Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs

by Cathy A. Small

Overview

In Voyages, Cathy A. Small offers a view of the changes in migration, globalization, and ethnographic fieldwork over three decades. The second edition adds fresh descriptions and narratives in three new chapters based on two more visits to Tonga and California in 2010. The author (whose role after thirty years of fieldwork is both ethnographer and family member) reintroduces the reader to four sisters in the same family—two who migrated to the United States and two who remained in Tonga—and reveals what has unfolded in their lives in the fifteen years since the first edition was written. The second edition concludes with new reflections on how immigration and globalization have affected family, economy, tradition, political life, identity, and the practice of anthropology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801463266
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Cathy A. Small is Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of My Freshman Year (as Rebekah Nathan), also from Cornell.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Author's NoteI. Departures
1. Portrait of a Migrating Village
2. Why Migrate?II. Arrivals
3. Coming to America
4. One Family's Story
5. Palu, the One Who Left
6. An Anthropologist over TimeIII. Returns
7. Going Home: Tongan Village Life in the 1990s
8. Distant Family
9. Finau, the One Who Stayed
10. TraditionIV. Travels Ahead
11. The Meanings of Tongan Migration
12. Anthropology in a Transnational WorldV. Revisiting Globalization
13. California Dreams
14. Back to the Islands
15. Reflections on and of GlobalizationAppendix: Tongan Population and Migration EstimatesNotes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

While a few Californians may be aware of the Tongan immigrant population in their midst, most Americans are unaware that the United States is a major terminus for the people of Tonga, an island nation in the South Pacific. Small (anthropology, Northern Arizona Univ.) examines Tongan migration to the United States in a "transnational" perspective, stressing that many of the new migrant populations seem successfully to manage dual lives, in both the old country and the new. To that end, she describes life in contemporary Tongan communities and in U.S. settings. Although this does not add much that is new to the anthropological literature, the chapter on "The Meanings of Tongan Migration" will show many nonspecialists why immigrants are willing to live in "hovels" in the United States and work two or more jobs: "these same people have fine houses and are important figures in the village when they go home for two or three months each year." For academic and larger public libraries.Glenn Petersen, Baruch Coll., CUNY

Library Journal

The central idea of Voyages—that Tonga and all Tongans exist at this moment in time in a transnational space—comes through vividly and powerfully, and the durability of this image is testimony to the success of Small's experiment in ethnographic writing.

The Contemporary Pacific

Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs provide[s] valuable ways of thinking about migration, the nature of difference and flexible and sometimes transient identities....Small's book is full of experiential moments and turning points – expected and unexpected – in the lives of potential and actual migrants.

Journal of Pacific History - John Connell

Voyages is a valuable contribution to the literature on immigration and on Asian Americans. Its clear, informal prose style also makes it an ideal book for undergraduate or graduate classes in anthropology, sociology, cultural geography, or Asian American studies.

International Migration Review

Voyages is a valuable contribution to the literature on immigration and on Asian Americans. Its clear, informal prose style also makes it an ideal book for undergraduate or graduate classes in anthropology, sociology, cultural geography, or Asian American studies.

-- "International Migration Review"

Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs provide[s] valuable ways of thinking about migration, the nature of difference and flexible and sometimes transient identities....Small's book is full of experiential moments and turning points - expected and unexpected - in the lives of potential and actual migrants.

--John Connell "Journal of Pacific History"

Most Americans are unaware that the United States is a major terminus for the people of Tonga, an island nation in the South Pacific. Small examines Tongan migration to the United States in a transnational perspective, stressing that many of the new migrant populations seem to successfully manage dual lives, in both the old country and the new. To that end, she describes life in contemporary Tongan communities and in U.S. settings.

-- "Library Journal"

The central idea of Voyages--that Tonga and all Tongans exist at this moment in time in a transnational space--comes through vividly and powerfully, and the durability of this image is testimony to the success of Small's experiment in ethnographic writing.

-- "The Contemporary Pacific"

From the Publisher