Border-Crossings, Family, Friends, and Education: Pacific Islander Girls in Hawai‘i Writing their Lives

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the writing of adolescent Pacific Islander girls who, during a community-based workshop, drafted statements of purpose (SOP) for scholarship applications. Pacific Islander migrants are among the most marginalized residents in Hawai‘i. Our project engaged the girls in telling their own stories through writing. Following New Literacies Studies approaches, we designed a multi-week workshop where the girls reflected on their stories and drafted SOPs. We collected the texts and used qualitative content analysis to investigate how the girls presented their stories. Analyses reveal that the girls authored stories from their own lives, relating their migrations across cultural and geographic borders, accomplishments and challenges, and aspirations for the future. The younger girls represented themselves differently from the older girls. For this group of multilingual adolescent girls, writing their SOP in a familiar out-of-school setting allowed them to express their identities as transnational youth with both traditional and modern sensibilities.