This thesis traces the immigration of "model minority" mothers: Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean, from their home countries to the United States. It examines the
reasons women immigrate to the United States, the situations into which they immigrate,
and the ways that they adapt traditional East Asian modes of mothering and child rearing
techniques to life in the United States. This thesis finds that Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean women emigrate to the United States primarily under the direction of male
figures of authority. Motivators of their emigration include leaving poverty and war in
their own countries, joining husbands or potential husbands in the United States, hoping
to escape the cultural restrictions of their home countries, or becoming prostitutes. As
these women make their own way in the United States, they find themselves
encountering immense cultural difficulties, not the least of which is the alteration of their
role as mothers as they try to raise their children in an entirely new cultural context.
Despite the hopes of many of these women, what they find in the United States is not a
life of leisure and wealth; rather, they are forced into positions in which they must work
for long hours outside the home to provide economically for their families as well as
raise their children and care for the home. This thesis finds that memoirs, novels, biographies, autobiographies, narratives, historical accounts, and sociological data
highlight several major areas of adaptation for these women including: the differences in
these women's sense of community in America, their expectations of the educational
system in the United States, the reversal of power in the use of language between mother
and daughter, and the complex measures of adaptation to and rejection of U.S. cultural
norms that mothers must implement while raising their children. Rather than being
crushed by the labor that they must perform and the cultural adaptations that they must
make, these women willingly sacrifice their lives to build a base upon which their
children can succeed through the attainment of higher education leading toward upward
mobility.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/85907 |
| Date | 10 October 2008 |
| Creators | Ashie, Christina Anne |
| Contributors | Nelson, Claudia |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, born digital |
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