Claiming Chineseness, Performing Localness: Languages and Identities of Chinese Americans in the Arizona-Sonoran Borderlands

Abstract

Arizona-Sonora Borderlands has a long history, where Mexicans, African Americans, and Indigenous Native Americans co-existed since its recorded history. The development of the Borderland is attributed not only to the majority Anglos, Mexicans, Indians on both sides, but also the early immigrants from China and their descendants, who have been living here since the 1870s. And yet, their lived experience was overlooked or sparsely documented in the studies of Latin American and Indigenous American Natives. Although there is a growing attention drawn on Asian Americans in Latin American studies, the studies specifically on language and identity issues of Chinese Americans in the borderlands have been relatively limited. This dissertation focuses on how Chinese American youth construct and negotiate their identities through their daily interactions with people in the borderlands. Building on the scholarships of Diaspora, Border Studies, and Asian American Studies, I draw on the notion of ‘Chineseness’ and ‘identity,’ and ask: how do the Chinese American youth perceive and position themselves through learnings of Mandarin and lion dance as their heritages, and how do their families and communities perceive, imagine, and expect them in terms of heritage language and culture? The dissertation is drawn on the on 3-months archival investigation and 24-months of ethnographic fieldwork at Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, a non-profit institution located on the west side of Tucson city, this dissertation provides an empirical and timely account of how Chinese Americans youth deal with the entangled identity, culture, and language in the Arizona-Sonoran borderlands.The dissertation reveals that most of the Chinese American youth recognize and value ‘Chineseness’ as part of their cultural identity and asset. They are passionate in the participation of the cultural and language heritage education, through which their identities are constructed and negotiated. In the meantime, they are able to assert and navigate their ethnic identity by using ethnic language and educational actions to the ones who interrogate or even discriminate against them. The study also emphasizes that the local young Chinese Americans focus not only on the development of China, namely “becoming” Chinese, but also “becoming” local Tucsonans by taking the advantages of learning Spanish and becoming involved in the local Hispanic communities. Therefore, the study echoes the multi-layered identities that the scholars propose. More importantly, the study shows the potential connections between “Asia” and “Latin America”. The presence of Chinese Americans in the borderlands, not only because it covers the lacuna in the U.S.-Mexico border studies, but also because the presence of Chinese Americans and their community impacts the larger Asian and Latin American communities nationwide and Global Asias.