Naming Their World in a Culturally Responsive Space

Naming the World

Paolo Freire’s (2000) literacy work with Brazilian peasants suggested that the oppression of the learners was reflected in the high rates of functional illiteracy as well as a lack of critical literacy to “read” the inequitable conditions of their lives. The didactic development of functional literacy functions to silence and pacify dispossessed individuals because it contributes to the stifling of curiosity (Freire & Faundez, 1992). In order to advance “critical” literacy, Freire developed pedagogical practices for learners to critically question, analyze, and act on the injustices of their social contexts which he termed “critical consciousness” (Freire, 2000). The goal of teaching and learning becomes one of “unveiling . . . the reality and thereby coming to know it critically” (Freire, 2000, p. 69). Critical pedagogy provides an education that “empowers” individuals through critical reflection and critical action. Education for critical consciousness “involves a constant clarification of what remains hidden within us while we move about in the world,” and promotes “recognition of the world, not as a ‘given’ world, but as a world dynamically ‘in the making’” (Freire, 1985, pp. 106-107).

Individuals attain critical consciousness when they

develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in the process, in transformation (Freire, 2000, p. 83, emphasis in original).

That is, individuals are empowered when they understand that the circumstances of their lives are not only shaped by their actions, but also by broader social, political, and historical forces. Through analyses of existing realities, individuals are able to “name their world,” develop social critique of injustices, and gain a sense of agency. The critical awareness of oppression provides individuals with an impetus to work against the existing inequities and transform their world (Freire, 1985).

Exploring Oppression in After-School Arts Programs

The arts open up multimodal possibilities for reflection and expression that allow for “the living of lyrical moments, moments at which human beings (freed to feel, to know, and to imagine) suddenly understand their own lives in relation to all that surrounds” (Greene, 2001, p. 7; see also, Heath, 1998). Literacy studies have especially highlighted the role of after-school arts programs in youth’s development of social critique, agency, and confidence. Research on writing programs showed that writing rap lyrics and spoken-word poetry provides urban, low-income youth with avenues to examine their lives and engage in social critique. Mahiri and Sablo (1996) learned the incorporation of hip-hop culture into writing spoken-word poetry and rap lyrics engaged African American adolescents in articulation of experiences of violence, poverty, and crime. They argued that the differing attitudes youth have toward school writing and out-of-school writing are due to the ways dominant classroom pedagogies silence the voices of youth by excluding their experiences and lives. García and Gaddes (2012) found that an after-school writing project promoted opportunities for Latina youth to “author” themselves by drawing on the cultural capital (e.g., code-switching) and experiences of their lives. They suggested that when the content of the program connects with youth about “real issues and real emotions,” youth “open . . . their own minds and hearts and author themselves in a way that may not have been accessible to them before, thus enacting their sense of agency in their own cultural worlds” (p. 154). As youth explored personal stories related to their transnational and bicultural identities, gang involvement of siblings, and racial tensions in their communities, their realities were legitimized. Reyes’ (2007) study of a video-making project examined the empowering use of stereotypes by Southeast Asian American youth in identity construction. She suggested that “stereotypes can be reappropriated for creative purposes, such as constructing identities, building social relationships, achieving community and solidarity, and producing panethnicity” (p. 91). Further, Hull and Katz (2006) showed youth are able to develop an “agentive self” and transform from an individual with a “meek and discontented school identity” to one with an identity of a “confident author and active community participant” through digital storytelling (p. 61).

Studies on youth theatre programs have underscored the ways in which youth are authoring new identities by “performing writing” (Fishman, Lunsford, McGregor, & Otuteye, 2005). For example, Vasudevan, Stageman, Rodriguez, Fernandez, and Dattatreyan (2010) found that rehearsals were an important site of “authoring,” where incarcerated youth “considered realities different from their own” (p. 62) and “tried on voices and postures, and explored motivations” (p. 61). The processes of theatre offered youth a way “to rehearse and re-script their own life narratives” (Vasudevan et al., 2010, p. 62). Halverson (2010) explicated the ways the dramaturgical process allowed lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth to tell, adapt, and perform personal stories. She argued that a theatre program functioned as a “live space” for youth to explore complex identities and present experiences of marginalization as an “amalgam of voices” reflective of all of the youth in the group (p. 639). Youth were able to “see themselves in the world” and “see their painful, personal stories independent of themselves” through public performances, which allowed them to move beyond the experiences (Halverson, 2005, p. 67).

