"I'm Not a White Kid": Korean American Adolescents' Identity Expression Through Literacy Practices

• In Event: What Is the "Truth" About Asian Americans? Interrogating Representations of Asian Americans in Literacies Research

Abstract

Objectives
Many scholars in the field of education have long dedicated themselves to promoting diversity against racism. These efforts have continued in literacy studies. However, Asian American youth remain an underrepresented population, often depicted as a homogenous group or with the myth of model minorities and perpetual foreigners (Iftikar & Museus, 2018; Lee, 2015). Through a year-long ethnographic study with Korean American adolescents and their families in the Northeastern United States, this study aims to learn about Korean American adolescents’ lived experiences and understand their identity expressions through literacy practices.

Perspectives
Theoretically, I ground this study in Asian Critical (AsianCrit) Theory (Iftikar & Museus, 2018; Museus & Iftikar, 2014) and a sociocultural approach to literacy that views “literacy as a social practice” (Street, 2003, p. 77) and distinguishes it from an autonomous model (Street, 1995). AsianCrit emerged from Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a critical lens to understand the racialized and oppressed experiences of Asian Americans (Chang, 1993; Museus & Iftikar, 2014). The socio-cultural perspectives of literacy are useful to understand the plurality of literacies and how literacy practices are situated in social contexts beyond the simplified view of literacy for decoding or technical skill (Street, 1997). By knitting these perspectives together, I analyze how Korean American adolescents explore and express their lived experiences and identities through literacy practices.

Methods and Data
This study is from a larger qualitative research project with adolescents from multiple countries. I focus on ten Korean American adolescents who were among the participants. I opened a writing class for ten Korean American adolescents in a local community center with a Korean American teacher to gather Korean American adolescents who were spread out across different schools in a northeastern U.S. city. I worked closely with the young people and their mothers through the weekly writing class over the course of two semesters. In the writing class, we engaged in multimodal writing focusing on their identities and lived experiences. I collected student artifacts including writing from an online community that we utilized for the writing course, interviews with students and mothers, and field notes. I went through multiple layers of data analysis to find themes (Saldaña, 2021).

Results and Significance
The analysis illuminates how literacy practices helped the young Asian Americans explore their complex and fluid identities. In addition, they expressed their racialized identities and oppressed experiences as Asian Americans in U.S. society by comparing themselves with White students; as one of the students said, “I’m not a white kid.” Moreover, these students realized that their collective experiences were a powerful tool to challenge racism and stereotypes toward Asian American communities. This study has significance for how researchers and educators utilize literacies to learn about immigrant youths’ experiences and identity expressions. The findings also contribute to understanding Asian American adolescents’ untold stories and perspectives on the consequences of the model minority and perpetual foreigners stereotypes.

Author

• Jin Kyeong Jung, Texas Tech University
  Presenting Author