Content area
Full text
The 1.5 Generation: Becoming Korean American in Hawai'i, by Mary Yu Danico. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press; Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2004. 221 pp. $21.00 paper. ISBN: 08248-2695-7.
The 1.5 Generation is a much needed empirical analysis of identity development among coming-of-age child immigrants (1.5ers), who, despite unique biculturalism, largely have been sidelined by immigration scholars' spotlight on the first and second-plus generations. Danico documents processual identity construction among Korean American 1.5ers in Hawaii, finding family, community, and socioeconomic and political dynamics to be key agents of biculturalism, as well as 1.5 collectivities in college and professional settings to be central to the youths' arrival at a "1.5" identification. She argues this point convincingly by way of a multipronged research design that I find impressive: one year of ethnographic participant observation in Hawaii and interviews with 50 young Korean Americans (20 in-depth interviews, 8 case studies, and observation of a 1.5 Korean American civic organization). Danico's study also provides a rare analysis of identity construction vis-à-vis social class differences, specifically between working class and middle class families. She finds that while 1.5ers of both backgrounds are socialized to be culturally Korean (e.g., show filial piety), working class 1.5ers are less able to enjoy a childhood,...