Leaving Deep Water: The Lives of Asian-American Women at the Crossroads of Two Cultures

During her younger years, Chow, a first-generation Chinese American born and raised in California, was ashamed of her Asian heritage, and so when she married she chose a blond Caucasian. They had two children, and the author became a family counselor and an adjunct professor at the John F. Kennedy University's Graduate School of Professional Psychology in California. In trying to come to terms with her identity problems, Chow hoped to gain insight from others like herself; she questioned 120 Asian American women for this book, most of them middle class and several of them professionals. She learned that many of her respondents shared her racial confusion, while others were proud of their heritage, either not acutely conscious of discrimination or indifferent to it. She found that her interviewees who grew up in more racially integrated Hawaii had the fewest identity problems. These case histories provide interesting, enlightening perspectives on the Asian experience in America. Chow notes that as she grew older she came to accept herself. (Mar.)