Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities Through Multiple Methods (Qualitative Studies in Psychology)

by Michelle Fine (Author), Michelle Fine (Author), Selcuk R. Sirin (Author)

New
Paperback
2008
$35.69

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terror, growing up Muslim in the U.S. has become a far more challenging task for young people. They must contend with popular cultural representations of Muslim-men-as-terrorists and Muslim-women-as-oppressed, the suspicious gaze of peers, teachers, and strangers, and police, and the fierce embodiment of fears in their homes.

With great attention to quantitative and qualitative detail, the authors provide heartbreaking and funny stories of discrimination and resistance, delivering hard to ignore statistical evidence of moral exclusion for young people whose lives have been situated on the intimate fault lines of global conflict, and who carry international crises in their backpacks and in their souls.

The volume offers a critical conceptual framework to aid in understanding Muslim American identity formation processes, a framework which can also be applied to other groups of marginalized and immigrant youth. In addition, through their innovative data analytic methods that creatively mix youth drawings, intensive individual interviews, focused group discussions, and culturally sensitive survey items, the authors provide an antidote to qualitative vs. quantitative arguments that have unnecessarily captured much time and energy in psychology and other behavioral sciences.

Muslim American Youth provides a much-needed road map for those seeking to understand how Muslim youth and other groups of immigrant youth negotiate their identities as Americans.

Synopsis

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terror, growing up Muslim in the U.S. has become a far more challenging task for young people. They must contend with popular cultural representations of Muslim-men-as-terrorists and Muslim-women-as-oppressed, the suspicious gaze of peers, teachers, and strangers, and police, and the fierce embodiment of fears in their homes.

With great attention to quantitative and qualitative detail, the authors provide heartbreaking and funny stories of discrimination and resistance, delivering hard to ignore statistical evidence of moral exclusion for young people whose lives have been situated on the intimate fault lines of global conflict, and who carry international crises in their backpacks and in their souls.

The volume offers a critical conceptual framework to aid in understanding Muslim American identity formation processes, a framework which can also be applied to other groups of marginalized and immigrant youth. In addition, through their innovative data analytic methods that creatively mix youth drawings, intensive individual interviews, focused group discussions, and culturally sensitive survey items, the authors provide an antidote to qualitative vs. quantitative arguments that have unnecessarily captured much time and energy in psychology and other behavioral sciences.

Muslim American Youth provides a much-needed road map for those seeking to understand how Muslim youth and other groups of immigrant youth negotiate their identities as Americans.

$35.69

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 264
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 12 Jul 2008
ISBN 10: 0814740405
ISBN 13: 9780814740408
Book Overview: Provides a much-needed analysis for those seeking to understand how Muslim youth and other groups of immigrant youth negotiate their identities as Americans

Media Reviews

This book provides a unique, powerful, rich, and nuanced understanding of identity development among Muslim-American youth. The publication of Muslim American Youth is a landmark event in developmental science.

-Richard M. Lerner,Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science, Tufts University

With heart and eloquence, the authors illuminate vital concerns about our society's treatment of Muslim-American youth.
-Youth Today

Sirin and Fine...render visible the complex lives of a profoundly maligned and misunderstood group Muslim-American youth. They deploy surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews, and identity maps to explore how Muslim-American youth are creating and re-creating themselves within these politically and socially charged times . . . This is a must read.
-M. Brinton Lykes,Lynch School of Education and Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Boston College

This book will be particularly useful for any professional who needs well-researched support for what their instinct tells them their community needs.
-VOYA Voices of Youth Advocates

This work complexly and richly captures the diversity in the lived identities of Muslim-American youth, highlighting the power and potential of mixed methodologies in studying the phenomenon of life on the hyphen.
-Harvard Educational Review

Author Bio

Michelle Fine is a Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Women's Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of a long list of award-winning books in the fields of education and psychology, including Framing Dropouts, Becoming Gentlemen, and Speedbumps: A Student Friendly Guide to Qualitative Research and The Unknown City, both with Lois Weis. She is also coeditor of NYU Press's Qualitative Studies in Psychology series. Selcuk R. Sirin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University.