Leading without a Title: A Vietnamese-American Woman’s Counterstory on Resistance in K-20 Public Schools

• In Event: Struggling Through Together: AAPI and Asian Diaspora Leadership Perspectives

Abstract

Purpose:
Though the number of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) educators have doubled in the last eighteen years, AAPI women in administration maintained a steady rate of less than one percent (Cooc & Kim, 2022). The recurring racial disparity between the teaching force and Asian American student population is a symptom of how institutional, systemic, and structural violence harm the AAPI community while disproportionately impacting the intersectional Asian American women (AAW) educator. This study begins with, and contributes to, the Liang, et al. (2018) seminal work to understand AAW’s pathways to school leadership by including a (sub)AAW counter-story haunted by echoes of colonial and patriarchal ideologies. Because there is a stagnation of AAPI women leaders, this study explores the following question: “How does a Vietnamese-American woman’s understanding of cultural (re)producation shape her lived experience in education and pathway to school leadership?

Perspectives:
This paper uses the theoretical framework of hauntology (Derrida, 1970; Fisher, 2013) to deconstruct the model minority myth’s contributions to loss and absence. The hauntology subject is pantemporal where “past and future are present, and present is absent” who experiences a “nullified future” that was “unrightfully taken away” (Rahim, S., 2021). Thus, the ghost is “the advocate” of a promised future that the past destroyed (Good, B., 2021). Through this process, the author explores how patriarchy imitates cultural (re)productions of (dis)placement in her hauntology, challenging the dominating narrative to imagine an Asian futurism in educational leadership.

Conceptual Framework:
Through the conceptual framework of AsianFemCrit (Tsong, et al., 2024), I examine my Vietnamese American (non)leader experience. Specifically, I highlight three tenets: the centrality of racialized sexism and gendered racism, challenging and disrupting dominant, colonial, and patriarchal ideologies and narratives, and commitment to solidarity and justice. Additionally, I combine my cultural studies background to deconstruct the oppositional binary relationships of woman/man, white/Asian, and model minority/perpetual foreigner to resist the recapitulation of cultural production and aesthetics and disrupt colonial narratives to reimagine an Asia-futurism in education.

Methods:
To engage in this discursive practice, this study uses an auto-ethnography narrative research method that analyzes DailyOM journal entries that span over the past two years, images, records, and counters-stories. I use counterstorytelling (Soloranzo & Yosso, 2002) to share moments that situate discussion of race, gender, and discrimination in my experiences in education. Because of my natural inclination for semiotics, I will use Derrida’s deconstruction approach to conduct a close reading and deconstruct the narratives’ underlying assumptions and power structures to challenge the dominant ideology.

Connection to Conference:
This research examines the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and identity of Southeast Asian educators.. This study presents an alternative understanding to AAW leadership and methodology that honors Asian women’s resistance to authority in history. It contributes to the understanding of AAW pathways to school leadership while complicating the meaning of Asian stereotypes. Additionally this study emphasizes the significance of AAW intersectionality and inclusivity as a form of resistance and transformative practice to dismantle systemic inequalities.

Author

• Ruby Pham-Stuart, University of Houston