Journeys With Asian Doctoral Student Advisees

Integrating Asian critical race theory (AsianCrit) in my teaching, this chapter foregrounds the voices of nine doctoral alumni from South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, for whom I served as dissertation chair and advisor at Penn State University in the United States. My mentorship helped students break from the pressure to assimilate the White patriarchal values and norms inscribed in the dominant scholarship and education in US universities. Eight of the nine former students responded to a set of eight questions based on four themes: the impact of their dissertations, finding their voice in writing their dissertation, challenges with regard to US cultural stereotypes of Asian countries and people, and cultural expectations by which they were raised, and their current personal and professional identities as well as mentorship advice. To provide a context of why and how I embrace AsianCrit, I share my lived experiences in developing allyship and advocacy to highlight my profound relationships and thoughtful insights from mentoring graduate students from Asian countries, each unique from intersections of their socio-economic class, ethnicity, and gendered lived experiences.