The week 3 readings discuss the underrepresentation of Hmong Americans. An important concept addressed in the article, "Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography," is model minority. Model minority assumes that all Asians are intellectual and are supposed to do well academically, and they have nothing to complain about (Moua, NA). Model minority can be positive for those who is successful and doing well academically and economically, but can be negative for those who failed to fulfill the expectations. For example, Chinese students are expected to do excellently well at math. However, not all Chinese students are good at math, and those who do not may be mocked by their peers for not fulfilling the mythical assumption. In the article, "Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An Autoethnography," Moua shared her story as a research assistant for her white advisor. As a Hmong American, she was raised to do whatever she's told to do and work hard. And she did the Administrative work asked by the advisor and said it was ok to not be able to do research. However, this rule-binding and hard-working was interpreted as not suitable for a Ph.d program. She failed to be a "good" graduate student. By sharing this story, Moua illustrated the needs in the education system to help minority students in graduate education like in undergraduate education. An interesting concept explained by Moua is the imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is "the self-perceived feelings of fake intellectual identity in academic and high achieving environments"( Moua, NA). I personally relate to this concept. I am an international student from China, and sometimes I doubt the reality of me being here in an American college institution. Before reading this article, I didn't know who are Hmong Americans. So one question I have about this reading is what can we do to improve awareness of the underrepresented minority in America and address their dilemmas properly.
References:
Moua. M. (NA). Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American
Woman: An Autoethnography. Hmong Studies Journal. 19(1):1-25.
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