The American Community College as “Stepping Stone”Opportunity, Agency, and Family in Asian and Asian American Women’s Educational Histories

I present nine accounts of the educational aspirations and experiences of Asian and Asian American women students at two community colleges in Southwest Virginia in a context of migration histories. Despite their difficult tracks to and within the United States, the women express personal motivation in selecting programs of study leading to careers. They assume nontraditional gender roles in low-income families and offer stories of personal change in the opportunity that a community college offers by way of an affordable education. In this qualitative study, my participants’ stories complement existing quantitative studies on Asians in community colleges. In contextualizing their accounts within complex family dynamics, I problematize the related “myths” of universal Asian academic and economic success in the United States, and of a patriarchal and collectivist stereotype of the Asian family as the “cause” of such success.