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A study of the educational success of children from Southeast Asian refugee families in the United States. This study is probing and eminently readable. Analysis is united with the personal experiences of the refugees, who speak movingly for themselves. The book is valuable on several levels--as a concise, holistic view of the refugee experience, as a compelling argument for the importance of family and culture as foundations for educational success, and as a provocative comment on the state of American education. It provides insight into the nature and characteristics of many of America's newest citizens and, as such, further illuminates a primary element in the fabric of American society.

During the late 1970s hundreds of thousands of people from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos began their flight out of their homelands. Most left by sea. In emigrating to the United States, these Boat People faced extraordinary cultural, material, and psychological obstacles. In the face of these impediments to success, their rapid economic and educational achievements provide one of the most intriguing success stories of our time. In The Boat People and Achievement in America, Caplan, Whitmore, and Choy report on five years of research on the Indochinese Boat People. Two rounds of surveys conducted in Seattle, Orange County, Chicago, Houston, and Boston provide the empirical basis of this study. The cultural values, family milieu, and psychological characteristics that account for the successes of the Boat People in this country are examined. Extensive quotations from the refugees themselves provide personal insights into their backgrounds and resettlement experiences, and add an important anthropological dimension to the study. Their findings have implications for the whole question of achievement in America.