Guided by Qi: Counter-Story of In(ter)dependence with A Chinese Immigrant Autistic Youth

• In Event: The Stories We Tell: Theorizing Intersectional Justice in the Context of Working With Marginalized Communities

Abstract

Purpose
I discuss how I use a culturally situated methodology with Chinese immigrant families in the United States raising children with disabilities, and specifically in the recent study with a Chinese autistic youth. I pursue a central research question: How did one Chinese immigrant autistic youth experience transition into adulthood in the United States? I explore what it means to be guided by the Chinese concept of qi in my methodology and what it allows me to produce in my data collection, analysis and results that move towards intersectional justice (IJ) as counter-story (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

Theoretical Framework
I draw on dis/ability critical race studies (Annamma et al., 2013) and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) to challenge the binaries that often exist in thinking about disability and to tell a counter-story of one Chinese immigrant autistic youth. In addition, I draw on decolonial feminist research (De Jong et al., 2019; Rhee, 2020) and endarkened feminist epistemology (Dillard, 2000, 2006a, 2006b), both of which work in tangent with critical theories to center alternative epistemologies marginalized in the education and social discourse.

Methods and Data Sources
I use “video-cued qi ethnography,” a methodology I developed based on Tobin et al.’s (1989) and Kaomea et al.’s (2019) work on video-cued ethnography (VCE). In my study, VCE provides a mechanism to resist a colonial gaze and “shift ethnographic authority” from researchers to participants (Tobin, 2019, p. 267). I expand VCE by drawing on the Chinese concept of “qi”, which means breath, spirit, and life force.
First, I video-recorded the daily life of one Chinese immigrant mother and her 17-year-old daughter with autism, Pearl, in suburban Georgia. Collaborating with Pearl and her mother, I edited the footage into a 20-minute film that captures a typical day in their lives. Using this edited film, I conducted one in-person video-cued interview with Pearl and one follow-up interview. Additionally, I used photo elicitation by printing screenshots from the film and asking Pearl to choose her favorite photos to include in a photo album.

Findings
Grounded in the onto-epistemology of qi, preliminary results suggest that Pearl frames her journey towards self-independence within the context of community dependence. Independence and interdependence are intertwined in Pearl’s narrative and always work together in her process of becoming an adult. Pearl draws on her community cultural wealth by using social, familial, resistant, and aspirational capital. Preliminary results also explore Pearl’s transnational perspective in utilizing these forms of capital and finding her career path.

Significance
This study moves towards intersectional justice by sharing the knowledge and brilliance of a Chinese immigrant autistic youth in culturally situated ways. This counter-story centers the epistemology of Chinese immigrant community and defies the deficit storytelling often associated with immigrant youth with disabilities. This study also informs future research with diverse immigrant communities on conducting studies that center participants’ voices and ways of knowing.

Author

• Eleanor Xiaoxiao Mehta, St. John's University