Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family MythTiger Mom. Asian patriarchy. Model minority children. Generation gap. The many images used to describe the prototypical Asian family have given rise to two versions of the Asian immigrant family myth. The first celebrates Asian families for upholding the traditional heteronormative ideal of the “normal (white) American family” based on a hard-working male breadwinner and a devoted wife and mother who raises obedient children. The other demonizes Asian families around these very same cultural values by highlighting the dangers of excessive parenting, oppressive hierarchies, and emotionless pragmatism in Asian cultures. Saving Face cuts through these myths, offering a more nuanced portrait of Asian immigrant families in a changing world as recalled by the people who lived them first-hand: the grown children of Chinese and Korean immigrants. Drawing on extensive interviews, sociologist Angie Y. Chung examines how these second-generation children negotiate the complex and conflicted feelings they have toward their family responsibilities and upbringing. Although they know little about their parents’ lives, she reveals how Korean and Chinese Americans assemble fragments of their childhood memories, kinship narratives, and racial myths to make sense of their family experiences. However, Chung also finds that these adaptive strategies come at a considerable social and psychological cost and do less to reconcile the social stresses that minority immigrant families endure today. Saving Face not only gives readers a new appreciation for the often painful generation gap between immigrants and their children, it also reveals the love, empathy, and communication strategies families use to help bridge those rifts. |
Contents
1 The Asian Immigrant Family Myth | 1 |
2 Education Sacrifice and the American Dream | 25 |
3 Love and Communication across the Generation Gap | 45 |
4 Children as Family Caregivers | 83 |
5 Daughters and Sons Carrying Culture | 111 |
6 The Racial Contradictions of Being American | 143 |
7 Behind the Family Portrait | 186 |
Other editions - View all
Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family Myth Angie Y. Chung Limited preview - 2016 |
Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family Myth Angie Y. Chung No preview available - 2016 |
Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family Myth Angie Y. Chung No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
achieve adult African Americans American Dream American-born children Amy Chua Amy Tan Angie Arlie Hochschild Asian families Asian fetishizers Asian immigrant families assimilation background career caregiving child childhood children of immigrants Chinese Americans Chinese immigrant families conflicts context cultural brokers cultural differences cultural values daughters depending dynamics economic emotional emotionally ethnic community ethnic identities experiences explained extended kin family culture family roles family’s father feel felt friends gender roles heteronormative household immigrant parents interview Jewish Americans kids Korean American Korean and Chinese Latino lives mainstream male marriage married middle-class migration model minority myth mother narratives negotiate networks older oldest participants race racial minorities racism relations relationship responsibilities sacrifice second-generation Asian Americans second-generation Korean second-generation white sense siblings sister social stereotypes structures struggles Taiwanese American things tion traditional understand white Americans working-class York younger