You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin (RESEARCH ESSAY REFERENCE)

8/17/2019 You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin (RESEARCH ESSAY REFERENCE)

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"You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin": Popular

and Consumer Culture and the Americanization of

Asian American Girls and Young omenLee, Stacey J ;Vaught, Sabina .The Journal of Negro Education 72.4

(Fall 2003): 457-466

A!stractTranslate Abstract

First- and second-generation youth of color are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and

sexuality as reflected in and perpetuated by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures.

These popular images inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for

first- and second-generation Americans. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation

Asian American girls and young women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their

positions in the United States. Data from two qualitative studies on Asian American young women

will be presented. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

ull Te#t

Headnote

First- and second-generation youth of color are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and

sexuality as reflected in and perpetuated by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures.These popular images inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for

first- and second-generation Americans. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation

Asian American girls and young women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their

positions in the United States. Data from two qualitative studies on Asian American young women

will be presented.

Scholars from various fields have written about the powerful impact of popular and consumer

cultures on youth identities and cultures (Appadurai, 1990; Giroux, 1992, 1994; Pyke, 2000;

Silverstone, 1994). For youth from immigrant families, popular and consumer cultures are significant

sources of information about "America" and being "American" (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). First- and

second-generation youth of color, in general, are affected by the dominant messages of Whiteness,

which pervade popular and consumer culture (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). Young women, in

particular, are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and sexuality as reflected in and promoted

by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures. Gender, race, and class inform the process of

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Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for first- and second-generation Asian American

young women. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation Asian American women

interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their positions in the United States. It includes a

review of the literature, a brief description of two qualitative studies, data from a sample of Asian

American high school girls and a sample of college students, and discussion of the implications of

the findings.

POPULAR AND CONSUMER CULTURE AND THE GENDERED RACIALIZATION OF ASIAN

AMERICANS

Research on immigrant students of color (Lee, 2001b; Lei, 2001; Olsen, 1997) reveals that students

undergo a process of racialization as they are incorporated into the existing racial hierarchy of the

United States-one that places White people at the top and defines them as the only true Americans.

While the formal curriculum and organization of schooling are implicated in this process, popular and

consumer cultures, operating both within and outside of schools, leverage considerable power in the

creation and re-creation of this racialized notion of American identity (Hall, 1995). As cultural studies

theorists like Thomas Nakayama (1994) have observed, "It is as if there is a natural-as opposed to

cultural, social, historical-relation between whiteness and Americanness" (pp. 168-69). Whiteness, in

consumer culture, is both pervasive and invisible as the unmarked norm. Significantly, unmarked

Whiteness is a classed racial category, determined by an equally unmarked middle class status,

such that the norm for Americanness is both middle class and White (Kenny, 2000; Ong, 2000).

Of equal significance is the multiple ways in which Blackness is constructed in popular cultures and

by students as the readers or consumers of those cultures. While Whiteness is constructed in

dominant popular culture as all that is quintessentially good and right with Americanness, Blackness

is constructed as the Other which defines that goodness-it functions to maintain the dichotomy of

good and bad in American culture and society (hooks, 1989, 1992). As julia Koza (1994) points out,

Black rap music is discursively characterized in mainstream media as rejecting what is right and

legitimate about dominant American (read: White) values. It is portrayed as violent, resistant, sexist,

and dangerous. Simultaneously, White families are portrayed as the normal American family; while

Black families, with few notable exceptions, are portrayed as either absent or dysfunctional anddeficient. This elaborates Nakayama's point that the collapsing of Whiteness and Americanness is

achieved through the construction of a Black-White binary. At the crux of this binary is the class

construction of Blackness as characterized by unearned hypermaterialism and parasitic poverty

(Koza, 1994).


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Within this hierarchical classed racial binary is the complicated construction of Asian Americanness.

As Nakayama (1994) writes, "Asian and Asian American identities and social spaces are often

conflated in ways that are not parallel to Africans and African Americans or Europeans and

European Americans" (p. 162). Here he points to the phenomenon identified by Mia Tuan (1998) as

being "forever foreigner," in which Asian Americans of any generation are constructed and perceived

by White Americans as Asians-foreigners, non-Americans, Others. This relegation to perpetually

foreign status is pervasive in mainstream popular and consumer cultures, which means that first-

and second-generation immigrant students must respond to all of these conflicting and multiple

messages about Americanness in constructing their identities.

