Multiracial Mandarin

Asian Americans and Impossible Language

Understanding the entanglement of language education with ethnicity and racialization

Who has the “right” to learn Mandarin Chinese? In Multiracial Mandarin, author David Shuang Song examines how matters of race and privilege shape US Mandarin language education and who has access to it. Through a two-year ethnographic study of two Bay Area high schools where diasporic and heritage speakers learn Mandarin alongside Black and Latinx students, Song advances a sociological and educationallinguistic inquiry into how language interacts with our understanding of identity and equity.

Comparing classroom activities in two public schools, Song investigates teachers that seek to make Mandarin accessible while detaching it from its cultural roots. As he explores the difficulties of limited resources, racial inequality, and pedagogical practices inherent in multiracial Mandarin instruc