Half and Half: An (Auto)ethnography of Hybrid Identities in a Korean American Mother-Daughter Relationship

Abstract

This essay focuses on how immigrant mothers and second generation interracial daughters construct, perform, and negotiate racial and ethnic hybrid identities. Placing my mother's experiences in dialogue with my own experiences, I (auto)ethnographically examine how we navigate our mother-daughter relationship and intercultural and interracial identities in relation to discourses of Asian American-ness. I identify three sites for identity formation: location, language, and the dialectical tension of assimilation-preservation. I argue that the enactment of a racial self is not always a conscious part of one's identity. Rather, we each enact racialized cultural identities that are contextually performed and continuously shifting.

Keywords:

• Hybridity
• Mother-Daughter Relationships
• Identity
• Autoethnography
• Korean American

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank William K. Rawlins, Benjamin R. Bates, and the anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and assistance with this article. The author would especially like to thank her mother for contributing her life stories to this project

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie L. Young

Stephanie L. Young is a Doctoral Candidate in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University, USA