Intersecting with these race and class identity dynamics is the function of gender. An examination of

gender issues in popular and consumer cultures reveals that both White women and women of color

are represented as reflecting a White ideal or aesthetic (Gillespie, 1998). These women conform to a

body ideal that reflects White middle class ideals: exceedingly thin, long, flowing hair, and voluptuous

(Gillespie, 1998; Kilborne, 1995). Not insignificantly, blond hair and blue eyes are valorized. These

images are created to encourage women to alter their bodies through consumerism (Berger 1977;

Macdonald, 1995) for the purpose of pleasing and attracting an "ideal" man. Thus, identity and self-

construction are consumed, not made. In addition to advertising the need for self-transformation to

meet a White body ideal, popular culture also promotes a behavior ideal. As Jean Kilbourne (1995)

writes, "Advertising creates a mythical, WASP-oriented world in which no one is ever ugly, over-

weight, poor, struggling" (p. 122). Girls, she explains, are taught through popular and consumer

culture to behave as the objects of male desire: "Women are shown almost exclusively ashousewives or sex objects" (p. 122).

Central to this White behavior ideal is the culture of romance (Holland & Eisenhart, 1991). For

example, Olsen (1997) discovered that first- and second-generation immigrant girls learned from

popular culture the mainstream expectations for gender and femininity that emphasized dating and

romance, free from parental involvement. Significantly, this culture of romance centers around girls'

aspirations for attaining the ideal man: economically independent, strong, tall, and White.

There are few images of Asian American women represented in popular and consumer culture.When Asians and Asian Americans are represented they are hyper-feminized. Specifically, they are

represented as exotic, demure, submissive, and docile (Espiritu, 2000). While Asian American

women are hyper-feminized, "American popular culture denies 'manhood' to Asian men" (Espiritu,

2000).

QUALITATIVE STUDIES OF ASIAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND YOUNG WOMEN


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Data reported in this article was collected from two studies with Asian American adolescent girls and

women. The first study focuses on Hmong American high school students. The Hmong came to the

United States as refugees from Laos in the late 1970's as a consequence of the Vietnam War. The

data on the Hmong was collected by Lee (2001a, 200Ib) as part of a larger ethnographic study on

ethnic identity formation among first- and second-generation Hmong American high school students

in Wisconsin between January 1999 and june 2000. This article includes data collected on the

twelve Hmong girls who participated in the larger study. The primary means of data collection were

participant observation of Hmong students in the high school and interviews with Hmong students

and school staff. Additional data was collected through participant observation at local Hmong

community events. The students were from working class and working poor families in which Hmong

was the primary language.

The second study, conducted by Vaught during the 2001-02 academic year, examined the influence

of consumer and popular cultures on six first- and second-generation working and middle-class

Asian American college women attending a private Southern liberal arts college. The women in the

study represent various Asian ethnic groups. Through a series of in-depth interviews, Vaught

explored the intersections of race, class, and gender formation in reaction to dominant popular and

consumer cultures especially as influenced by Southern regional contexts.

Study 1: Voices of Young Hmong American Women

The Hmong American high school girls explicitly and consistently expressed their belief that not

being White prevented them from being accepted as authentic Americans (Lee, 200Ib). In

negotiating their position, the second- generation youth focused on Americanization, defined and

made available through popular and consumer cultures. This process of Americanization included

buying and wearing name-brand clothes and listening to particular popular music. Strikingly, these

second-generation students perceived the process of Americanization as requiring and achieving

distance from first-generation youth. As one second-generation Hmong student explained, "FOBs

don't care about clothes. They are stingy about clothes. They dress in out-of-date, 1980's style

clothes. American-born Hmong are into clothes and cars." Inherent in this student's disparaging

description of recent immigrants, whom she identifies as "Fresh Off the Boat," is a condemnation ofanything foreign, but also a rejection of the "forever foreigner" (Tuan, 1998) status imposed on her

and other Asian Americans. However, by rejecting the image of Asian Americans as "forever

foreigners," she is simultaneously partially internalizing a racist discourse about Asians and Asian

Americans.


