Toward “Ghetto in a Good Way”: Cambodian and Lao American Girls Navigating Identity

• In Event: Navigating the Intersections of Asian/Asian American Identities and Differential Experiences

Abstract

This paper explores how Cambodian and Lao American girls navigate identity at the intersections of gender, race, and ethnicity. It illuminates how nonconformity to traditional gender norms and pushing back against Americanization are forms of resistance to both racial and gender oppression. It seeks to expand the boundaries on how racialized Asian girls believe they should be and what they are capable of by revealing how they carve out spaces of belonging and create ways to survive oppressive conditions.

Author

• Diana Chandara, University of Minnesota