterns for Asian American ethnoracial boundaries by merging theories from minority incorporation and marital racial-status exchange literature. Together, this project reveals that Asian Americans’ incorporation is an on-going social process and that the “mainstream” American society that Asian Americans reach may not always be that of the dominant White racial group. In so doing, I highlight the importance of ethnically disaggregated investigations of pan-ethnic groups to adequately capture and analyze the effect of heterogeneity on their social processes. Ultimately, Asian Americans are not simply subscribing to the existing American racial order, but rather actively participating in nuanced and subtle power struggles both among themselves and with other ethnoracial groups, perpetuating the existing systems of inequality.

South Asian Americans (SAAs) are a burgeoning subpopulation in higher education settings. SAAs are not a monolithic group; they are affiliated with a variety of linguistic, immigration, socioeconomic, and spiritual identities. Furthermore, SAA spiritual identities have been increasingly minoritized and racialized in post-9/11 America, creating challenges unique to this group. The purpose of this study was to explore how SAA collegians experience a sense of belonging and navigate the intersections of their cultural and spiritual identities on campus. The point-of-entry model for Asian American identity consciousness (Accapadi, 2012) and the model of belonging for privileged and minoritized students (Vaccaro & Newman, 2016) were used as conceptual frameworks to ground the study. 12 SAA college students participated in this qualitative, phenomenological inquiry. Interviews, photovoice technique, and journal entries were used as instruments to collect data. In considering the larger phenomenon of SAA collegians’ identity navigation and experience of belonging, three key findings emerged from the data. They included: (1) family serving as a primary source of support; (2) student organizations being a critical vehicle for spiritual identity exploration and belonging; and (3) a universal understanding that SAA solidarity is essential for community advocacy. Implications from the study were incorporated into a conceptual model and involved a need for further research on SAA collegians; institutional support for recruitment of SAA faculty and staff members and ongoing cultural competency training for higher education professionals; and promotion of community-building among SAA collegians.

Asian American students have done well in school; they have had higher academic achievements, higher academic scores, lower dropout rates and higher college entrance rates as compared to other minorities and generally other students in the United States (U.S.). A possible explanation to the higher academic performance and achievement of the Asian American students is that they are more likely to have experienced an environment that is conducive to learning at home; their parents were involved and held higher expectations. Immigrant minorities have been found to do well in schools in many parts of the world. Similarly, here in the U.S. there has been increasing evidence that students of Asian ancestry, both immigrants and U.S. born, complete more years of education than most of the other ethnicities. Current research and data on the academic performance of Asian immigrants includes most Asian countries. This study reviewed the current literature regarding the factors that influence the academic performance of "Asian Indian Americans" who attended high schools in the U. S. This correlational study examined the relationship between various factors, such as parental participation, parental expectations and involvement, discipline, cultural beliefs, personal identity and values, language spoken at home, and the academic performance of the Asian Indian Americans.

My thesis, Marry a White Man, is a collection of poetry and prose that examines humor as an act of resistance. An effective use of humor in poetry draws the audience in and exposes its complicity in the problems that the humor has as its subject, much as Margaret Cho does in “I’m the One That I Want,” which speaks to her experience as a teen star and a young Asian woman. My work builds upon Cho’s use of dark, situational humor, exploring the benefits and limits of adopting the persona of the “funny girl.” For me, humor has been a balm that has helped me face the unwanted and uncomfortable. Humor allows me to write through my experiences as a woman and an Asian adoptee and exposes the patriarchal, capitalist, and imperialist systems that help to produce trauma and discomfort.