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Although second-generation youth do achieve a distance from students they call FOBs, they do so

by purchasing and wearing clothing styles and brands that many of their teachers and peers

associated with Black urban youth and culture. Tellingly, teachers explicitly described these second-

generation Hmong American students as embracing a "bad" model of Americanization. Implicitly,

"good" models of Americanization were associated with Whiteness and "bad" models of

Americanization were associated with African Americans.

By and large, the second generation emulated and appropriated dress associated with Black youth

and popular culture not only because they perceive the racial exclusivity of Whiteness at school and

in society, but also because as members of the working poor they are excluded from the mainstream

of school and society. These students respond to this exclusion by adopting, identifying with, and

transforming the existing Black youth popular culture, which they perceive as having oppositional

power. Several students described themselves as "dressing ghetto." This reveals the ways in which

these second-generation youth have taken on problematic racialized notions of Blackness as being

synonymous with poverty, which reflects their identification with a particular raced and classed

position that stands in opposition to White middle-class Americanness. The term "ghetto" reflects

their adoption of the binary and their situation of themselves on the Black side of that binary.

However, one complication of this identification emerged amongst a few Hmong girls who, while they

dressed in what was perceived as Black youth dress, aspired to and internalized a standard of

extreme thinness associated with a White, middle-class gender aesthetic. These young women

reported dieting, exercising, and in-group surveillance all aimed at achieving this White aesthetic.

Significantly, this marks a trumping of White middle-class femininity over Hmong and African

American standards of beauty, which points to a gender difference in resistance and the process of

Americanization.

White middle-class standards of femininity are not restricted to beauty ideals, but extend into notions

of gender and domesticity (Wolf, 1991). Dominant popular culture is the purveyor of an idealized

domesticity in which there is ostensibly greater opportunity for women than the young first- and

second-generation Hmong American women perceive in their own families and communities.

Further, this idealized domesticity is White, such that Whiteness represents the healthy, progressive,safe domestic space. Several of the adolescents complained about the gender inequality in their

families, specifically the fact that as daughters they had to perform all the household chores,

including cooking for and serving their brothers. They asserted that when they have children they

plan to teach their sons and daughters to share domestic chores. As captured in the conversation

between one of the participants and the researcher, many of the Hmong American girls felt they


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learned practical lessons about how to create greater gender equity in their future homes from TV

shows:

Hmong American Girl: I would have, like, I would have set chores for my kids.

Researcher: For boys and girls?

Hmong American Girl: Yeah, like, I would, like, make a chart and have them, like, do their thing, and

when they're done, you can, like, check it off or whatever.

Researcher: Where did you get that idea?

Hmong American Girl: I've seen it in movies. And like some families-Hmong families-do that now and

it works well.

While it may appear that popular culture can then provide examples of alternative and progressive

constructions of domestic gender relations, these examples contain inherently biased and potentially

harmful messages as well. Namely, they represent an idealized domesticity that veils the real

complexity and difficulty in gender relations in middle-class White families. Thus, popular images of

the "normal" family and the "good" parent perpetrate not only the primacy of the White American

family, but the deficiency of all other families (Fyke, 2000).

Girls, in particular, appear to internalize the image of the White American family as "good" and

"normal." This, in combination with their gender experiences at home, leads them to question

whether or not Hmong American men would make desirable future husbands. Consequently, these

Hmong American girls face a complex and contradictory dynamic: (a) in order to resist racial

domination, they must reject Whiteness; and (b) in order to resist gender domination, they must buy

into Whiteness. Buying into the White family ideal represented in popular culture leads to the

perceived deficiency of their own families. As one young woman said,

Well, I guess they always have those TV shows with the perfect family, and.. .And you know, you do

kind of envy that. I mean, you don't have it. . .1 don't know, but like, I like wish I had a good

family. . .For me, I think that's why a lot of White people are successful, you know?

This devaluation of non-White families contributes to an exacerbation of intergenerational conflict.

