Focusing on four Chinese immigrant children's intersecting worlds of home literacy, culture, and schooling, Guofang Li brings the reader into the inner worlds of these children and their families through an ethnographic lens. Centering on the meanings that these children's home literacy practices and their beliefs about literacy have brought upon their school experiences, this book documents the complex, multifaceted nature of the different literacy practices of these children in their distinct family milieus. Li highlights the role of culture and family capital in shaping home literacy practices and schooling. The illustrations of the varied, but often frustrating home experiences counteract the schooled, Eurocentric notion of literacy that may constrain and contradict immigrant children's learning outside of schools.
«'East is East, West is West? Home Literacy, Culture, and Schooling' takes us into the homes of four families and allows us to look closely at four Chinese children as they begin their schooling in Canada. Guofang Li does an excellent job of describing the challenges facing both academic and entrepreneurial families as they try to make sense of an educational system that is very different from the one they experienced. There is much important information about the perceptions that new Chinese immigrants have about Western schooling and the difficulties that they encounter in balancing work and academic support of their children. This book especially valuable to researchers and practitioners involved in the establishment of meaningful home-school partnerships between newly arrived immigrants and schools.» (Guadalupe Valdés, Professor of Education and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Stanford University, California)