Week 2 - Jowi Deguzman

Jowi Deguzman
Section A03

In Kaozong Mouavangsou’s piece, Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation of Hmong Americans, she addresses how Hmong culture and history has caused Hmong families to view education as they do and how the United States’ school system is providing Hmong youth, as well as other youth, with a distorted identity of the Hmong people, and how they view their culture. Having grown up in a military community as an Indonesian, Filipino and Muslim American, I can relate to the families that she interviewed at a high level. In many instances of my life, I was the only student of my ethnicity and religion in my classroom. Feeling like an outsider, having pressure from parents who follow the “tiger mom” Asian stereotype, and being miseducated about my culture and religion are all things I know too well. In fourth grade, my class had Christian, Caucasian visitors give a presentation on their trip to Egypt and Islam. In their presentation, they mentioned how Muslims do not eat pork solely because they believe it is “unclean.” Having knowledge of Islam from my daily life, I knew that this was not true, but when I brought it up to the teacher, she simply brushed it aside and did not bother to distribute the information to the class. The instances of being miseducated from the reading, as well as my experience, tie into the theme of the week because it is something that Asian American students around the nation face, and need to work to fix.

In Linda Vo’s piece, Transformative Disjunctions in the Academy, she writes about her battles to attain an Asian American Studies department at the university level. Having an Asian American Studies department is crucial for the identity and history of Asian Americans in this country, because without it, Asian Americans, as well as youth of other ethnicities, would only have the broad information provided by their previous U.S. history courses that do not have an adequate education of it. 

Media: I chose this image because it reminded me of how most Asian American parents are perceived. It supports the idea from Hmong families in the interviews that states that as long as your financially stable, you will be successful.