This study extends the scholarship on the ways in which after-school, youth arts programs provide opportunities for adolescents to critically reflect on their experiences and “author” alternative “agentive selves.” It addresses a dearth in the literature on the ways in which culturally responsive, after-school programs serving Hmong immigrant youth may foster critical consciousness.

Setting and Participants

This article draws from an ethnographic study (Fetterman, 1998) of the culturally relevant practices of a theatre project of the Coalition of Youth Artists (COYA), a youth program within the Midwest Hmong Artists Collective (MHAC), a Hmong non-profit, CBO in an urban center in the Midwestern United States. Ethnographic fieldwork took place from August 2013 to mid-January 2014 over a 6-month program cycle.

The participants included seven female and two male Hmong adolescents ages 16 to 19 who were low-income, second-generation immigrants; two 1.5-generation Hmong American staff of MHAC (including the COYA program coordinator); and one Korean American teaching artist from a local theatre company. In this article, I use pseudonyms that reflect the Hmong or Anglicized names of the Hmong American participants. I draw on the insights from Jane, the Korean American artist, and Xang, the executive director of MHAC. As research often lacks the perspectives of immigrant adolescents, I especially highlight illustrative insights from four focal Hmong youth whom I call Kia, Mai, Anna, and Suzy.

While COYA engaged the Hmong youth in various arts-based leadership activities throughout the year, the youth primarily worked on a theatre project for the second half of the year that aimed to illuminate aspects of their Hmong heritage and identity. Jane, a 32-year-old professional actress with the local theatre company, led the project. Although she taught theatre classes for 7 years as a teaching artist, it was her first time with the youth of COYA. Specifically, Jane was brought in to work with the youth to write, produce, and perform a play over the course of 40 hours. During the program cycle of this study, the theatre project focused on their experiences as Hmong American male and female adolescents. According to Jane, she worked with the youth “to create a piece that they have ownership of.” Together, they “can create a play with fantasy, mystery, whatever” but she sought “to get at the heart of what they’re going through and their personal stories. So basically I work with the students to help create their stories and put them on stage in the end.” Some of the prompts Jane used for youth writing included “tell me a time when you were sad, tell me a time you felt left out, tell me a time you were incredibly happy.” She encouraged the youth to “go into detail” and “take down all their sensors and all of their vulnerabilities and put them on the page.” Since the intent was to put their (verbatim) stories into the play, Jane made it a point to check in with the youth to make sure that “they were uncomfortable with having anything staged or read.” Jane thus aimed to “help them create a play, create a piece that speaks to them, that is familiar to them, and that can then be acted and put up on stage.”

Research Strategy

Ethnography allows for deep immersion and nuanced exploration of social and cultural contexts to illuminate the day-to-day circumstances and behaviors of participants (Fetterman, 1998). Ethnographic research involved intensive participant-observations of the weekly activities of the COYA program one evening a week, for 2 to 4 hours each session. The fieldwork produced fieldnotes (n = 26; Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1998) that included description of the setting, activities, and participants’ behaviors and recounts of conversations and dialogue. Interpretive notes recorded thoughts and initial hypotheses related to descriptive observations. The insights from the observations were used to ask clarifying questions in conversations and interviews. The in-depth interviews with youth (n = 9) centered on their experiences in the arts program and took place toward the end of the program cycle. The interviews with staff (n = 3) focused on their perspectives about the teaching and learning practices of the arts programs, and their experiences with the youth in the programs. Moreover, the fieldwork included the collection of artifacts of the community context and documents such as work-products from the youth program, articles from news articles, and drafts of the script (n = 53), and audio and video recordings of fieldwork conversations (n = 24).

