Workbook
For Southeast Asian (American) Families
A Workbook on Belonging, Family Expectation, and Building Your Own Definition of Success
Your family built something here. This is where you name what it is.
For the Southeast Asian American families — Vietnamese, Hmong, Cambodian, Lao, Thai, Burmese, Indonesian, Malaysian, and others — navigating the shared experience of building belonging in America while holding the specific cultural identities that make each community distinct. Families working to define what success means across generations.
The Name It First Experience
Your family came from Southeast Asia — or from a refugee camp, or from a country that no longer looks the way it did when you left. You built something in America. The question is whether your family has ever named what that something is, and what it means for the next generation. This workbook does not flatten Southeast Asian diversity into a single identity. It provides a structure that allows your specific family to name what it carries — from whichever country, language, and tradition it comes — and what it is building from here. Grounded in Racial Identity Development theory (Cross, Helms), Acculturation Theory (Berry), Intersectionality (Crenshaw), diasporic identity scholarship (Brah, Hall), and research on Southeast Asian American family and diaspora identity, this workbook gives your family a structure for the conversation. The work is yours to do together. This is where you write it down. You leave with The Southeast Asian (American) Families Agreement.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- What has your Southeast Asian American family given you — the values, the cultural practices, the ways of understanding family and obligation that shape how you move through your life?
- What does belonging look like in your Southeast Asian American family — what are you expected to be, do, or become, and how much of that do you actually agree with?
- What would The Southeast Asian American Family Record say — from your experience — about what was given, what was expected, and what definition of success you are building for yourself?
Research basis
Cross (1971, 1991) Nigrescence Model adapted for Asian American identity / Helms (1990) racial identity statuses / Berry (1997) acculturation strategies / Crenshaw (1989, 1991) intersectionality / Brah (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora / Hall (1990) Cultural Identity and Diaspora / Espiritu (1992) Asian American Panethnicity on collective identity formation / Zhou & Bankston (1998) Growing Up American applied to Southeast Asian American families / Ong (2003) Buddha Is Hiding on Southeast Asian refugee identity / cultural diversity within Southeast Asia (Theravada Buddhism, Islam in Malaysia/Indonesia, Catholicism in Philippines) / intergenerational dynamics in refugee and immigrant Southeast Asian families (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001) / model minority applied to Southeast Asian Americans and its limits (Caplan, Choy & Whitmore, 1992).
Choose your format.
Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.
Print Paperbackpersonalize
A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.
$22.99
eBook + journal
The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.
Not available
Audiobook
We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.
Not available
Hardcoverpersonalize
The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.
Not available
Digital Fill + membership+membership
Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.
$12.99
Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership
Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.
Not available
Everything packages
The Paperback Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
The Hardcover Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
The Premium Hardcover Everything Package
[personalize]
Not available
Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.
Choose your pace.
The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.
Essential path
Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.
Full depth
Every question. Every scenario, every angle.
Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.
Buy it for yourself.
Choose your format above.