Question:
Book Review: Tang’s Ethnography, “Unsettled”
Report on the entire ethnography.
With a lot of critical thinking, you will be able to identify the key ideas and arguments in each chapter.
You can add to your report the things you enjoyed and didn’t like about each chapter.
Answer:
Cultural Anthropology refers to the study of human beings and focuses on different cultures.
This study is primarily concerned with the socio-cultural aspects and the diversity of human life. (Lau and al.
This essay will focus on the cultural and anthropological history, Cambodians, against the backdrop of Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia.
Eric Tang’s book, “Unsettled”, explores the relationship of African Americans and refugee communities. It also examines how governmental violence entered the inner affairs of American cities (Tang).
Eric Tang, scholar-activist, focused mainly on the two current issues facing the nation, namely.
The intercontinental refugee crises and the growing movement against police and law violations in urban America.
Eric Tang’s book tells the story Ra Pronh from Cambodia, who arrives in the Bronx as a refugee from Thailand’s refugee camps (Contreras).
Tang used the historical past experiences of Ra in order to dramatize her story.
Eric Tang strongly denies that the government has created such circumstances that people are forced to leave their family, properties, and settlements.
Tang was adamant that the government was responsible for these discrepancies in their laws and regulations. However, Tang didn’t reveal the identity of the government so readers can’t recognize the accused governmental organisations (Clymer).
The book begins with a description about the United States’ role in Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge invasion of 1975-1979.
Tang blamed the “paradox” of the United States for making it illegal to allow Southeast Asian refugees to enter the country.
Instead of accepting peace and freedom, the writer insists that these refugees found only an “unbroken state” of captivity.
The next chapters of the book were written by Tang. They describe the daily lives of refugees in refugee camps. This gives readers a glimpse into the struggles these refugees faced to survive in refugee camps.
This book gives a glimpse into their lives and highlights the resistance strategies they used to escape oppression from the government (Forrant).
The book ends with a list of the violence and harassments faced by refugees in migrant camps.
The book concludes with a summary that shows how even the agency meant to assist refugees used their circumstances to meet their own needs.
Tang concludes by stating that the “persistence of Cambodian poverty over three decades is evidence that their continued captivity” as well as stating that the refugee “is never saved or released”.
It can be concluded that “Unsettled”, the book about the cultural and social backgrounds of the Cambodian population, is conclusive.
Refer to
Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees at the New York City Hyperghetto.
Eric Tang, “Unsettled”: Cambodian Refugees in NYC Hyperghetto.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2015, 234 pages.
“Eric Tang, Unsettled”: Cambodian Refugees in New York City’s Hyperghetto.
Eric Tang, “Unsettled – Cambodian Refugees in New York City Hyperghetto”
Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 32.2 (2016).
Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees at the New York City Hyperghetto.
Temple University Press, 2015.