Sociology Commons^™

[Review Of] Elionne Belden. Claiming Chinese Identity, Russell Endo

Ethnic Studies Review

Thirty years ago, when the field of Asian American studies was in its infancy, identity was one of the subjects that received much attention. Since then, a good deal of research on or related to identity has been conducted, and, in the past few years, several significant pieces of work have been published. Claiming Chinese Identity is not among the latter.

An Examination Of Social Adaptation Processes Of Vietnamese Adolescents, Fayneese Miller, My Do, Jason Sperber

Ethnic Studies Review

The purpose of the study was to examine the factors that affect the ways in which Vietnamese youth feel about themselves and their "place" in society. More specifically, the purpose was to determine the relationship between sociocultural factors (L e. language proficiency, length of residence, socioeconomic class, ethnic identity, and cultural continuity) and such person-oriented variables as depression and alienation. Thrity-one college and fifteen high school students responded to a series of questions about themselves, family, relationships, personality, and achievement motivation. It was found that perceived problems with one's ethnic group, cultural continuity, and parental attitudes toward schooling significantly predicted …

[Review Of] Linda Mack Schloff. "And Prairie Dogs Weren't Kosher": Jewish Women In The Upper Midwest Since 1855, David M. Gradwohl

Ethnic Studies Review

Wit and wisdom permeate this tome from its wonderful title to the end of the last chapter. The idea of Jews even considering the possibility of consuming brisket of prairie dog (without the cream gravy, of course) is hilarious. But behind this humor is the serious question of why the matter would even be considered. The book's title comes from the child of early Jewish immigrants of South Dakota recalling "my parents got tired of eating potatoes, and prairie dogs weren't kosher."

Table Of Contents

Ethnic Studies Review

Table of Contents for Ethnic Studies Review, Vol. 20, April 1997.

[Review Of] Michael Angelo. The Sikh Diaspora: Tradition And Change In An Immigrant Community, Karen Leonard

Ethnic Studies Review

This is a peculiarly narrow book, although published as part of a series on Asian Americans entitled Reconceptualizing Culture, History, Politics. The title is misleading, at first referring to "the Sikh diaspora," the settlement of India's Punjabi Sikhs throughout the world, but then indicating "an immigrant community" which turns out to be in the U.S., the upstate New York region around the capital, Albany. Angelo wanted to study Sikhs, a highly visible religious Indian sub-group, to see the effect of interaction with American culture on traditional religious values and attitudes. He found 2,694 Asian Indians in the 1990 Albany district …

[Review Of] Gail Pellet And Stanley Nelson (Producers And Directors). Shattering The Silences, Belinda Acosta

Ethnic Studies Review

"Our silence will not protect us," poet and feminist Audre Lorde has written, and broken silences recur with startling clarity in Shattering the Silences. The video documentary features professors of color from across the nation discussing their experiences as scholars, as people of color in predominantly white institutions, as women of color in predominantly male departments, and as husbands, mentors, and for some, as the first in their family to pursue a life in academia. Each story is compelling, sometimes painful, and always poignant.

[Review Of] Clara E. Rodriguez, Ed. Latin Looks: Images Of Latinas And Latinos In The U.S. Media, Gabriel Haslip-Viera

Ethnic Studies Review

The anthology Latin Looks is an important contribution to the literature on Latinos and their relationship to the mass media in the United States. It builds on the earlier work by Rosa Linda Fregoso, George Hadley-Garcia, Chon Noriega, Luis Reyes, Peter Ruble, Allen Woll, and others. The book focuses primarily on television and film; however, there is no discussion of the films produced in other countries, or the Spanish language films produced in the United States. The images that are developed in music, literature, or magazines are also not discussed, although there is an admission that these are an important …

[Review Of] Charles W. Mills. The Racial Contract, John H. Mcclendon Iii

Ethnic Studies Review

Over the past few years I have read a number of articles by Professor Charles Mills. I have found him to be a stimulating thinker and lucid writer. In fact, I had the opportunity to use his article, "Non-Cartesian Sums: Philosophy and the African American Experience" (Teaching Philosophy, September 1994) in an NEH seminar that I conducted on multicultural approaches to Honor College teaching. Mills is a significant voice among the small cadre of Black philosophers committed to correction of and expansion beyond the Eurocentric myopia of professional philosophy. In his previous scholarship he demonstrates not only that he is …

