![\"cropped-Asian-in-minnesota.png\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/888\/2016\/07\/cropped-Asian-in-minnesota.png\")
<\/a>Beneath the North Star <\/em><\/strong>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 \u201cAmerican” life in Minnesota?<\/p>\nDuring the summer of 2016, the research team interviewed 16 Southeast Asian Americans, both first and second generation, who come\u00a0from 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cAmerican Dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#3a3a3a” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on” height=”3″] [\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”justified” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n
Sam Ouk<\/strong>: The Cambodians were one of the very first if not the first wave of refugees into Rochester, Minnesota… and there was a lot of people that didn\u2019t know how to react to us and plus we didn\u2019t know how to react to them either and … all of a sudden we heard a lot of negative Asian stereotypes about Asians, Asians being soft, Asians being quiet, Asians being weak, Asians being “gay,” and that really hurt us… We felt like we survived the killing fields… \u00a0that we were warriors and that we were strong and to have such a challenge we were very surprised and didn\u2019t know how to respond. I think the first generation my mother and my\u2026 her younger siblings, the first generation of teenagers that went to school they just took it… but for us it was a different story… you know we had more of the English growing up, coming to school young and all that stuff and so we fought back in a very strong way<\/span>…<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/zp6a8fgNYPA”] [\/et_pb_video][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#3a3a3a” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3uJeTl0t3XI”] [\/et_pb_video][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”justified” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n Kaziah Josiah<\/strong>: I… just because I\u2019m Karen, so I guess I have a lot of advice for the Karen community, especially for the youth, new . . . newly arrival refugees, Karen refugees. I want to give them advice to take school seriously. To focus on school and try to do their best in school because… their parents have migrated here for… I guess for the same reason as my parents. Their parents want their kids to go to school and have better life in the future. But sometimes I see some Karen youth who are able to quickly adapt to the immigrant lifestyle but in a negative way if that makes sense… so like they would skip school, they would not take education seriously, just… and they would just prefer to make money, which is understandable because they might be struggling in school. But I think that one important reason is also because they… because there, I feel like there is not enough support from our community to push these students to go to… not high school but college.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#3a3a3a” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”justified” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n Christine Nguyen<\/b>: … Growing up in a small city, I was the only Asian girl so people thought I was like Chinese or Japanese. It was really annoying trying to get people to understand I was Vietnamese <\/span>my culture.<\/span> I had to adapt to the American culture, and like people think that the culture I was raised in and I tried to like when I first went to public school, people thought it was a bit weird and… I didn\u2019t really talk much, since I didn\u2019t know English well and like I had a very thick accent at the time and people couldn\u2019t comprehend. And people would always tell me to slow down, when that was the way I talked to my parents, at a quicker pace.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/jhkvREkYz_4″] [\/et_pb_video][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#3a3a3a” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/Wxqt9ObhAx4″] [\/et_pb_video][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”justified” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n Tenzin\u00a0Choerap<\/b>:\u00a0So being that we have these small communities in these larger American communities. There\u2019s 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. <\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#3a3a3a” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”justified” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n Toui Mohlke<\/b><\/strong>: Well I guess the person that gave me your professor\u2019s name, <\/span>Kathy Tekmeyar Pak, she\u2019s her daughter and my daughter are the same age and the only reason our families ever got to know each other is because her daughter Leah and my daughter Casey… they… the teachers and faculty would get each other mixed up; they\u2019re both half Asian and half Caucasian. They really don\u2019t look anything alike, but that’s you know so few Asian kids and… most of them are adopted actually.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/SyS3NmeIB28″] [\/et_pb_video][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider admin_label=”Divider” color=”#3a3a3a” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on”] [\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1490,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"<\/p>