Take accomplished students from Latino and Asian-American backgrounds, throw them into elite, northeastern academia and see what happens. Or read the accounts of students who lived that exact story at Dartmouth.
Both "Mi Voz, Mi Vida" and "Balancing Two Worlds" record the experiences of Dartmouth students, but their priority is to capture the challenges of growing up in a multicultural world and acclimating into a mainstream American college environment. The College itself provides a framework, a point of reflection and a common thread between the subjects.
These narratives were developed and overseen by Andrew Garrod, professor of education, who discovered these projects to be not only a "potential teaching tool" but also as a "privileged form of teaching ... students sharing their life with you ... encouraging and helping them find meaning."
Many of the experiences recorded in these books illustrate the conflicts inherent in being multi-cultural. Questions of cultural allegiance, tradition versus assimilation and privilege all arise. According to Garrod, these memoirs bring an awareness to the reader that avoids our being "locked into our own identity and ethnicity."
As the student writers uncovered connections about their pasts, I questioned my perception of the Dartmouth student body. Like Garrod, who said he learned from them, the reader learns a great deal about his own outlook.
The stories reflect great diversity within single ethnic groups, and these memoirs elucidate the difficult synthesis of two cultural worlds. At the heart of each narrative is the struggle to combine elements from cultural/ familial tradition and the pervasive American environment.
The first collection, "Mi Voz, Mi Vida", attempts to answer the question, "what does it mean to be Latino?" Through anecdotes that range from describing abusive parents to surmounting the low expectations of a Latino in American society to hiding one's heritage, these students illustrate how their identity as Latinos has impacted every part of their lives.
The second book, "Balancing Two Worlds," introduces how ethnic influences have encumbered Asian American students' struggle to identify as a whole -- rather than half-Asian, half-American. Many issues in these narratives are pointedly heterogeneous. Many stories revolve around issues that pertain to all college students, not just the Latino and Asian American communities.
While all the memoirs bring up unique social and cultural issues, the confusion these writers face results from differing social and familial expectations. Despite the thought-provoking power of these two books, the worth of these volumes lies in the students' actual stories -- not in their craft. While the experiences of these students are at times frightening, sad and inspiring, the writing and format of both books suffers. Each story is unique, though as parts of a collection, they become a bit redundant. In several cases, the stories were organized with the same narrative arc. They followed what seem to be strict guidelines; as a reader, it became easy to predict the trajectory of each story, and grew tiresome.
Given this criticism, we shouldn't read these books for great writing. Rather, we should read them to learn about the challenges of growing up stuck between two cultural pulls. As Professor Garrod stated, we can benefit from the thoughtful memoirs of these writers because they are "people who face challenges ... if lives are placid, the learning is limited."