[Review Of] Karen Christian. Show And Tell: Identity As Performance In U.S. Latino/A Fiction, J. Alemán

Ethnic Studies Review

Christian's crucial contribution to ethnic studies is her book's argument that ethnic identity is more performance than essence. Of course, this is an unresolved and essentialized issue, but Christian summarizes the debate well, situating her study in the performance camp as she relies on Judith Butler's theory of performativity to examine the inter-related performances of ethnicity and gender in Chicano/a, U.S. Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican texts. As Christian explains, static U.S. Latino/a identity categories create "collective fictions" that "regulate performances of gender, sexuality, and cultural identity," but alternative performances of ethnicity and sexuality, Christian argues, subvert these "collective fictions" …

[Review Of] Daniel Friedman And Sharon Grimberg. Miss India Georgia, Kasturi Dasgupta

Ethnic Studies Review

Miss India Georgia is an intelligent and insightful video documentary that tells the story of four Indian American teenagers, who in `the process of preparing for Atlanta's annual South Asian beauty pageant reflect on the trials and tribulations of their bi-cultural lives. It is a timeless tale told over and over as each new wave of immigrants has come ashore and their children have had to resolve the incongruities of their multiple ethnicities.

[Review Of] Rakhmiel Peltz. From Immigrant To Ethnic Culture: American Yiddish In South Philadelphia, Ayala Fader

Ethnic Studies Review

Rakhmiel Peltz, in From Immigrants to Ethnic Culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia, presents one of the few ethnographies available on spoken American Yiddish in his investigation of the elderly children of immigrant Jews in a Philadelphia neighborhood. Drawing on audiotaped ethnographic data which includes life histories, personal narratives, interviews, and naturally-occurring interactions in local contexts, Peltz examines how Jewish residents attempt to maintain their yiddishkayt (`Jewishness') as they become a shrinking minority in what was once a thriving Jewish community.

[Review Of] Phillipa Kafka. (Un)Doing The Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry In Contemporary Asian American Women's Writing, David Goldstein-Shirley

Ethnic Studies Review

Phillipa Kafka's clever book title turns on her deconstruction of what she sees as a simultaneous patriarchal and racist orientation of some contemporary literary criticism, akin to the unquestioned, naturalized supremacy presumed by agents of political imperialism such as missionaries. By focusing on what she sees as feminist and postfeminist writing by contemporary Asian American women authors -- specifically, their attention to gender asymmetry -- she demonstrates that we can read these works as a collective strike against the sexism of much (male) postcolonial, Marxist, and deconstructionist criticism and the racism of much (white) feminist criticism. Her readings of Amy …

Black Cowboys In The American West: A Historiographical Review, David Goldstein-Shirley

Ethnic Studies Review

Few subjects in the ethnic experience of the United States are as fraught with mythology and misinformation as black cowboys. Although absent from most classic history texts of the American West, black cowboys probably constituted about a quarter of the working cowboys in the nineteenth century, although q uantitative data to establish a number are lacking. This essay reviews the historiography of black cowboys published during the last half-century, noting how much of it is marred either by glossing over the presence of black cowboys or by credulously repeating estimates of their numbers established by earlier work. The essay speculates …

[Review Of] Cora Govers And Hans Vermeulen, Eds. The Politics Of Ethnic Consciousness, Jonathan A. Majak

Ethnic Studies Review

Govers and Vermeulen's book seems to be a timely one, considering the resurgence of inter-ethnic strife that is causing so much misery in many parts of the world, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. The book, however, is not an expose on the politics of ethnic consciousness. Rather, it is a collection of case studies that address certain aspects of ethnic consciousness. Govers and Vermeulen provide the theoretical context for these studies in the introductory first chapter of the book. Indeed, the book can be usefully divided into two main parts, …

[Review Of] Daniele Conversi. The Basques, The Catalans And Spain: Alternative Routes To Nationalist Mobilisation, Laura Bathurst

