Laotian Daughters

"Bindi Shah has written a lively and perceptive account of Laotian American youth, who were legacies of war and displacement but came of age through community organizing. This much-needed book reminds us that movement activism does more than counter injustice; it produces new knowledge, new subjectivities, and emergent cultures."
—Scott Kurashige, author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles

"Laotian Daughters convincingly argues that children of refugees embody a pivotal social location that allows for deeper, more complex insights into such pressing issues as cultural citizenship, political belonging, and national identity. Shah’s weaving together of social scientific research, cultural studies, and literary analysis is seamless. I am particularly excited by the incorporation of environmental justice literature into this mix, which is rare. The book’s greatest strength remains the young activists whose stories bring this book to life. Laotian Daughters is part of an important, growing intellectual body of research on the U.S. second generation, and this ethnographic study of Laotian teenagers fills a significant niche."
—Lisa Sun-Hee Park, Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, and author of Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs

"Laotian Daughters tells an interesting tale about a handful of Laotian teens, who have an opportunity to hone their evolving political sensibilities in the company of others. Shah’s effort to 'explore identity based on politics rather than politics based on identity' is nuanced and rich. She successfully documents the complex divisions among a group of girls who, despite similar struggles, connect and incorporate ethnic, class, generational, and cultural diversity into their identities differently."
—Mobilization

"The book demonstrates quite effectively how environmental justice activism bridges questions of citizenship, rights, race, culture, and national identity.... (T)he best part of the book (is) the careful parsing of the potentiality and limitations of Asian Youth Advocates’s (AYA) intervention into the teens’ political subjectivity. (Shah) demonstrates the contradictions between prevailing liberal models of citizenship and existing inequalities based on group membership, as well as the partial and contingent success of AYA’s campaign to empower these young women."
—American Journal of Sociology

"The book guides readers through dense explorations on the intersection of race, identity, citizenship, and power—but it is the girls’ stories that breathe life into the book…. On balance, Laotian Daughters makes a compelling case for the power of critical incorporation. The book offers an engaging account of how a group of disadvantaged girls draws on the resources provided by their social activism on the road to 'becoming American.' Shah provides a thickly described ethnography that shows how environmental activism interacts with a number of forces (family, school, friends, the media) to delineate national, gender, and racial and ethnic boundaries.... (S)cholars of immigration, citizenship, and identity will find much to appreciate in this work."
—Contemporary Sociology

"Shah's book takes what seems to be a very narrow project and makes it a very important and broad one that has much utility for scholars working across many fields: sociology of immigration, intra and interethnic relations, youth and gender, refugee and American identity formation and critical citizenship studies, leadership development and environmental justice and urban activism. Her in-depth account of second-generation Laotian teenage girls in an environmental justice organization succeeds in articulating their struggle to challenge 'what it means to be American and are becoming American in the process.' Last, this book is well written and highly readable, and recommended for teaching in both undergraduate and graduate contexts in sociology."
—Social Forces