The data analysis involved a thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) of the data from a constructionist perspective that views meaning and experience as socially produced and reproduced (Burr, 1995). The literature on critical and culturally relevant pedagogies (e.g., Freire, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995) and youth development (e.g., Mahoney et al., 2005) provided the lenses for analysis and writing. I became familiar with the data through discussions at weekly research team meetings and reading and rereading interview transcripts, fieldnotes, and program work-products (e.g., youth writing, script of play). The analysis began with writing interpretive memos after discussion and reading sessions, and progressed to lists of initial ideas about the data as I moved back and forth from writing and rereading the data. I then moved to coding, which involved identifying “the most basic segment, or element, of the raw data or information that can be assessed in a meaningful way regarding the phenomenon” (Boyatzis, 1998, p. 63). This phase involved coding for all potential themes or patterns, coding and recoding, and finally organizing themes into theme groups (with sub-themes). I then reviewed, refined, and defined the themes by collapsing, reorganizing, and renaming them. This article draws on three themes to understand critical consciousness among Hmong youth: stereotypes, cultural belonging, and ethnic identification.

My research is influenced by my identity and experiences as a refugee from Vietnam who resettled to the United States from an Indonesian refugee camp (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). I shared with the Hmong staff and youth similar experiences of immigrating to and/or navigating the expectations of my parents and dominant U.S. society. I also brought to my research extensive experience with the Hmong community from employment at a Hmong American non-profit agency as well as over 15 years of engagement with the Hmong community. As an education scholar, I seek to animate the social and cultural contexts of education for immigrant students in order to inform critical multicultural education in theory, practice, and policy.

Exploring Acculturation Expectations

As with other immigrant groups, for Hmong youth the relatively faster rate of acculturation and English acquisition among immigrant children may contribute to instability within the family and ethnic community (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2002). Recent census data for language spoken at home and English ability, where 7.9% of Hmong Americans reported only English is spoken at home; 49.1% reported non-English spoken at home, with English spoken “very well”; and 42.9% non-English spoken at home with English spoken “less than very well” (Y. S. Yang, 2013). Knowledge of English language, American popular culture (e.g., clothes), and normative adolescent practices (e.g., going out) that are outside the experiences of Hmong parents are sites of struggle for immigrant youth and parents. Jane, the teaching artist, described this as the “generation gap” or the “cultural gap” as she reflected on the challenges faced by the youth:

I know that there’s a big, just a generation gap, and just a cultural gap that these students face in [their] families. And just how difficult that can be to try to go to Field High School or go to Truman or wherever they go . . . . Then have that split world and how to manage it. So I think that’s fairly common . . . . I think a lot of Hmong youth deal with that. And because Hmong, there’s so many Hmong families here that it does create this interesting, insular thing where the parents, the families are able to be together and share their culture and everything and keep it alive.

Jane saw the Hmong youth having to “manage” a “split world” between their Hmong families and schools. This is due to the large, “insular” Hmong community that promotes the maintenance of Hmong culture.

Research has especially found that conflict among immigrant adolescents and parents are due to differing cultural values and practices of “traditional” and “Americanized” worldviews (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2002). S. J. Lee (2005) observed that “Hmong American adults view the forces of Americanization as the biggest threat to their children and families” (p. 50). For Hmong female adolescents, struggles with parents often arise out of their desire for freedom to take part in activities of school peers (e.g., go to the mall, attend school dances) and parents’ desires for daughters to stay home in order to protect them from accusations of promiscuity as well as to help with household tasks (S. J. Lee, 2005; Ngo, 2002).

Indeed, Xang, the executive director of MHAC, shared that one tension between Hmong parents and youth who were in COYA was the desire of the youth to be a part of the after-school program:

[They are] in conflict with their parents each time they come here. I know that their parents probably don’t approve. They still live in this fear mentality that, “Stay home, don’t go too far. Otherwise something bad’s gonna happen.” And I think that they’re [youth] standing up against that by, again, exploring all these extracurricular activities and being involved in the community.

Xang went on to further explain, “There is a communication gap. It’s as simple as there is a difference in language, there’s a difference in mentality and aspirations.” According to Xang, Hmong parents and youth not only have language differences, but also a different outlook on life. While the youth want to be involved in leadership activities and actively engage with the community, their parents are fearful and want them to stay home.