Dissatisfied with the real lives of their families, these women turn to the popular culture genres of TV

and film where they can easily find falsely ideal images. The destructive danger here is that popular

culture offers only a binary, in which there are good (read: White) families and bad (read: non-White)


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families. This binary precludes the positive familial transformation that might be undertaken by these

young women, and unilaterally alienates them from their families and cultures so that they cannot

easily see the worth and value of their own families. Although the young women complained about

their families and idealized White families, they continued to be proud of their Hmong identities.

These women plan to use their educations to help their families and the larger Hmong community

(Lee, 200Ia).

These young women looked for images of Hmong and other Asian Americans in popular culture

evidenced by the example of the Hmong Student Association renting and viewing Walt Disney's

Mulan (1998) for the purpose of viewing a film with Asian characters and stories. After viewing this

film, one young woman expressed concern about the film saying she had heard the "bad guys were

Hmong." She went on to say that she was troubled that the media always portrayed the Hmong in a

negative way, a portrayal she compared to negative characterizations of Muslims in American

popular media. Although the "bad guys" in Mulan are not Hmong, this student's concern about

popular representations of Hmong expresses a critical read of dominant images that emerges from

her pride in her ethnic identity. Of further significance is that while these young women are not critical

of representations of Whiteness in popular culture, they are critical of the way White popular culture

constructs images of non-White people, here Muslims and the Hmong. This ostensibly contradictory

dynamic of being both very critical of and very manipulated by dominant popular culture is explained

by the way that their racialization creates a hierarchy of critical insight. They are able to recognize the

way they are marginalized by the dominant culture, but the forces of that dominant culture prevent

them from criticizing White middle-class gender norms. There is a complex conflict between shameand pride created by the power of dominant popular cultural forms.

Study 2: Asian American College Women in the South

The complex and nuanced interplay of race, class, and gender emerged in the style, body images,

and behavior of the women in Vaught's study. These first- and second-generation working- and

middle-class Asian American women, who grew up in predominantly White and African American

communities and attended schools in the American South, achieved a measure of mainstream

"success," as evidenced by their attendance at an elite private liberal arts college, whose studentsare primarily White and upper middle or upper class. Unlike the adolescents in the first study who

gravitated towards styles associated with Black urban youth, these female college students emulated

more mainstream (read: White, middle class) styles of self-presentation. At this overwhelmingly

White college, all of the Asian American women knew of each other and expressed consistently

similar styles of dress and desires for a particular body image and female attractiveness. This


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contrast between the Hmong American adolescents in the first study and these college students is

marked in large part by class stratification and accessible class aspirations.

As avid consumers of mainstream popular culture, the college students read Cosmopolitan, Vogue,

and a variety of teen magazines and consumer catalogues such as Victoria's secret. Significantly,these types of popular culture media reflect a rigid and fervent adherence to a White beauty

aesthetic (Gillespie, 1998). One participant captured elements of this beauty standard when she

described the messages conveyed to readers by the models in female magazines:

There was always, especially in like Teen magazine, you're supposed to be thin, and beautiful, and

look just like everybody else. They were all thin and they had blond hair and blue eyes and white

skin. I never really thought I could look like them.

Another young woman echoed this perception, saying, "I have learned after years of pop-culturemessages about the ideal beauty, which is White, blond, big breasted." The other young women

expressed a similar recognition that this dominant beauty aesthetic is racialized and not neutral, and

so beyond their reach as Asian American women. Despite this recognition, the young women all

attempted to adhere to the White beauty ideal promoted by dominant forms of popular culture. They

spoke of dieting and working out at gyms to achieve thinness, wearing push-up bras and tight

clothing, dying or bleaching their hair, and wearing green or blue colored contact lenses.

The impact of popular culture on a young woman's self-concept and her body is described by

Kilbourne (1995) when she writes, "Objectified constantly by others, she learns to objectify herself"

(pp. 122-124). For example, one participant talks about religiously watching the TV program Ally

McBeal (1999), which chronicles the life of a fictitious female attorney. This participant expresses a

desire to emulate Ally McBeal's physical appearance and lifestyle. Although she admires Ally

McBeal, she describes her as "anorexic," but then immediately goes on to say, "I just know I would

look ten times better.. .if I lost about 50 pounds." This participant is of average weight, height and

proportion and would herself be "anorexic" were she to lose even half this weight. Of note is that the

practice of self-objectification that Kilbourne (1995) identifies as being promoted and triggered by

popular and consumer culture images of White beauty, is the very practice that interrupts the

emerging criticism expressed in the above interviews. all of these young women understand the

impossibility of attaining the White beauty aesthetic, yet through the constant exercise of attempting

to obtain it, their insight is dramatically muted and aborted (Best, 2000).

