Youth Gangs, Racism, and Schooling

Kevin D. Lam is Assistant Professor of Urban and Diversity Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Drake University, USA

"Youth Gangs, Racism, and Schooling is a pioneering book about the interplay of colonialism, racism, and the production of Vietnamese youth gangs in Southern California. Lam's narrative is moving, rigorous, and deeply compelling. Weaving his own personal experiences with the poisonous dynamics of American imperialism, diaspora, displacement and the reconfiguration of place and agency, Lam provides a searing commentary on Vietnamese American youth gang subculture and the dynamics of racism, disruption, and poverty that now mark a notable chapter and offshoot of American domestic and foreign policy. The subculture of youth gangs is understood by Lam as a way not only to analyze a politics of disposability and state racism and violence, but also to connect the related matters of empire, immigration, geopolitics, and education. This is a brilliant book which should be required reading by everyone concerned about politics, power, and what it means to take seriously learning from historical memory in order to treat youth in general as part of the project and promise of a radical democracy." - Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest, The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy, and Professor of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Canada "Lam is a new voice in critical education. In this rich account, Lam provides compelling analysis of Vietnamese gang formation in a framework that combines studies of political economy, racialization, and empire. Stuck between model minority and gang-banger status, Vietnamese youth seek meaning as criminalized and perpetual strangers in the US. As Lam shows, they are neither victims of their circumstances nor freely acting subjects. We peer into a world of contradictions where hope resides as a concrete possibility through Lam's retelling of their migration and social struggle." Zeus Leonardo, Professor and Affiliated Faculty Member of the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, USA