Chapter 1: Narrative Beginnings -- Chapter 2: Theoretical Underpinnings of This Narrative Inquiry -- Chapter 3: Learning to Think Narratively -- Chapter 4: A Narrative Account of Coming Alongside Lisa and Hồng -- Chapter 5: A Narrative Account of Coming Alongside Ryan and Thanh -- Chapter 6: A Narrative Account of Coming Alongside Alex and Hiên -- Chapter 7: Home Walk and Home Walking Alongside Vietnamese Newcomer Children and Mothers in Canada: The Resonant Threads -- Chapter 8 : "So What?" and "Who Cares?": Returning Holistically to Personal, Practical, and Social/Theoretical Justifications
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
