A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Vietnamese Children and Mothers in Canada: Composing Lives in Transition (Global Vietnam: Across Time, Space and Community)

This book recounts the understanding of three Vietnamese children and their mothers’ experiences as they navigate being newcomers to Canada. It explores the cultural, traditional, familial, intergenerational, personal, social, institutional, political, historical, community, and linguistic narratives shaping Vietnamese children and mothers as they compose their lives. The author employs narrative inquiry as a methodological approach, beginning by positioning herself through her narrative beginnings, delving deep into philosophical and methodological underpinnings. The author lays out the three child–mother pairs’ experiences as they negotiated a new culture in Canada, particularly the spaces of home, schools, and communities. The book brings a holistic and relational way of understanding familial curriculum-making as support for children’s school curriculum-making and for the ways in which Vietnamese families’ sustain their ongoing life making. It also looks at the influence of the homeland’s language, culture, and educational traditions. Through the complex interplay between the children and mothers’ narratives and the writer’s own stories, this book discusses multiperspectival and multidimensional ways of supporting Vietnamese newcomers and other ‘arrivals’ composing their lives in similar landscapes. The book is relevant to educators, researchers, cultural brokers, and policymakers, opening avenues for understanding cultural ethics within the relational ethics of narrative inquiry, as well as familial narratives in relation to institutional and social narratives. Preface Acknowledgements Contents About the Author List of Figures 1 Narrative Beginnings 1.1 Experience Compels My Research 1.2 Beginning to Wonder About Composing Lives in Transition 1.2.1 Inquiring into Experiences of Transition in My Childhood 1.2.2 Early Childhood with Very Few Friends 1.3 Beginning to Wonder About Intergenerational Narrative Reverberation 1.3.1 The Kitchen: Grandmother, Mother, and Daughter 1.4 Beginning to Wonder About Familial Curriculum Making References 2 Theoretical Underpinnings of This Narrative Inquiry 2.1 Lingering with My Wonders of Experience, Lives in Transition, Familial Curriculum Making, and Intergenerational Narrative Reverberation 2.1.1 Dewey’s Theory of Experience 2.1.2 Becoming Drawn Toward Lives in Transition 2.1.3 Becoming Drawn Toward Familial Curriculum Making 2.1.4 Becoming Drawn Toward Intergenerational Narrative Reverberation 2.2 Additional Social/Theoretical Justifications for an Emerging Research Puzzle 2.2.1 Attending to Children as They Compose Lives in Transition to Canada 2.2.2 Attending to the Vietnamese Community in Canada 2.2.3 Attending to “World”-Travelling 2.3 An Emerging Research Puzzle References 3 Learning to Think Narratively 3.1 Gradually Awakening to the Centrality of the Relational Ethics as a Narrative Inquirer 3.2 Continuing to Grow in Understanding What Narrative Inquirers Do 3.3 The Centrality of Experience and Attending to Experience 3.4 Co-making Our Relational Narrative Inquiry 3.4.1 Meeting Potential Co-researchers 3.4.2 Coming Alongside Co-researchers and Co-composing Field Texts 3.4.3 Thinking Narratively with Our Field Texts to Shape Interim Research Texts 3.4.4 Drawing on the Narrative Accounts to Shape Final Research Texts 3.5 Looking Ahead References 4 A Narrative Account of Coming Alongside Lisa and Hồng 4.1 Rooting and Co-making Relationships 4.1.1 Introducing Lisa and Hồng 4.2 Narrative Threads Weaving Lisa and Hồng’s Familial Curriculum Making 4.2.1 Living in Intergenerationally and Culturally Ethical and Respectful Ways 4.2.2 In Relation with Bà—Numerous Stories Lived, Told, and Retold During Our Inquiry 4.2.3 In Relation with Lisa—Numerous Stories Lived, Told, and Retold During Our Inquiry 4.2.4 In Relation with Hồng—Numerous Stories Lived, Told, and Retold During Our Inquiry 4.2.5 Valuing and Nurturing Relationships 4.2.6 Desiring Good Relationships More Than Learning Languages 4.2.7 Composing Lives in Two Languages 4.2.8 Family as Always-in-the-Making 4.3 Returning to the Piano References 5 A Narrative Account of Coming Alongside Ryan and Thanh 5.1 Beginning in Tensions 5.2 A Year Later, a Healthier Happier Story Begins to Be Lived and Told 5.3 A Year Before: Thinking Backward and Forward from Our Days of Rooting Relationships 5.4 Narrative Threads of Coming Alongside Ryan and Thanh 5.4.1 Living Layers of Relationality 5.4.2 Being Afraid of Academic Failure as a Sign of Life Failure 5.4.3 “All We Care is to Help Our Children” 5.5 Circling Back to School, Circling Back to Hopes and Smiles References 6 A Narrative Account of Coming Alongside Alex and Hiên 6.1 Beginnings: Ways Friends Became Co-researchers 6.2 Growing Seeds of Being in Relation in Narrative Inquiry 6.2.1 With Hiên as Both Co-researcher and Friend 6.2.2 With Alex with Respect for His Characteristics 6.3 Narrative Threads that Emerged Alongside Alex and Hiên 6.3.1 “Early Childhood Education is not to Create a Genius, But to Help Children Develop” 6.3.2 Bumping Stories Between Broader Social, Cultural, and Institutional Narratives and Familial Narratives 6.3.3 Sustaining the Relational Ontology in the Everyday Practices of Children and Family 6.4 For Now—Rethinking Education for Children’s Flourishing References 7 Home Walk and Home Walking Alongside Vietnamese Newcomer Children and Mothers in Canada: The Resonant Threads 7.1 Awakening to the Resonances 7.2 Thread One: Home Walks Between Lands 7.2.1 Home Walks as a Bridging Space Between School and Home 7.2.2 Home Walks Between the Home Country and the New Country 7.2.3 Home Walks in Living in and with Liminality 7.3 Thread Two: Home Walks Between Languages 7.3.1 Languages in Connection with Places 7.3.2 Languages in Connection with Playing 7.3.3 Languages in Connection with Social and Community Contexts 7.4 Thread Three: Home Walks with Temporality 7.4.1 Living the Present While Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future 7.4.2 Intergenerational Narrative Reverberations 7.5 Thread Four: Home Walks Within, Between, and Across Families 7.5.1 Multiple Cultural and Playful Co-composers in Familial Curriculum Making 7.5.2 Living Homeland Culture as Identity Making in the New Land 7.6 Learning from These Resonant Threads References 8 “So What?” and “Who Cares?”: A Holistic Returning 8.1 Looking Back 8.2 Living in Culturally and Ethically Relational Ways 8.2.1 Living in Culturally and Ethically Relational Ways with Co-researchers 8.2.2 Living Relationships Shaped by the Desires of Co-researchers 8.3 Newcomer Children and Mothers 8.3.1 Home Walking 8.3.2 Familial Curriculum Making 8.4 Flourishing 8.4.1 Flourishing for Newcomer Children, Mothers, and Families 8.4.2 Flourishing for Multispecies 8.5 Closing (for Now) and My Forward Looking References Correction to: A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Vietnamese Children and Mothers in Canada Correction to: T. T. H. Tran, A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Vietnamese Children and Mothers in Canada, Global Vietnam: Across Time, Space and Community, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5818-4 Epilogue