In the following scene, Mai poignantly expresses common acculturative gaps—of being culturally and socially out of step with peers:

I don’t have the right shoes, the right hair, the right clothes. My shoes, I bought a new pair because someone said they looked ugly, even though I, I thought they were gorgeous. They put a shield up for me, they were “gangster,” they looked like the boys’ shoes. The boys never got bullied, not the tough ones, at least. They got beat though, my shoes. And my hair is so long, and I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I was sitting in lunch and my hair got pulled until my head was 2 inches off the tiled floor . . . . My clothes weren’t pretty and nice like the other girls also, the name brand ones! I want those, I want them so bad. Because Paige wouldn’t talk to me. She wouldn’t talk to me, because I didn’t wear Hollister, because I didn’t own brand name clothing, because my mom was working too hard she forgot about me. And I hate it, I hate everything about myself, why couldn’t I just be like Paige? Paige had the right shoes, the right hair, the right clothes, and I hate it because I can’t be like her, I can’t fit in. I can’t blend in, be white, and be cool. (Mai, female, 16)

As a child of immigrants, Mai ² could not afford “brand name” clothing such as Hollister. Her black hair—worn long as is customary in Hmong culture—was a source of scorn. She lacked “the right shoes, the right hair, the right clothes” to belong in dominant culture. Her assertions, “my hair is so long, and I hate it” and “I hate everything about myself,” point to the internalization of dominant culture’s messages of inferiority as an ethnic minority. She was bullied and could not be friends with White girls like Paige because she did not reflect the values of dominant culture. In response to her inability to “blend in, be White, and be cool,” Mai performed toughness by representing as a gangster.

As Mai shared in an interview, she had “a lot of experience not fitting in” as a Hmong American. The above monologue was grounded in her elementary school days where she struggled to belong because she “was the Asian kid in a White school.” Even though there were other Asian American students at the school, Mai believed, “All the Asian, other Asian kids are so Americanized. I was the lone Asian kid.” While the racialization of Asian Americans homogenizes differences across generation and ethnic groups (Ngo & Lee, 2007), Mai’s monologue pointed to acculturation differences that made her “the lone Asian kid” despite the presence of other Asian American students.

According to Mai, her experiences of alienation are the stuff of movies, so unbelievable that they cannot seem “real”:

People think that it only happens in movies. That it’s not real. Like even I thought that. Like I thought that as a kid growing up. I’m like, “This is movies. This don’t happen.” And suddenly I hit sixth grade, and it’s there. And it’s everywhere. It’s kids are bullying. Kids are crying in front of me. And you can’t do anything about it. The adults don’t care. Like they certainly didn’t care when I was getting bullied. So it was just—I needed to get it out there. (Mai, female, 16)

She emphasized in an interview that the “shoe part” of her writing “really did happen.” A girl from the school approached her one day and said, “‘Your shoes are ugly. Get new ones.’ And I got new ones.” COYA’s theatre program was a forum for Mai to reflect on and name experiences of exclusion, but also to “get it out there” for others to know.

And yet, the Hmong adolescents did not only feel alienated from mainstream culture. Their work on the play also elucidated their struggles to belong in the Hmong community. For example, as the youth explored themes for the play, the girls especially focused on differing gender expectations in Hmong culture (Donnelly, 1994). During one group conversation, Ellie shared that her parents always tell her to “stay at home, stay at home” because she’s a girl. When Jane asked, “Do you think sexism is an Asian family thing?” and whether their White friends have the same kinds of experiences, Kia replied that it is specifically a Hmong family thing. She pointed out the protectiveness of Hmong parents with an example of how Hmong parents do not let their children take driver’s education, whereas White parents do. Anna adds that the White youth have a lot of freedom in comparison to Hmong youth, so much so that some of her White friends “wish their parents were more strict.” Mai especially stressed what she saw as parents’ limited view of the possibilities for their cultural identities and lives: “A lot of our parents don’t understand about how it is growing up in America. All they know is education, education, education. And they’re really stuck in the traditional thing where you don’t go out.”

