Negotiating Chineseness in Everyday Life
Negotiating Chineseness in Everyday Life
This chapter explores the productions of Chineseness as a form of cultural and racial identity within the context of everyday lives of adoptive parents and their children. More specifically, it considers how these forms of Chineseness operate in relation to race, culture, and adoption that define adoptive families. It focuses on what adoptive parents do with their new, though often admittedly limited, knowledge about Chinese culture and how processes of Chinese American cultural production work. It also examines the construction of adoption narratives by Chinese adoptees and what combination of family tradition and cultural innovation characterizes the production of Chinese culture by adoptive parents. Finally, it asks whether there is any “work” that productions of Chineseness may perform within the context of shifting patterns of U.S. multiculturalism.
Keywords: cultural identity, racial identity, adoptive parents, Chineseness, race, Chinese adoption, Chinese culture, cultural production, Chinese adoptees, multiculturalism
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
