Volume 14, Issue 2 -

In this article, I discuss my own experience as a critical multicultural educator who is an Asian American. Using the psychoanalytic ideas of Holding Environment and Countertransference, I use the two questions of where you am from and where are you really from in this article as a way to think through and learn about my own emotional world and its influence on multicultural education teacher education courses that I teach. I conclude that such exploration into my emotional world is helpful and necessary in giving new and different meanings to my emotional experience beyond seeing it as a mere response to students’ questions and understanding their psychical world in which questions like where are you from and where are you really from become the students’ own defense against difference.

My goal in this article is to share my experiences as an academic in an institution of higher education in the United States. To a large measure, I provide insight into a world that contains multiple complexities for those who have come from a different shore. These experiences were based on my not, at first, understanding the prevailing cultural rules of the new context, with some experiences being humorous and others less so. This article presents lessons that were learned over the years that have allowed me to continue to strengthen my understanding of myself as a stranger from a different shore.

In this article, I apply a critical autoethnographic approach to frame my experience as a Taiwanese immigrant woman faculty in the US higher educational institutions where I served and continue to serve. I describe how I developed research agendas to produce knowledge as a means to diversify our understanding of minorities. Conducting research in rapidly changing Chinese ethnic communities with an intent to include other immigrant groups and produce cross-ethnic understanding with other researchers in digital media proved to be incompatible with the current conditions of the tenure-granting process at CUNY, and my application for tenure was denied. However, I contested the decision; and after winning my case, I engaged in institutional research on the roles of Asian American faculty in leadership in the system. I conclude that hiring and retention of diverse faculty and engaging in activism are ways to maintain academic rigor for the system.

Hmong people in the United States of America have started to emerge on the national scene thanks to the recent rise of Hmong politicians winning State representative, senate, and assembly seats. The Hmong-American experience in the United States is a rollercoaster experience. While we have made America our home for the past 45 years, our presence is still largely unknown to the majority of the American people. The struggle of every Hmong person living in a relatively unknown land, unknown culture, and unknown people is very real, it represents that of the whole community struggles to survive. This article focuses on my graduate school experience through the so called multicultural education system. I provide a brief history of the Hmong people, why we are here in the United States, Hmong people’s overall educational experience, and my personal experience in maneuvering through the bureaucratic institution of graduate school. My story represents the larger story of the Hmong people experience in the United States. Portions of this story have appeared as a chapter in the book, Voices of Asian American in higher education: The unheard stories (Obiakor & Hui-Michael, 2018).

One of the critical issues in education today is how to help all students to maximize their fullest potential. Achieving this goal seems to be difficult for many people who come from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. At all levels, they endure direct and indirect disenfranchisements, disadvantages, and disillusionments, especially if they learn differently, are racially different, demonstrate different behavioral patterns, have different personal idiosyncrasies, or come from different countries. Despite these apparent impediments, Asians are viewed by many as “model” minorities when compared to African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. This view has continued to affect how Asians view themselves and how the society as a whole views them. Coming originally from Nigeria to the United States, I have had myriad interactions with Asians as student, professor, scholar, leader, and professional. In this article, I share my experiences with Asians and how these experiences have exposed multicultural realities and myths.