Overview

The untold stories of resilience in Hmong American education Re-membering Culture is a deep exploration of the intricate dynamics of cultural memory and education, centering the experiences of Hmong American students and educators. Arguing that the school, as a product of coloniality, perpetuates the marginalization and erasure of non-Western epistemologies, author Bic Ngo sheds light on the subtle yet impactful process of structured forgetting within the American education system. This politics of forgetting, in turn, contributes to the fragmentation of Hmong cultural heritage, identity, and community. Based on a high school in an urban center with a considerable Hmong immigrant community, Ngo's work draws on extensive ethnographic research with Hmong American community leaders, school administrators, parents, teachers, staff, and high school students to understand how they navigate the terrain of Western pedagogy while attempting to retain and preserve Hmong knowledge systems. Exploring a range of school experiences, Ngo traverses students' challenges in balancing school with family life and the everyday cultural racism encountered in the classroom as well as grassroots efforts to preserve culture, including the establishment of a Hmong Cultural Club. Highlighting these experiences and voices, Ngo provides a nuanced understanding of the challenges Hmong Americans face within an assimilationist society while contesting the dominant anti-immigrant narratives of refugee suffering and poverty. Through these practices of (re)storytelling, resurgence, and refusal, she underscores the agency of the Hmong American community, illuminating how the critical consciousness fostered by re-membering serves as a powerful tool in confronting white hegemonic ideologies in education. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

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9781517910754

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"""In this highly engaging critical ethnographic work set in an urban U.S. high school with a substantial Hmong American student population, Bic Ngo skillfully challenges static notions of diversity, culture, and identity. By revealing the complexity of views and struggles of students, teachers, staff, parents, and community leaders, Re-membering Culture provides a wealth of insights for educational researchers and practitioners to consider in providing schooling that is truly culturally sustaining."" —Wayne E. Wright, Purdue University"

"""Breathtaking! Connecting the dots between American imperialism abroad and cultural imperialism through U.S. schooling, Re-membering Culture offers paradigm-shifting lenses for examining the repression of and renewal by Hmong Americans while also rattling taken-for-granted narratives about diversity, democracy, and critical pedagogy more broadly. Once again, the brilliant Bic Ngo has offered a much-needed intervention for all educators and advocates committed to justice in and through education.""—Kevin K. Kumashiro, author of Surrendered: Why Progressives Are Losing the Biggest Battles in Education   ""In this highly engaging critical ethnographic work set in an urban U.S. high school with a substantial Hmong American student population, Bic Ngo skillfully challenges static notions of diversity, culture, and identity. By revealing the complexity of views and struggles of students, teachers, staff, parents, and community leaders, Re-membering Culture provides a wealth of insights for educational researchers and practitioners to consider in providing schooling that is truly culturally sustaining.""—Wayne E. Wright, Purdue University  "

Author Information

Bic Ngo is professor of culture and teaching in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. She is author of Unresolved Identities: Discourse, Ambivalence, and Urban Immigrant Studies.

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