Ethnic Studies Review

In this book, Daniele Conversi compares and contrasts two widely known nationalist movements in Spain: the Basques in the northeast and the Catalans in the east. Working from both primary and secondary sources including documentary material such as political pamphlets, communiqu's, periodicals, and nationalists' declarations and writings, as well as sociolinguistic data and personal interviews, he constructs a detailed historical account of the emergence of both movements at the end of the nineteenth century through the 1980s. Included in his book are maps, glossary, extensive notes, index, and large bibliography. Conversi's particular focus is on the leading intellectuals and intelligentsia …

[Review Of] Juan F. Perea, Ed. Immigrants Out!: The New Nativism And The Anti-Immigrant Impulse In The United States, Robert Mark Silverman

Ethnic Studies Review

Immigrants Out! offers a response to nativist sentiment in the contemporary discussion of immigration policy. Individually, each chapter in this edited volume charts the development of contemporary nativist sentiment, while identifying the themes that have nurtured nativism historically. Some important relationships are identified between issue oriented politics and more general theses that emerge from nativist thought. For instance, in several passages English-only laws are described as a small, although highly symbolic, component of a broader ideology based on separatism and isolationism. Similarly, proposals to place restrictions on social welfare benefits for immigrants are linked to the more general curtailment of …

[Review Of] Manuel De Jesus Hemandez-Gutierrez And David William Foster, Eds. Literatura Chicana, 1965-1995: An Anthology In Spanish, English, And Calo, Phillipa Kafka

Ethnic Studies Review

The works included in this anthology, many of them previously printed, reflect six characteristic themes of Chicana/o contemporary literature: "the search for identity, feminism, conservatism, revisionism, homoeroticism, and internationalism" (xix). Organized chronologically according to various literary genres and replete with many useful notes, the anthology contains no index. Further, Literatura Chicana could also be assigned as required reading in American Studies courses, specifically in contemporary American literature courses, even though the editors suggest that the anthology be adopted for university level humanities, Spanish, ethnic, Chicana/o literature courses, in women's studies programs and social science departments.

[Review Of] Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky And Shelley Fisher Fishkin. People Of The Book: Holstein Thirty Scholars Reflect On Their Jewish Identity, Sandra J. Holstein

Ethnic Studies Review

People of the Book is an important contribution to ethnic studies and identity politics. It is a dense and reflective collection of essays which defines Judaism in personal and scholarly contexts. As one of the contributors, Nancy Miller, says: "It's not easy to write about being Jewish" (168). The editors divide the essays into four parts. After the introductory essay, Part 2, "Transformations," examines how the authors' activism grows out of their Jewish heritage. "Negotiations," looks at Jewish definition in the context of other Jewish and non-Jewish communities, and "Explorations," shows the relationship between being Jewish and pursuing a discipline. …

Hispanic Immigration And Spanish Maintenance As Indirect Measures Of Ethnicity: Reality And Perceptions, Shaw N. Gynan

Ethnic Studies Review

Many supporters of official English have accused U.S. Hispanics of refusing to learn English and rejecting the traditional assimilationist model by clinging to their ethnolinguistic identity. An analysis of U.S. Census data from the last thirty years refutes these claims. The picture of U.S. Hispanic maintenance of ethnolinguistic identity has evolved. Here we show that while adult Spanish loyalty has decreased, youth Spanish loyalty has increased; however, Spanish maintenance does not occur at the expense of English proficiency. Once recent immigrants are subtracted from the Hispanic population, U.S. Census figures show clearly that long-term limited English proficiency has decreased substantially. …

Ethnic Studies Review

Ethnic Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Race And Birthweight: The Influence Of Socio-Economic Status And Utilization Of Prenatal Care, Lena C. Frennborn

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to determine how much of the variance in birthweight can be explained by socio-economic status and utilization of prenatal care in Blacks and Whites. Rather than defining race in genetic terms, race was understood here as a social construction. The methodological approach was an analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth Cycle IV, 1988. The first, singleton, live birth for each interviewed woman was included, resulting in a sample of 911 women, of whom 313 were Black women and 598 White women.

Consistent with previous research, Black mothers were twice as likely to …

[Review Of] Fred L. Gardaphe, Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution Of Italian American Narrative, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum

Ethnic Studies Review

This indispensable interpretation of Italian American narrative literature can fruitfully be used in many ethnic and cultural programs. It is a study distinguished by familiarity with vernacular Italian American culture, as well as consciousness of the losses as well as gains in education in the dominant WASP culture. Trying to reconcile the difference between what Antonio Gramsci called the organic intellectual and the assimilated intellectual, Gardaphe has adopted "a culture-specific criticism that is sensitive to both Italian and American cultures."