Like the working class boys in Willis' study (1977), these young women experience moments of

insight that are ultimately blunted by an achievement ideology. However, in this case, the "culture of


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romance" (Holland & Eisenhart, 1991) defines the parameters of achievement: women achieve

individual success through White, middle-class male approbation. At this particular school, the

women describe a culture of romance promoted and monitored by sororities, female peer groups,

and the incorporation of popular cultural forms. Therefore, much of what they do to alter their bodies

is in an effort to attract men, and so to act on their aspirations to class mobility. One participant

explained:

I want bigger boobs, because I think men like that. all the guys have Brittney Spears posters on their

walls, so as confident as you are about your body, you're going to be like, "Oh." I am very affected by

my outside. . .1 wear a pushup. . .1 workout to try and be skinnier.

Another woman reported that she began wearing green contacts in the 11th grade:

. . .because [a White boy at school] said he liked girls with green eyes. So, I was like "Ooh." T justcontinue to wear them, because I continue to get comments from males. They say, "Ooh your eyes

are so pretty." It's kind of like wearing the right shade of lipstick.

Of importance is that this participant equates adornment-wearing lipstick-with a racialized alteration-

wearing colored contacts-that involves masking, transforming, and hiding evidence of her Asianness

(Gillespie, 1998; Kilbourne, 1995). The other young women reported similar alterations to their

bodies and remarkably similar positive responses from White men.

These efforts at self-alteration, however, are not directed at all men, but specifically to White men-asentiment echoed by all participants. As one woman succinctly put it, "I'm attracted to White men.

Not attracted to Asian men at all." The participants reported several reasons they would not date

Asian or Asian American men, all of which were asserted in contrast to their beliefs about White

men: physically unattractive, financially weak, emotionally remote, and boring. Similarly, many of the

Hmong American girls in the first study complained that Hmong boys were "too short" and "not cute."

This rejection of Asian and Asian American men reflects popular culture constructions of these men

as weak, passive, and otherwise lacking in hegemonic masculinity (Kumashiro, 1998; Lee, 1999; Lei,

2001). As Espiritu (2000) argues, "due to the persistent desexualization of the Asian male, many

Asian females do not perceive their ethnic counterparts as desirable marriage partners" (p. 97).

Where the two groups diverged was that some of the Hmong American girls in the first study found

exceptions, such as actor and martial arts performer Jet Li; whereas none of the women in the

second study cited exception to their rejection of Asian or Asian American men. Again, this complete

rejection speaks to the class aspirations of the young women in the second study and their

accompanying belief that those aspirations can be achieved through marriage to White men.


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These young women are attracted to White men, who express and symbolize the hegemonic

masculinity (Connell, 1995; Kimmell, 2000; Kumashiro, 1998) that is perpetrated by popular culture.

Hegemonic masculinity is a rigidly circumscribed construct against which all other masculinities are

measured. It represents the "right" manhood, both racially and economically, by reifying notions of

dominance, rationality, and protection. These women aspire to relationships with hegemonic males,

because they believe such liaisons will bring them emotional and economic stability. all but one of

the participants watched the TV series Friends (2001) for the express purpose of studying the male

members of the cast. The women assume that by understanding how these characters think and

what these characters look for in women that they will be able to attract and please hegemonic

males. In the following quotation, one young woman explains that she began watching MTV in order

to learn how to please her White boyfriend and other White men:

Watching MTV affected the way I acted very much. I think I wanted to be more Americanized. I

changed my hair color. I got colored contact lenses. I started buying clothes at the Gap. . .1 became

aware that I didn't have the same hair as other people.

