Elder Voices: Southeast Asian Families in the United States

by Daniel F. Detzner

More than a quarter of a century has passed since the first Southeast Asian refugees arrived in this country, but because of their age and formidable language barriers, many elders have difficulty making their voices heard. Language barriers, family privacy, and social isolation have made it almost impossible for their experiences to be shared outside the family and community. Elder Voices helps to understand the family life of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Hmong refugees from the perspective of the oldest generation. Their stories are composed of complex family narratives that help us understand the ways in which migration and resettlement processes are experienced. The forty life histories of Southeast Asian elders gathered for this study collectively reveal personal perspectives on new immigrant family adaptation to American life at the end of the twentieth century. This volume is a great resource for anyone interested in Southeast Asian families in America.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2004

Reviews

[L.P. Casper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elder Voices: Southeast Asian Families in the United States by Daniel Detzner is a book revolving around Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong elders on the hardship and struggles of life in their home countries and how they’re adapting to life in their host country in America. Detzner retells the stories shared by these Southeast Asian elders of what they found challenging and what they found easier to adapt to when it comes to the American ways verses their cultural ways. This book is a great example to address the challenges Southeast Asian families face when they’re here in America that probably Americans are not aware about. It would be a great lesson (or recollection) to those who ever question why Southeast Asian families, especially the elders do things the way they do and maybe might even make us more empathetic towards their situation.
I thought the book was very well researched and made it even more realistic because Detzner included the actual opinions of these Southeast Asian elders from different case studies instead of just using his own opinions or just basing it off of one study alone. It proved how much work and effort he put into this book. I found it helpful that the book was effectively organized into chapters and subchapters (i.e. Changing Family Structures with subchapters of Elders’ Roles, Gender Roles, Family Roles and Relationships, Sibling Relationships, etc.) so that readers will have an idea of what that section is going to be about. Even though Detzner is not a man of Asian descent, he does an incredible job of capturing the lifestyle and history of Southeast Asians without any biased opinions or being judgmental from an outsider’s point of view. I even noticed a little bit of understanding from his part such as a quote from page 30 when he noted, “It is not uncommon for people crossing cultural boundaries to experience discrepancies between their identity and their actual social position in the host society.”
With that being said, he kept the stories interesting by not providing too much history on the background of Southeast Asian families that might make the readers feel as if they’re reading a history textbook that would probably bore them. Since I’m from a Southeast Asian background myself, the details and accuracy of his research was right on point that I almost forgot this book was written by a man from a different background than mine. Overall, I found this book very insightful and completely relatable. It makes me happy to know that someone can share the history and culture of Southeast Asians’ past and present without any ethnocentrism.