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Good Chinese girls and the model minority: race, education, and community in Girl in Translation and Front Desk

journal contribution
posted on 2021-09-01, 00:00 authored by Sue ChenSue Chen, Sin Wen Lau
The girl protagonists in Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation and Kelly Yang’s Front Desk embody and reinterpret the notion of guai (loosely translated as “good”) in their struggle to adapt to life in America. Guai is the most important concept governing childhood in Chinese societies. The word, often used to praise children, denotes obedience, docility, the acceptance of authority and conformity to accepted norms of behaviour. This essay explores how familial, racial and institutional forces impinge on and reshape the protagonists’ understanding of what it means to be a “good Chinese girl” to push beyond analyses of Asian American texts for young people as perpetuating or challenging the idea of the model minority. Given the significance of guai in the lives of Chinese American children, it is necessary to analyse how specific Asian cultural logics are adapted to the American context. Discussions about Asian American identities must not only explicate the “American-ness” of characters’ choices but also consider the ways in which “Chineseness” shapes, constitutes and diversifies the “Asian” in what it means to be an Asian American.

History

Journal

Children's Literature in Education

Volume

52

Issue

3

Pagination

291 - 306

Publisher

Springer

Location

Cham, Switzerland

ISSN

0045-6713

eISSN

1573-1693

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

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