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Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents

Conflict, Identity, and Values

• By Terry S. Trepper, May Tung

• Price: $34.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 128
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 17th July 2000
• ISBN: 978-0-7890-1056-8

About the Book

Based on culture-related themes derived from the author's psychotherapeutic work with young Chinese-American professionals, this important book relates personal problems and conditions to specific sources in Chinese and American cultures and the immigration experience. Unique and practical, this is a nonclinical work that will help Asian Americans connect historical and cultural meanings to their Chinese roots. It will also give educators, mental health professionals, and those working with Chinese populations firsthand insight into the lives and identities of Chinese-American immigrants.

Exploring the meaning and arrangement of Chinese family names, the bonds among family members, and the different contexts of “self” to Chinese Americans, this valuable book offers you insight into the dilemma between “self” and “family” that both the younger and older generations must face in American society.

In order to help you understand Chinese immigrants or help your clients, Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents provides you with information about several differences found between the two cultures, such as:

• understanding that words and concepts may not relate to the same emotions or translate exactly between languages
• realizing that strong family bonds of the Chinese fosters interdependence, unlike Americans who admire self-assertiveness and independence
• recognizing the fear that Chinese immigrant parents have of losing their strong family ties and seeing their children forsake customs because they do not want to be seen as “different”
• discovering why risk-taking and adventurous acts are discouraged by many Chinese parents
• comprehending the great importance to Chinese parents of continuing their family and raising successful children
• acknowledging the different roles of men and women within several different contexts in American and Chinese societies
  
  With personal vignettes, humor, and interesting insights, Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents: Conflict, Identity, and Values demonstrates how some Chinese Americans are connecting historical and cultural meanings to their Chinese roots and bridging generational gaps between themselves and their parents to create a truly cross-cultural identity.

Table of Contents

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. What Is in a Name? Culture and Personal Boundary
• What Is in a Chinese Name?
• Individual Persons in Chinese Context
• The Great Wall Mentality: Boundary As Reflected in Dwellings
• Chapter 2. The Environment for Chinese-American Self-Identity
• The Process of Self-Identification
• Chinese-American Self-Identity
• “E. T. Phone Home”: Roots of the “Self”
• Chapter 3. “You Have a Chinese What?!”: Internalized Inferiority
• “Asianness as a Liability”
• Self-Representation
• Yes, Even in China
• Chapter 4. Emotions: Coping Style, Allocation, and Communication
• Worldviews and Coping Styles
• Allocation and Communication of Emotions
• Emotional Awareness for Chinese Americans
• Chapter 5. Moving Out from the Shadow of the Eclipse: Integration
• In America
• In China
• Chapter 6. Ancestral Ghosts Meet Superman: A New Cycle of Chinese Immigrants
• References
• Index