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Balancing between Two Worlds: The Integration Stage of Bicultural Development

Paul R. Smokowski and Martica Bacallao

in Becoming Bicultural: Risk, Resilience, and Latino Youth

This chapter examines how Latino immigrant families view the integration stage of bicultural development. Using alternation theory as a guide, it considers how the process of becoming bicultural is ... More

This chapter examines how Latino immigrant families view the integration stage of bicultural development. Using alternation theory as a guide, it considers how the process of becoming bicultural is shaped by different environmental systems such as family, friends, and peers. It also explores the immigrant families' relationship to their culture-of-origin and to the U.S. host culture as well as the cultural capital, opportunities, and challenges they face in living between two cultures. Finally, it discusses how Latino families strongly encouraged biculturalism by reinforcing familism and practicing restrictive parenting strategies. The chapter highlights the benefits and challenges inherent in developing bicultural skills, especially the ways that bilingualism and peer networks facilitate bicultural development.Less

The Assimilationist Paradigm and Burmese Americans

Joseph Cheah

in Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation

The process of adapting Buddhist religious practices to the American milieu is different from that employed by white Buddhists and sympathizers. Burmese immigrant Buddhists cannot simply racially ... More

The process of adapting Buddhist religious practices to the American milieu is different from that employed by white Buddhists and sympathizers. Burmese immigrant Buddhists cannot simply racially rearticulate their religious practices to the American context; i.e., modifying the host culture by infusing meanings that comes from the culture of their homeland. Rather, they must adapt their religious beliefs and practices to the American culture by negotiating within the racial and religious landscape of the United States. This chapter contextualizes this process by situating the experiences of Burmese Americans within the larger historical framework of Asian Americans in order to highlight the ways in which Burmese Americans have inherited overt and covert racism experienced by Asian ethnics (those who have been in this country for two or more generations), and the ways in which the existence of a hegemonic culture uses model minority myth to continuously reproduce itself to maintain the status quo.Less

From Contact to Conflict: How Assimilation Mechanisms Underpin the Exploration and Adaptation Stage in Bicultural Development

Paul R. Smokowski and Martica Bacallao

in Becoming Bicultural: Risk, Resilience, and Latino Youth

This chapter examines the impact of assimilation mechanisms on Latino immigrant families, with particular emphasis on how acute assimilation pressures prompt Latino adolescents and their parents to ... More

This chapter examines the impact of assimilation mechanisms on Latino immigrant families, with particular emphasis on how acute assimilation pressures prompt Latino adolescents and their parents to explore and adapt to the host culture. It begins with a discussion of assimilation theory and two interpersonal and institutional mechanisms that drive assimilation in daily life: monolingualism and discrimination. It then considers monolingualism and discrimination in Latino immigrants' specific transactions with others in schools, workplaces, and churches. It shows that monolingualism was a strong form of interpersonal and institutional discrimination against Spanish speakers, and that discrimination regulated belonging by enforcing conformity with U.S. norms, appearance, and behaviors.Less

German-Jewish Literature and Culture and the Field of German-Jewish Studies

Mark H. Gelber

in Jewish Contribution to Civilization

This chapter delineates the parameters of developments and relationships to the 'Jewish contribution discourse'. It notes the marginality of Jewish culture in present-day Germany that has enabled the ... More

This chapter delineates the parameters of developments and relationships to the 'Jewish contribution discourse'. It notes the marginality of Jewish culture in present-day Germany that has enabled the emergence of the quintessential post-modern field of cultural studies in Germany and the basis for diverse criticism. It also mentions Moritz Goldstein, who boldly claimed in his 'Deutsch-jüdischer Parnass' that the Jews in Germany had become the custodians and arbiters of the spiritual treasures of German society. The chapter explores the understanding of European culture as largely Jewish, which militates against the idea of a possible Jewish contribution to that culture since the term 'contribution' appears to make little sense if the Jewish element is the dominant one. It explains the concept of a contribution that rests on the notion of a dominant host culture to which guests might contribute.Less

‘Afro-française’: In-Between or Out of Sync?

in Calixthe Beyala: Performances of Migration

This chapter considers the implications of Calixthe Beyala's shifting identification from African to sometimes French through the ambiguous hyphenated identity of the ‘Afro-française.’ It examines ... More

This chapter considers the implications of Calixthe Beyala's shifting identification from African to sometimes French through the ambiguous hyphenated identity of the ‘Afro-française.’ It examines whether the characters in Beyala's fiction reflect the incorporation of African immigrants into Frenchness or they reflect an immigrant identity that is permanently ‘out of sync’ with the host culture of France. It argues that Beyala's fiction deconstructs the very concept of home and that her uncertainty about where home is generates an ambivalence that is symptomatic of the experience of transculturation.Less

Jewish Writers in Polish Literature

Eugenia Prokop-Janiec

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 15: Focusing on Jewish Religious Life, 1500-1900

This chapter explores Jewish contributions to Polish literature in the period between the two world wars. This literary activity mirrored social and cultural processes, such as the democratization of ... More

This chapter explores Jewish contributions to Polish literature in the period between the two world wars. This literary activity mirrored social and cultural processes, such as the democratization of the Polish intelligentsia, with its absorption of members from the middle class, and the acculturation and linguistic Polonization of various Jewish groups. The literary question thus became a symbol of the new — and for the most part complex and difficult — relationship between Poles and Jews. It is not a coincidence that the two groups especially involved in the discussion were acculturated Jews and Polish nationalists. The views of these two groups set the parameters for description, interpretation, and evaluation of the literature to which all other participants had little choice but to conform. In general terms, their discussion ranged from acceptance of Jewish literature in non-Jewish languages as a contribution to world literature to treating it as an infiltration of the host culture; from description of the emerging literary group to examination of literary texts for the national or racial traits that were assumed to appear in them. In the space between these polarities there was room for a whole range of intermediate views.Less