The cultural expectations for Hmong youth did not only come from their parents to attend to Hmong ethnic identity. Youth also experienced pressure from Hmong school peers to behave a certain way as Hmong Americans. For example, as the below fieldnote illustrates, Anna shared a school experience where she did not fit in with other Hmong youth:

Anna volunteers to finish reading her monologue. This time she gets through it, but it takes about 10-15 minutes to do so because she has to continue to stop and gather herself. At one point, Pahnia gets up to get some napkins for Anna to dry her tears. Throughout the reading, Jane reiterates that she is in a safe space. The story that Anna narrates is about her experience transferring to a high school with predominantly Hmong American students. She describes them as bullies who shamed her for not knowing her language, for having White friends, and for being a “race traitor.” The ending of her monologue conveys her joy at returning to her old school and her White friends, where she enjoyed “feeling liked” again.

Anna’s experiences of cultural marginalization involved accusations by Hmong peers that she was a “race traitor” for her lack of Hmong language fluency and having mostly White friends (cf. Pyke & Dang, 2003). As the youth examined their experiences of cultural marginalization, they showed that belonging did not simply align with their Hmong ethnicity. “Hmong American” comprises differences within and across generation, gender, class, language, among others. While Anna’s Hmong school peers had an understanding of Hmong identity that included having close Hmong friends and Hmong language proficiency, she had different ideas about what it meant to be Hmong (cf. S. J. Lee, 2005).

The work of the Hmong youth in COYA explored differences in Hmong identity and experiences that enabled youth such as Anna and Mai to name inter- and intra-group struggles as they navigated culture, identity, and belonging as low-income, second-generation Hmong adolescents. This was possible through opportunities for youth to delve into personal, painful experiences that teased out the nuances of acculturation expectations. Despite intra-group differences in what it means to be Hmong, the participation of Hmong youth in COYA also nurtured an awareness of the ways in which Hmong history, identities, and experiences are ignored and denigrated by school and society, and enabled youth to construct a positive Hmong identity.

Confronting Racial Stereotypes

Teng suggests they could do a scene where this “Asian dude falls for a White chick, gets in a fight with a White guy.” He explains that the White guy is a football player and smart and beats the Asian dude up. A youth says, “It’s like the Great Gatsby.” Another youth says, “I love that movie!” Suzy sits upright and asks, “What if we copy movies—stereotypical films like Mean Girls—and then we do reality?” Jane points the marker at Suzy and says, “I like this. Teng, there’s something that I see with friends and Asian guys.” She continues to share a story about when she and a group of Asian American friends experienced racism: “One time with 10 of my friends, all Asian, we went to a bar. These were strong, professors at the University, spoken word artists. All these people stared at us. The entire night we got harassed by guys calling them ‘bonsai.’ Guys would come over and hit on the girls in front of our guys. This wouldn’t happen if we were Black. We were with boyfriends, partners. Some of my guy friends were so infuriated because they had to fight for us.” Jane tells the youth, “I encourage you to push the envelope. Comedy comes from pain.”

As the above fieldnote shows, work in the theatre program engaged Jane and the Hmong youth in discussing and navigating racialized and gendered issues that they confront in their everyday lives. As Jane and the Hmong youth brainstormed ideas for the play, their conversations involved sharing stories of marginalization as Asian Americans and ethnic minority men and women. She encouraged the group to “push the envelope” and consider painful moments as points of inspiration. The Hmong youth wrote about the pressure to fight to prove Asian American masculinity, desire to be a powerful boss (rather than a powerless female adolescent), burden of the pressure to take advanced placement classes, among other stories about racialized experiences as Asian and Hmong Americans.

As they reflected on and challenged dominant narratives that constrained their identities, the Hmong youth especially focused on the “model minority” stereotype to examine the politics of belonging and construct identities that complicated the model minority stereotype. One way in which they did so was through Kia’s character, a “smart Asian girl” who was soft-spoken and wore glasses. The play opens with a monologue where an Asian American male high school student character introduces the other Asian American high school characters one by one. The introduction of Kia’s character brings attention to the stereotype: “Kia’s now the ‘smart Asian girl.’ At least, that’s the way people see her. She’s going to get into Harvard for sure. ‘Wow, she’s so smart. She’s going to be so rich!’ That’s all they say.” As a model minority, Kia will be able to attend an Ivy League school and attain immense wealth because of her intelligence.

