Half and Half: An (Auto)ethnography of Hybrid Identities in a Korean American Mother-Daughter RelationshipPosted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2011-01-03 02:48Z by Steven |
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication
Volume 2, Issue 2 (May 2009)
pages 139-167
DOI: 10.1080/17513050902759512
Stephanie L. Young, Associate Professor of Communication Studies
University of Southern Indiana
This essay focuses on how immigrant mothers and second generation interracial daughters construct, perform, and negotiate racial and ethnic hybrid identities. Placing my mother’s experiences in dialogue with my own experiences, I (auto)ethnographically examine how we navigate our mother-daughter relationship and intercultural and interracial identities in relation to discourses of Asian American-ness. I identify three sites for identity formation: location, language, and the dialectical tension of assimilation-preservation. I argue that the enactment of a racial self is not always a conscious part of one’s identity. Rather, we each enact racialized cultural identities that are contextually performed and continuously shifting.
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