Chapter 3: Chinatown Youth Reflect on the Discourses of September 11, 2001

In this study, I explored the emerging responses of New York City youth who identify as Chinese American or as recent immigrants from China to the events of September 11th. In my classroom observations and the semistructured individual interviews that I conducted with six adolescents from Chinatown, I focused on ways that youth were making sense of the events of September 11th. The findings have revealed multiple ways that Chinatown youth are interrupting, or refusing to take for granted through their persistent questioning and critiques, the dominant discourses of patriotism, war, and anti-immigration that have arisen around September 11.