Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Vietnamese Children and Mothers in Canada : Composing Lives in Transition

This book recounts the understanding of three Vietnamese children and their mothers’ experiences as they navigate being newcomers to Canada. It explores the cultural, traditional, familial, intergenerational, personal, social, institutional, political, historical, community, and linguistic narratives shaping Vietnamese children and mothers as they compose their lives. The author employs narrative inquiry as a methodological approach, beginning by positioning herself through her narrative beginnings, delving deep into philosophical and methodological underpinnings. The author lays out the three child–mother pairs’ experiences as they negotiated a new culture in Canada, particularly the spaces of home, schools, and communities. The book brings a holistic and relational way of understanding familial curriculum-making as support for children’s school curriculum-making and for the ways in which Vietnamese families’ sustain their ongoing life making. It also looks at the influence of the homeland’s language, culture, and educational traditions. Through the complex interplay between the children and mothers’ narratives and the writer’s own stories, this book discusses multiperspectival and multidimensional ways of supporting Vietnamese newcomers and other ‘arrivals’ composing their lives in similar landscapes. The book is relevant to educators, researchers, cultural brokers, and policymakers, opening avenues for understanding cultural ethics within the relational ethics of narrative inquiry, as well as familial narratives in relation to institutional and social narratives.

Originally from Vietnam, Dr. Thi Thuy Hang Tran has worked in multiple areas: a lecturer, a researcher, a community facilitator, an interpreter, and a cultural broker. She has been a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education for 12 years. At present, Dr. Tran is a postdoctoral scholar at the Child Trauma Research Centre, University of Regina, Canada. She completed her PhD in Elementary Education at the University of Alberta in 2021, and received the 2022 Canadian Association of Teacher Education (CATE)’s Recognition Award as well as the 2023 American Educational Research Association (AERA)’s Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Narrative Research SIG. Dr. Tran has a wide range of research interests including education and mental health of refugee and immigrant children, youth and families, trauma-informed/sensitive pedagogies, familial curriculum making, multilingual and multicultural education, teacher education, and narrative inquiry.