Table Of Contents

Ethnic Studies Review

Table of Contents for Ethnic Studies Review, Vol. 19, No. 2&3, October 1996.

[Review Of] Mary Carol Hopkins, Braving A New World: Cambodian (Khmer) Refugees In An American City, Corswang Ngin

Ethnic Studies Review

Cambodians, officially classified as Asian Americans, are a part of this large group which contributes to the country's fastest growing minority population. The Cambodians in Middle City, the pseudonym of a Midwestern city, however, live in a world unlike any resembling those in middle Asian America. They are victims of poverty, of dangerous urban housing and of social isolation. The majority are of poor health, illiterate in English, and too old or too distracted to learn. Hopkins' study of this community is classic ethnography, describing in vivid details the ordinary family and Buddhist ceremonial life of the Cambodians as they …

[Review Of] Thomas J. Labelle And Christopher R. Ward, Ethnic Studies And Multiculturalism, Otis L. Scott

Ethnic Studies Review

Within the barely 133 pages of this book, the authors, LaBelle and Ward, carefully examine the timely, important, and controversial issues swirling around the roles and placement of ethnic studies and multiculturalism in academe. The straightforward examination of the origin of the discipline of ethnic studies and the development of multiculturalism are confined to three parts: "Historical and Conceptual Backdrop," "Multiculturalism and Ethnic Studies: A Contemporary View," and "The Context and Strategies for Addressing Diversity."

[Review Of] Herman Gray, Watching Race: Television And The Struggle For "Blackness,", Clarence Spigner

Ethnic Studies Review

Professor Herman Gray offers a fascinating, highly analytical, and well-researched account of race (and gender) mirrored in the prism of televised images. Focusing mostly on the decade of the 1980s, in an almost razzle-dazzle and didactic fashion he explores the deep sociological and political manifestations of televised racial imagery and its effects on the well-being of American society.

Editor's Note, Miguel A. Carranza

Ethnic Studies Review

This issue of the journal includes articles that focus on a variety of topics in the discipline of Ethnic Studies. In the first article Gabriel Haslip-Viera challenges scholars to reassess the theory of human development in the Western Hemisphere. Haslip-Viera presents a compelling argument that focuses on the basic claims and methods used by Afrocentrists to support their theory. His concluding section discusses the potential consequences of this theory on future relations among African Americans, Native Americans and Latino Americans.

[Review Of] David R. Maciel And Isidro D. Ortiz, Eds. , Chicana/Chicanos At The Crossroads: Social, Economic, And Polticial Change, Jorge L. Chinea

Ethnic Studies Review

Judging from the concerns shared by a majority of its contributing authors, the dominant theme throughout this four-part interdisciplinary anthology is the relatively few gains for Chicanas/os since the Brown Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. A central theme in Part I concerns the recent influx of Latin American immigrants, a rise among the foreign-born, and the continuing concentration of Chicanos/as amongst the unemployed, the underpaid, and the destitute despite their high labor force participation.

[Review Of] Chon Noriega And Ana M. Lopez, Eds., The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts, Gabriel Haslip-Viera

Ethnic Studies Review

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the relationship between the media arts and the Latino communities of the United States. A number of important books and essays have been published on the subject, most notably Chon Noriega, ed. Chicanos and Film: Representation and Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), George Hadley-Garcia, Hispanic Hollywood: The Latins in Motion Pictures (New York: Carol Publishing, 1993), and Gary D. Keller, Hispanics and United States Film: An Overview and Handbook (Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Press, 1994). In fact, there have been so many books, edited collections, and essays published on …

[Review Of] Verad Amit-Talai And Caroline Knowles, Eds. Re-Situating Identities: The Politics Of Race, Ethnicity, And Culture, David Covin

Ethnic Studies Review

While the lead title of this book, Re-Situating Identities, is entirely on target, the subtitle, The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture, is far off the mark. The book is primarily about identity. It has precious little to do with politics. This might be apparent from the contributors, whom the editors identify as sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural theorists. There is not a political scientist among them. The omission, however, is not necessarily indicative of an absence of politics, because sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural theorists often write good politics. That is not the case in this instance. Though the editors make …