Voices From Transnational Chinese Families: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Two Student Mothers

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Identity in Spaces (Table 23)

Abstract

In this collaborative autoethnographic critical inquiry, we reflect on our parenting experiences as transnational Chinese doctoral student mothers, former Chinese language educators, and emerging scholars in two U.S. higher education institutions. We draw on Asian Critical Theory (AsianCrit), a group-specific branch of critical race theory (Museus, 2014), as a conceptual lens to critically reflect on our children’s schooling experiences and language practices at home. Through revisiting the iterative process of heritage identity negotiation, and discrepancies between the cultural values promoted in mainstream US schools and transnational families, our research sheds light on the unique challenges of transnational families that the education system often overlooks, and advocate family-school partnerships to build a linguistically and culturally diverse educational environment for transnational children.

Authors

• Ying Xiong, Pennsylvania State University

• Peizhu Liu, University of Pennsylvania