A trilingual Asian-American child’s encounters with conflicting selves in the figured worlds of a multicultural book club

ABSTRACT

This study explores a Japanese-Korean-English trilingual Asian-American child’s identity negotiation in a multicultural book club. Drawing upon the conception of figured world (Holland et al. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), it investigates how the book club as a space of authorship offers the 9-year-old girl of migrants opportunities to negotiate her multiple identities while responding to the books and interacting with the book club members. The weekly multicultural book club was held in a local public library for 34 weeks. The data included field notes of the book club sessions, transcripts of the book discussions, interviews with the child’s mother, and the child’s journal entries. The data were analysed on a weekly/monthly basis with interpretative approaches. The findings revealed that the child appreciated diversity and fortified her identity as an activist self who stood against social practice that marginalised people from different backgrounds. However, the identity was questioned and challenged by the book club members. The book club pushed her into a space where she encountered different perspectives and negotiated conflicting identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Multicultural book club
• figured world
• Asian child of migrants
• identities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Out of 34 meetings, one meeting was for watching a movie adaptation, and another meeting was for rereading a book. Therefore, a total of 32 books were used for the research period.

2 American-Born Chinese for Week 27 is a young adult novel. Ava’s mother wanted Ava to read a book that has more text as well as a picture book. Therefore, I added the young adult novel to the book list. In the book club meeting for Week 27, we read and discussed some story events covered by the book, and the remaining of the book was for a voluntary reading at home.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Youngji Son

Youngji Son is an instructor of Korean. His research focuses on multilingualism, multiculturalism, critical literacy, identity, and a book club.