Street smart to book smart : Asian American youth resisting criminalization

There are Asian American youth who have been characterized as delinquents, deviants,\ud and with broken moral compasses (Lee & Zhou, 2004; Umemoto & Ong, 2006). Often\ud such research has problematically deemed Asian American youth who have gone through\ud the juvenile justice system as hopeless. Less often does such research address the\ud resiliency and the accomplishments of youth resisting criminalization after being released\ud from the juvenile justice system. Grounded within scholarship that examines the struggles\ud of dealing with survival guilt (O???Connor, et.al., 2000) and impostor syndrome (Clance &\ud Imes, 1978), my paper evaluates not only the internalized oppression among formerly\ud incarcerated Asian American youth, but also the healing and transformation processes\ud they experience. More specifically, I use the concept of transformative resistance\ud (Solorzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001) to explore how many of these youth use education\ud and community activism to resist criminalization in their life and create increased\ud opportunities after they have done time in the system. Through a close examination of the\ud relationship between survival guilt, impostor syndrome, and transformative resistance, I\ud hope to demonstrate the complexity of issues among a group of Asian American youth\ud who are rarely acknowledged within Asian American Studie