Even as the above introduction reiterated the stereotype, ³ the lines “at least, that’s the way people see her,” and “that’s all they say” also suggested the “nerd” or “smart Asian girl” stereotype inadequately described Kia’s identity. Kia wrote about school experiences being stereotyped as a model minority and the ways in which her identity reflected and exceeded the image (Ngo, 2010). The details for her character were based on her experiences as a student and a nerd who is “pretty smart” and “wear[s] glasses all the time”:

Okay. So I started writing like, just like how I was picked on. Kind of, from like, because I’d wear glasses all the time. (Laughter) Yeah, I think I look weird without glasses. And I just started writing. And I’m the nerd in the play. And I’m pretty smart. So it’s like sometimes people take advantage of that. And like I once had to—There was a African American girl and I had jewelry class. And I knew, I knew what I was doing cuz—Yeah, I knew what I was doing. But she seemed confused. But she’s never there. So I knew why she was confused. And she asked me to do like her work for her before. And I was like, “Sure,” cuz she was intimidating. So yeah, but that’s how my character got developed. (Kia, female, 16)

Kia’s work on the play provided her with a means to reflect on experiences of being “picked on” and “take[n] advantage of” as a quiet, smart Asian American student. She drew from an experience in a jewelry class where she agreed to do the schoolwork of a threatening classmate. Notably, Kia recognized the unfairness of the request, given that her classmate often skipped the class.

As Kia examined her experiences, she decided, “At one point, I just wanted to add how the nerd stands up for themselves, cuz usually nerds don’t.” In the rewriting of her experiences with the model minority stereotype, she refused to continue to do homework for the student. In the scene that she wrote, Kia and another Hmong student, Mai, are at a party. Mai asks Kia to do her Biology homework again. At first, Kia agrees, but then decides she no longer wants to do someone else’s schoolwork. The exchange escalates into a threat by Mai that if Kia does not help her, she would make her school life “a living hell”:

As Kia stands up for herself, she points out the injustice of the situation by letting Mai know that she only needs her help with Biology because Mai is never in class to learn, and that their teacher would not approve of the request. In response, Mai threatens Kia with “You don’t like being known as a nerd, do you?” This threat conveys the status of the nerd as pariah in school, and points to the bullying that they endure.

The scene continues with Kia exclaiming, “This is such CRAP!!” The other students at the party stop what they are doing and turn to the two girls. Kia then complexly talks back to the Asian American model minority stereotype:

I mean—I mean—People think just cuz I’m a nerd, all I want to do is homework or read. Sometimes, I’d like to be asked to go out to parties—or to the mall even. But I never get asked. I hang out with my family a lot, and that can be a bummer, but at least they don’t think of me as just a “smart Asian girl.” I’m a straight A student and I’m really proud of that—but sometimes, sometimes I do get lonely. I like to have fun, too. I play sports, you know. I’m pretty athletic. I bet you didn’t know that about me. Yes, I wear glasses. Yes, I don’t always wear designer clothes. Being known as the “smart Asian girl”—I guess I should be proud of that, because at least I’m not known as the “dumb Asian girl” or something worse.

In this soliloquy, Kia conveys the loneliness and hurt caused by social exclusion (i.e., not being invited to parties or to the mall). She challenges the conception that as a nerd, all she wants “to do is homework or read.” Instead, she asserts that she “likes to have fun” and is “pretty athletic.” Rather than internalize the racism of the model minority stereotype and reject being a “straight A student” (Osajima, 1993), her Asian American identity construction embraced academic achievement while simultaneously expanding notions of the “smart Asian girl” to include athleticism and sociality.

As the scene continues, Kia tells Mai, “I never should’ve agreed to help you out. Maybe I was stupid enough to think that by doing your homework, you would be my friend. My mistake. I’m sorry but I can’t do your homework for you anymore.” When Kia starts to exit the party, Mai stops her with: “You. Are such. A FOB.” The scene continues:

Significantly, while Kia’s experiences as a nerd echoes those of nerds from other racial backgrounds, they are also different and nuanced by her racial and immigrant identity. In this rewriting of her experiences, Kia especially (re)presented racialized discourses that construct her cultural identity as foreign and Other. She lacked belonging in the school because of her “fresh off the boat” (FOB) refugee status, “ugly-ass clothes,” and the “nasty-ass papaya salad” of Hmong cuisine.

