“I Listened to Korean Society. I Always Heard that Women Should be this Way …”: The Negotiation and Construction of Gendered Identities in Claiming a Dominant Language and Race in the United States

Abstract

Based on a year-long, qualitative study of five East Asian women, pre-service teachers enrolled in U.S. Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher education programs, this article examines one Korean woman's journey as she navigates through her multiple identities as a daughter, spouse, mother, and language teacher inside and outside of Korea and the United States. In narrative accounts audiotaped during in-depth interviews conducted over a period of seven months, Han Nah shared experiences that have been shaped by her gendered identities while also being transformed by these identities. Han Nah's identities are viewed as a site of struggle in multiple contexts: (1) Han Nah was influenced by how her parents positioned her as a traditional Korean woman in the larger Korean patriarchal society, which in turn impacted her own decisions navigating through both Korean and U.S. educational and professional contexts; and (2) Han Nah's “mothering” and “spousal” identities influenced and somewhat superseded her professional aspirations, which led Han Nah to claim her dominant language and race in the Western educational system. This article concludes with TESOL teacher education implications.