Book Review: Strengths and Challenges of New Immigrant Families: Implications for Research, Education, Policy, and Service Edited by Rochelle L. Dalla, John DeFrain, Julie Johnson, and Douglas A. Abbott

Authors

Katherine Fennelly, University of Minnesota

Date of this Version

Spring 2010

Citation

Published in Great Plains Research 20.1 (Spring 2010): 150-51.

Comments

Copyright 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Used by permission.

Abstract

Strengths and Challenges of New Immigrant Families is a multidisciplinary compendium of articles and essays about immigrants and refugee families. Most (but not all) of the studies were conducted in the Great Plains states. The authors include academics, providers, and policy advocates. The work is well intentioned, but demonstrates the risks of compiling conference papers into a book; the result is a tome of variable quality. Indeed, in the introduction the editors acknowledge that it was a challenge “arranging the final manuscripts into a coherent whole.” That said, one value of the book is the inclusion of research on a number of understudied populations, such as Sudanese, Khmer, Somali, and Korean immigrants and refugees. In addition, a few chapters are of notably high quality. One of these, chapter 4 by Blume and de Reus, combines a review of the literature on race and the social construction of difference with reflections on the ways in which practitioners, researchers, and educators need to consider white privilege.