The positioning of Mai, a Hmong American female character, as Kia’s antagonist reflects the complexity of processes of racism experienced by immigrants, whereby adolescents sometimes internalize the racial oppression of dominant society and attempt to distance themselves from negative stereotypes by embracing the dominant culture and rejecting practices that may be too “ethnic” or “Asian” (Osajima, 1993; Pyke & Dang, 2003). S. J. Lee (2005) found in her work with Hmong high school students that “Americanized” second-generation Hmong students “ridiculed traditional students for being too traditional, conservative, and old-fashioned” and “used derogatory terms such as “FOB” or “FOBBIES” . . . to describe traditional students” (p. 54). Likewise, Mai’s use of “FOB” and other pejorative language to denigrate Kia draws on racial imageries of dominant culture in an act of co-ethnic Othering that labels Kia as “too Hmong” (Pyke & Dang, 2003). Further, her statement, “your kind isn’t wanted here” echoed anti-immigrant discourses and discrimination experienced by Hmong and other immigrants in the United States (Greenberg, Greenberg, & Hootkin, 2004).

Kia subverted the model minority stereotype in ways that allowed her to rewrite dominant narratives as well as rewrite the experiences of her life (Halverson, 2005; Vasudevan et al., 2010). She not only incorporated her life experiences into the play, but authored different outcomes. In her school experiences, Kia did not stand up to her classmate, but in the play she did so by refusing to continue doing Mai’s homework. When her character punches Mai in the face, it disrupted dominant depictions of the compliant, weak Asian American nerd. Further, her departing remark, “I happen to like papaya salad,” avowed the goodness of the difference of Hmong food and culture.

Through participation in the theatre program, Hmong youth were able explore the complexities of racial stereotypes, talk back to dominant narratives, and imagine new possibilities for an Asian American identity. The representation of intra-ethnic Othering (Pyke & Dang, 2003) by Mai as she shunned Kia as “too ethnic” forcefully captures the power of anti-Asian racism to categorize Asian Americans as Other and simultaneously recruit Asian ethnics in the denigration of their own group. The next section extends the inter- and intra-group analysis by showing that as the youth examined their experiences as immigrants, they explored struggles with acculturation expectations from non-Hmong peers as well as those of Hmong peers and parents.

Constructing Hmong Ethnicity

For immigrant families, engagement in co-ethnic, CBOs nurtures positive ethnic identities that provide youth and parents with social capital for social and educational success (Zhou & Bankston, 1998). Co-ethnic community spaces are particularly important, due to increasingly assimilationist practices of school spaces that divest immigrant youth of their language and culture (S. J. Lee, 2005; Ngo, 2013; Valenzuela, 1999; Wong, 2010). As an after-school program within a Hmong arts organization run by Hmong American young adults, COYA afforded youth a culturally responsive space (Simpkins et al., 2016) to name their racial and ethnic experiences that ultimately nurtured a deeper understanding and appreciation of their Hmong ethnicity.

It was significant for the youth to do this work within the co-ethnic space of the Midwest Hmong Artists Collective with Hmong peers and an Asian American teaching artist. As Teng pointed out, this afforded youth with a space where they could tell a “story that everybody knows”:

I really liked the way that we were showing people what we’re going through, what stereotypes we’re going against, what problems we’ve been through. It was really like “Aww, that sucks.” Or like “Oh, I know how you feel.” Cuz there’s people who’ve done that to me. I mean everybody has some chunks that are relatable. And that’s what I really liked about the play. It was more like you’re telling your story that everybody knows. But at the same time they don’t know cuz they haven’t experienced what you’ve experienced. But they’ve experienced something similar to it so they can relate to it. (Teng, male, 18)

The theatre program was significant for the youth, because they were able to name their stories of marginalization to a group of peers (and later an audience of primarily Hmong friends and family members) who were able to relate to their experiences due to shared identities as Hmong ethnics and Asian Americans.

