Reading: Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography
The article makes an interesting point noting how "much of AAPI and SEAA academic research tends to focus on the binary of success and failure of students" (Moua). Although it may be significantly prominent in the research surrounding AAPI and SEAA, I believe this statement touches on a broader idea that's not limited to the Asian educational experience but all of academia. As society fixates on the definitive options of pass or fail, victory or loss, triumph or failure, people search for simple reasonings behind these "simple situations." For Asians in particular, due to the generalization that all Asian parents deal a great amount of care and discipline into their child's academic performances, people have correlated "a lack of Hmong parental involvement" with any "low academic performances" among Hmong students (Moua). Rather than the obstacles or low representation Hmong people face in academia, I found the most abhorrent factor of the Hmong educational experience to be the idea of blaming one's parents or cultural ethnicity for the individual's deficiencies in reaching expectations ensued from a myth. Not only do the expectations for Hmong success in academia originate from a superficial stereotype for a significant amount of people, but such circumstances also prompt students performing under these expectations to subject their parents to blame, question their identity, and drown in accusation and psychological issues; not to mention the lack of mental health concerns by many Asian populations. In the end, Hmong students begin to diverge away from their family and culture, molding into the shells created by macro facilities, while "the over emphasis on cultural deficiencies often turns a blind eye to the macro forces that perpetuate these discourses in academia" (Moua). On top of everything, the Model Minority Myth also allows "the White dominant race to dismiss and devalue other minorities and their needs, attributing their failures to their lack of hard work and educational values" (Moua). The macro forces blossom from the blood of the rest of the population.
Hmong women, with expectations of bearing a high work ethic, functioning in a precise and organized manner within the realms of guidance from others, suffer further more, as seen in the accounts of Manee Moua and Caroline Valverde. I found myself relating to multiple aspects of Moua's reflection of her time as a graduate student from simply the first paragraph. I believe many Asians, not limited to women, understand the desire to "to speak perfect English to avoid being stereotyped as a foreigner or marginalized as someone lacking intelligence" (Moua). It's a sad reality that I found myself contributing to before. Americans don't seem to associate European who don't speak English fluently with a lack of intelligence, but they do for Asians, as they simply see Asians as a joke, including their accents, while romanticizing European accents. In addition, Asian women may tend to relate more to the need to prove their worth and abilities in a workspace. Although dealing with heavy circumstances, the openness of females in the educational workspace in regards to their struggles have brought a more positive light to the future of Asian American women by debunking myths and exposing the realities of hierarchies and oppression in academia.
Question: How can the cultural identity struggles of Asian American women in academia broaden and be applied to assist the work experiences of individuals outside of education?
Work Cited:
Moua, Manee. Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography. Retrieved from http://hmongstudies.org/MouaHSJ19.pdf
Ellis, Michael Andrew (Nov 14, 2017). 3 Ways Mormonism Reflects Traditional Hmong Culture. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@maelliswriter/3-ways-mormonism-reflects-traditional-hmong-culture-3b200a46b499
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