What this woman and others learn is that in order to attract White men they must not only alter their

bodies, but they must also adapt and transform their behavior (Coward, 1985; Wolf, 1991). They

referred to this constellation of changes as both a process of Americanization and exoticization. Their

perception and experience confirms that by playing into the exotic role they can attract White

American men. Another participant further explains:

Somehow, I thought that if I changed my hair color and changed my appearance to be more

Americanized and more Westernized that would be good. Because at the time I was trying to get a

job and I couldn't get a job anywhere. As soon as I changed my appearance-started wearing tight

jeans and tank tops-then I changed my hair color and wore make up on a daily basis. I started

smoking also. And I got a job. I started dating then. Older White men. I think I became not so foreign

to them. I might look exotic, but not foreign. They're like, oh, you're American. . . I'm much more

comfortable with being Asian and being exotic than I was before.

As the above quote demonstrates, Americanization and exoticization are overlapping concepts and

processes, by which these young women attempt to achieve a White middle class standing

(Americanization) by simultaneously taking on a dominant (White) notion of foreignness (the exotic).

In order to gain the approval of White men these women must play into the exotic stereotype of Asian

and Asian American women as ultrafeminine, hyper-sexual, and submissive. Their willingness to

embrace and embody the exotic stereotype of Asian and Asian American women may reflect their

understanding that they cannot achieve the White beauty aesthetic. In other words, they may


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recognize that while they cannot achieve Whiteness they can attract White men by submitting

themselves to the fantasies of White men.

Although the women learn to play on stereotypes of the exotic, hyper-sexualized Asian woman by

heightening their racialized bodies, they simultaneously learn that they must downplay any culturaldifferences. One woman explained:

I used it to get man's attention-being exotic-but I tried to also hide it and be as American as I could

be, because I didn't want them [White men] to be afraid of me. . .1 want to please people and make

them accept me.

Later she said of growing up:

I think I had this mixed message, "Oh, Asian women are beautiful, but don't try to be Asian, because

you'll scare them [boys] off." Don't act Asian. You can look Asian. You're not Asian really and people

are going to like you better because you aren't Asian really. I get that a lot now.

Thus, while these women are seen as exotic, they convey a safe exoticism because their Asian

cultural behaviors have been successfully disciplined. The women spoke of disguising their ethnic

and cultural identities by omitting certain information-countries of origin, first languages, and

childhood experiences-in conversations with White men in order to insure that the men would not be

"scared off." Although they are seen as sexually alluring, they exist ultimately for the purpose of

pleasing and being subservient to the White male (Lee, 1999).

IMPLICATIONS

Ultimately, both groups of young girls and women in the two studies looked to television, fashion

magazines, and other forms of popular culture for instruction on racialized and gendered

Americanization. Participants in both of our studies internalized these notions of Americanness,

evidenced strongly in their reserving the term "American" to refer to White people, while using

ethnically or racially specific language to identify themselves or other people of color. Of notable

difference, however, was the expression of Americanization based on both real, material class

differences as well as perceived potential for class mobility. The young Hmong American girls in the

first study experienced a multifaceted process of gendered Americanization that involved combining

both urban African American and middle-class White standards of appearance. On the other hand,

the young college students in the second study participated in a monolithic process of achieving

gendered Americanization, informed by their aspiration for and belief in the possibility of acceptance

and incorporation into White middle class society. Schooled by popular culture to objectify


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themselves, their bodies, and their cultures, the young women in both studies experience a

pernicious internalization of dominant ideas of Americanization. They experienced moments of

critical awareness of the contradictory messages about race, gender, and national identity. However,

the damaging force of popular cultural images often eclipsed these insights.

Educators must recognize the powerful effect of popular and consumer cultures on first- and second-

generation Asian American women, as well as other immigrants of color. Schools and teachers

should work with students to develop their latent critical insights into popular cultures. In order to

facilitate the development of such insight, educators must be attentive to the complex ways in which

these girls and young women construct identities in relation to powerful racialized and gendered

consumer images.

References

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AuthorAffiliation

AUTHORS

STACEY J. LEE is a Professor of Educational Policy Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison;

[email protected]. Her research interests include immigrant students, and racial and ethnic

identity and Asian American students.

SABINA VAUGHT is a doctoral student in the departments of Educational Policy Studies and

Curriculum and Instruction at University of Wisconsin-Madison; [email protected]. Her

research interests include critical race theory and narrative methods.

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