Asian/Asian American Female Scholars Positioning Themselves Through Narrative: Stories About Pathways and Barriers Through Academia

• In Event: Moving Beyond the Forever Foreigner–Honorary White Binary: Asian/American Education Scholars on Re/Claiming Diasporic and Transnational Lived Experiences

Abstract

Narratives provide a methodological entrée for understanding lives and experiences (Wortham & Gadsden, 2012). In telling autobiographical stories, narrators position and evaluate themselves and others, and thereby, construct themselves. Because identity is dynamic, an individual negotiates and develops an identity while narrating autobiographical stories (de Fina, 2012). By studying people’s stories about themselves, we can gain access to this process of positioning and self-construction, both studying and evoking people’s experiences and their construal of these experiences.

Norton (2000) defines identity as “how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future” (p. 5). In this paper, I study identity in this sense, by exploring autobiographical narratives told by Asian/Asian American female scholars about their experiences as academics going through the tenure process. I show how their autobiographical stories both represent and help construct senses of themselves as scholars struggling with the constraints and opportunities provided by gender and ethnicity.

I conducted in-depth life history interviews with three scholars who received tenure in American universities. I conducted two semi-structured interviews with each subject, including a deep interview and a follow-up interview (Lincoln, & Guba, 1985). Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using qualitative data analysis software.

Data analysis involved the four stages of analysing narratives presented by Wortham and Gadsden (2012). First, narrators describe as narrated content various narrative events in the past, which an analyst maps out, noting the key actions and characters. Second, narrators voice or position people represented in their narrative, identifying them as recognizable kinds of people. Third, while voicing themselves and other characters, narrators also evaluate these voices, taking stances on what they think of various social types. Fourth, while telling their stories, narrators also position themselves with their interlocutors in the storytelling events. I apply this methodological approach to study how the scholars identify themselves and key others in their stories about tenure.

The findings illustrate how the scholars construct themselves while telling their stories, focusing on their emergent categorizations involving race, ethnicity, and gender. The narrators describe certain characteristic events and positions that recur across cases, often involving a tension between the need for self-assertion and stereotypes of passive Asian women. Academics must develop an independent voice and make an original contribution to knowledge, which requires self-assertion. But as Asian/American women, they are too often expected to be passive and compliant, and interpreted as aggressive if they try to define themselves. The analysis shows how these female academics navigate this tension as they move through the tenure process.

The results of the study show that Asian/American female scholars’ identity formation is complex and dynamic as they become academics. They have to negotiate their way through various challenges, and this has consequences for their senses of self. Their identities become hybrid and unique, depending on the personalities and situations of each individual. The study tells their stories, contributing both to our understanding of academic power relations and to our appreciation of artful self-construction.

Author

• Deoksoon Kim, University of South Florida