Beneath the North Star explores the multifaceted Southeast Asian population in Minnesota, the heartland of America. While the experiences of Asian immigrants are well documented on the coasts, the tales of those in the Midwest, especially those of the refugees, have been largely overlooked. A major goal of this project is to collect and present their experiences. How well did they settle in Minnesota? How did they face the challenges of assimilation, stereotype, and discrimination while keeping their own cultures, languages, traditions, family values, and identities? What does it mean to be an “American” and live an “American” life in Minnesota?

During the summer of 2016, the research team interviewed 16 Southeast Asian Americans, both first and second generation, who come from diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Cambodian, Filipino, Karen, Vietnamese along with college professors and educational experts who have extensive knowledge and worked closely with Southeast Asian students. The stories that are presented here also encompass those participants with heritages from Indian-Thai, Malaysian, and Laotian in earlier research. For the most part, the semi-structured interviews took place on the St. Olaf campus as well as the homes of the informants. The interviews usually last between one and one and a half hour.

Their stories bear some similarities. Many struggled between learning English and holding onto their heritage language. Others experienced some form of racism. All of them stressed education, family, and community as most important to them. However, there were also differences, chiefly regarding individual identity, ethnic labeling, and the idea of the “American Dream.”

Janis: A student who actually was raising two children in addition to attending school full time and . . . here at St. Olaf and you know it’s a really rigorous curriculum here at Olaf, and so I think just having really achieved the goal of earning her BA and then actually going into a Master’s program and earning her Master’s degree as well. She also had a lot of family obligations besides her immediate two children where you know she often would have to interpret during doctor visits for her family. She, if you want to add anything about the background, I think you know who I’m talking about, but yeah. But always education was her major goal. Like she just always, that was, that was what kept just really motivating her and driving her to get that degree, or both degrees which is very impressive we feel.

Melissa: And that seems kinda typical amongst a lot of students that we have, and especially Asian students of that dedication and just the balancing of time and you know some people see success as being a 4.0, and that can be successful. But when we see students like her I mean that’s how hands down like how she could successfully complete St. Olaf, do really great academically, balance her extracurriculars, take care of her family, her children. You know, she’s dedicated to her culture. It’s just really impressive I think, as McNair staff are just kinda blown away by that.

So being that we have these small communities in these larger American communities. There’s a lot of tensions I feel like, and these tensions can very much affect the students. And how do they can affected? Well, say that a certain student in one family is pursuing to be a doctor or a lawyer, something prestigious as a profession. What we tend to do in these communities is to pressure our kids into pursuing that. I think that plays in part that our parents were never brought up in the American system. They hear that doctors and lawyers are great professions. But there are hundreds of other professions that others can pursue. So then the child kind of takes on that expectation from their parents and have to give up their passion of becoming a musician or a teacher. So they have to then struggle with that pressure from the society that, this person in this family is pursuing something that is prestigious so my parents want me to also. In a community that is so small, you have to sort of compete in a sense. So I think there is that challenge as well in the Asian American communities here in Minnesota.