A Critical Ethnography of Hmong American Students Navigating and Transforming Their University

Since Hmong Americans are considered “Asians,” previous literature has often used them to dismantle the Model Minority Myth by focusing on their low educational attainment. This focus on Hmong American students’ (lack of) educational attainment does not adequately illustrate their assets and agency in navigating higher education. My dissertation intervenes in these deficit and damaging discourses on Hmong American students. Using critical ethnography, I position Hmong American undergraduates with assets that are crucial to equity and diversity in higher education. Specifically, I collected data at a U.S. public four-year university, which included academic student records, questionnaires, interviews, and participant observations of Hmong American undergraduates. My findings highlight Hmong American students as possessing assets to navigate and transform their educational experiences in higher education. Most notably, in an act of transformative resistance to their marginalization on campus and within the Asian American Studies Department, the Hmong American undergraduates created their own student-initiated and student-led course where Hmong history, culture, and knowledge was centered, legitimized, and affirmed. These efforts brought institutional awareness and actionable plans to imbue a sense of ethnic history, culture, and identity within their university. My study has relevant implications for scholars, educators, policymakers, and community members invested in serving diverse communities from critical perspectives so as to nurture their assets. Furthermore, my study also contributes to scholarship on race/ethnicity, education, and ethnic studies by illuminating the experiences of marginalized groups that are often invisible in the academic literature