Constructing mirrors of learning : the negotiation of identity and representation in the lives of Chinese Canadian women
Date
1998
Authors
Lam, Eugenie Yuen-Ching
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This inquiry explores how five women of Chinese descent, all formally educated and raised in Canada, understand and learn about identity and representation in their daily lives in a predominately eurocentric society. It examines some of the complexities and contradictions of living a "hyphenated" identity as "Chinese-Canadian women" across borders that continually re-define and challenge the meanings of sameness, difference, and be-longing. Within the frameworks of cultural psychology, discursive psychology, and hermeneutics, the project of living an identity is multilayered and evolving as it entails negotiating the tensions between how one is known to oneself and how one is seen by others. Interwoven into this inquiry are identity issues in research that impact on minority women as both participants and researcher. The implications of representation and identity politics in research about racial minority women are addressed while engaging in a generative dialogue about learning across cultural borders.