At more than three million, Filipina/o Americans are one of the largest ethnic minority groups in the United States. Yet, few studies have focused on the experiences of Filipina/o Americans in institutions of U.S. higher education. Given the increasing disparity in degree achievement between first and second generation Filipina/o Americans, this qualitative study investigated the challenges to persistence that Filipina/o American undergraduates have faced in college and identified resources and strategies that have facilitated their survival in higher education. Through individual interviews and a focus group, participants shared their experiences in a private, Catholic, and predominantly White institution. This study found that challenges to persistence included feelings of cultural dissonance between Filipina/o Americans and a predominantly White and affluent student body, feelings of invisibility and marginality due to lack of representation in the institution’s academic and social spheres, and personal academic challenges. Their stories also elucidated that despite these struggles, students were able to persist. Campus subcultures such as ethnic and cultural organizations, an Asian-interest sorority, and service organizations were primary factors in persistence. Additionally, the support of family was key in fostering participants’ educational aspirations. Institutional characteristics such as size, religious affiliation and mission, and available resources were also cited as important factors in building their commitment to persist. The stories shared in this study are a testament to the need to destabilize dominant narrative of persistence in higher education to include Filipina/o American students who are often overlooked as a result of the model minority myth.

This is a study of the collective identities of Japanese American elderly in a former sugar plantation community in the rural town of Puna, Hawai'i. Investigating their plantation stories in which they remember, evaluate, and represent their past lives on the plantation from the 1920s, to the 1980s, I explore a process of which they collectively delineate their identities in terms of ethnicity, class, generation, and gender. My analysis focuses on the contents as well as the contexts of plantation stories that include their social and cultural circumstances now and then, transitions in the socioeconomic environment in Hawai'i, and historical events that they have gone through. The purpose of this study is to produce an ethnography of remembering that captures ethnographic voice-cultural testimony in which the Japanese American elderly narrate their plantation experience as both an internally-oriented emotional manifestation and an externally-based common understanding of their community. I demonstrate how the Japanese American elderly employ their memories to reconstruct plantation experience and define their peoplehood as the collective identities of plantation-raised Japanese Americans.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2002. / Bibliography : leaves 247-276.

This study was conducted in a Chinese community located in an academic community in the United States. Ethnographic data were collected from the Chinese community in general and subsequently a close study of ten families who had school aged children was conducted. As international graduate students or visiting scholars, the parents in the families had affiliations with institutions of higher education and lived in the United States temporarily. The purpose of this study was to document, analyze, and find the meanings of the Chinese families' home literacy practices, as well as their strengths and difficulties. Theories of literacy as social and cultural practices led to the study's focus on the social and cultural backgrounds of the parents and their use of home literacy as cultural practices for achieving social goals. This study addressed the following research questions: (1) What are the home literacy practices of a group of Chinese families living in a community in the American society; (2) What are the Chinese parents' perspectives about literacy, schooling, their roles in their children's literacy development, and how have these factors influenced the families' home literacy practices; (3) How have families experienced literacy learning in the American schools, and how have these experiences influenced the families' home literacy practices. This study was ethnographic in methodology. Data were obtained through interviews and participant observation. Analysis of the data showed that the parents, who grew up in Chinese society, formed their views of literacy in that particular sociocultural environment. Those views guided them in home literacy practices. These practices served as a process of cultural transmission. Through home literacy practices, the parents helped their children construct and maintain identity with Chinese culture, traditional social relations, and the values of literacy learning. Home literacy practices also helped the families make adaptations when they came to the United States. When the families came to this country, the host culture posed as challenges to the families' lives. The children's schools served especially as the representative of the new culture to the families. The school culture made a strong impact on the families' home literacy practices. Soon the parents found that what counted as literacy in this new sociocultural environment was different from their previous experiences. They used home literacy practices to help cope with the difficulties they faced. These practices enabled them and their children to negotiate between the Chinese and the American cultures, to help the children function in American schools, and to prepare them return to home country.

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