Their work on the play was especially meaningful because of its focus on their lives as Hmong adolescents. According to Jane, “for them to just be on the stage and represent, that’s big . . . they’re telling their story and they’re telling it just as themselves.” These stories are especially important for younger Hmong youth:

Because other Hmong youth, for instance, who are younger, who are going through something and feeling out of place, they can see this play and feel like, “Oh, they’re talking about issues that I’m familiar with. Like, eating disorders or knowing somebody who committed or attempted suicide. But they’re also Asian-American and they’re also Hmong. So you get more and more specific. And thereby, therefore you create just a sense of belonging almost in this person, this audience member.”

Thus, while it was important for the Hmong youth to delve into identity and belonging as Asian Americans, it was also critical for the youth to “get more and more specific” to their experiences as Hmong youth.

The focus of the theatre program on their stories as Hmong American adolescents (versus Hmong adults or individuals more generally) was particularly significant. Suzy cogently puts it the following way:

I think it brought the Hmong community—or how do I say this? It showed more of the Hmong community rather than showing the American community in our play. And the Hmong got—it finally put the Hmong people in a spotlight. Rather than not at all . . . . Cuz I guess we don’t really get our story told. And when we do, sometimes it’s wrong. Or when we do, it’s not really about the youth. (Suzy, female, 18)

Suzy’s comment that the play “finally put the Hmong people in a spotlight” implies that the lives and perspectives of Hmong Americans are often ignored—overshadowed by a focus on the “American community.” On the rare occasions, Hmong stories are told, the attention is not on the experiences of Hmong youth. The theatre program was important because it was one of few spaces that “focuses on the youth, the Hmong youth rather than the older Hmong generations.” A space that allows immigrant adolescents to connect with their Hmong identity is important, because youth are the ones who are becoming more distant from Hmong culture (Ngo, 2013).

As children of immigrants, the increasing adaptation of the Hmong adolescents to dominant U.S. culture (along with subtractive schooling practices) results in decreasing familiarity with ethnic language, history, and traditions (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2002). Also, “[b]ecause the culture of the school reflects and serves White middle-class students Hmong American students’ experiences remain unseen” and their cultural heritage are not part of the curriculum (S. J. Lee, 2005, p. 3). Through participation in COYA, Suzy recognized that she did not have deep knowledge about Hmong history, language, or traditions:

I started to realize that I didn’t know a lot of Hmong myself, being Hmong. I mean, I know like the history and I’ve done a lot of research. But I didn’t know like some of the traditions and like history. And I’ve kind of lost the language along the way somewhere. (Suzy, female, 18)

As Suzy examined her racial and ethnic experiences in the culturally responsive program, she began “thinking about how other [Hmong] kids are like that too. And how we don’t have a Hmong Club at our school.” This recognition motivated Suzy to establish a Hmong Club with some friends as a way to “try to promote the Hmong culture to the rest of the student body.” Her involvement in COYA thus nurtured her ethnic identity in ways that motivated her to make changes at her school and create a club dedicated to Hmong culture and identity.

For other youth such as Anna, participating in a program within a Hmong organization helped her to realize that “being a Hmong is not a bad thing.” This was considerable for her identity development, because she “personally used to think that.”

And I do love how MHAC helps us embrace it and helps us be more of like, not oppose it. Because a lot of the times they would be—Sometimes Hmong people out there, they don’t even like their race. It’s really sad to see that, because they’re kind of just, “I wish I wasn’t Hmong because Hmong people, they don’t get noticed or they don’t do this and they don’t do that. And the whole custom is just so stupid.” (Anna, female, 18)

Anna’s participation in COYA transformed her from a youth who did not want to be Hmong to one who embraced her Hmong ethnicity. Moreover, and significantly, Anna’s recognition of her negative perception of Hmong culture allowed her to see the ways in which Hmong peers have also internalized messages that they are inferior and different (Osajima, 1993).

Immigrant youth’s attempts to belong may manifest in negative attitudes toward the self and their own racial and ethnic group (Osajima, 1993; Pyke & Dang, 2003; Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Such attitudes or “hidden injuries” are a result of processes of racialization—particularly internalized racial oppression—that affect the ways in which racial and ethnic groups view themselves and one another (Osajima, 1993). Against the backdrop of the marginalization of their culture and identity in dominant culture, immigrant youth may question the worth of their cultural and ethnic community. The opportunity to “name the world” (Freire, 2000) in the co-ethnic after-school program contributed to the positive ethnic identity development of the Hmong youth.