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. 2019 Mar;2019(164):99-115.
doi: 10.1002/cad.20279. Epub 2019 Mar 19.

A Global Cypher: The Role of Hip Hop in Cultural Identity Construction and Navigation for Southeast Asian American Youth

Jacqueline Nguyen  1 , Gail M Ferguson  2
Affiliations

A Global Cypher: The Role of Hip Hop in Cultural Identity Construction and Navigation for Southeast Asian American Youth

Jacqueline Nguyen et al. New Dir Child Adolesc Dev. 2019 Mar.

Abstract

Southeast Asian American (SEAA) adolescents and emerging adults navigate a multicultural, global world by utilizing cultural variability to play up and play down three cultural identities: their Asian/Asian American heritage culture, the White dominant culture in which they live, and a hip hop cultural identity. The latter is a unique cultural identity rooted in the global phenomenon of hip hop that includes dance, art, and music as well as resistance to the dominant, mainstream culture. Hip hop is a meaningful cultural identity for SEAA youth because it is a cultural identity transcendent of race/ethnicity, a means toward relational and identity harmony, a form of resistance, and because it facilitates belongingness to a local and a global community.

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