Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

While African American dress has long been noted as having a distinctive edge, many people may not know that debutante balls - a relatively recent phenomenon within African American communities - feature young women and men dressed, respectively, in conventional symbols of female purity and male hegemony, and conforming to gender stereotypes that have tended to characterize such events traditionally. Within the Hmong American community, mothers and aunts of teenagers use bangles, lace and traditional handwork techniques to create dazzling displays reflecting the gender and ethnicity of their sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, as they participate in an annual courtship ritual. This book examines these events to show how dress is used to transform gender construction and create positive images of African American and Hmong American youth.Coming-of-age rituals serve as arenas of cultural revision and change. For each of these communities, the choice of dress represents cultural affirmation. This author shows that within the homogenizing context of American society, dress serves as a site for the continual renegotiation of identity - gendered, ethnic and otherwise.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. ix)
• List of Illustrations (p. xi)
• 1 Introduction (p. 1)
• 2 Hmong Arerican Dress and Culture: an Overview (p. 15)
• 3 Dressed Be Successful in America: Models of Masculinity at Hmong New Year (p. 31)
• 4 I Am Hmong, I Am American, I Am a Hmong American Woman (p. 49)
• 5 Invention of Tradition: Emergence of Ethnic Dress in America (p. 71)
• 6 African American Debutante Balls: Presenting Women of Quality (p. 81)
• 7 It Was Style, with a Capital "s" Versions of Being Male Presented at the Beautillion Ball (p. 97)
• 8 Comning of Age in America: Common Threads (p. 113)
• Bibliography (p. 117)
• Index (p. 123)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book describes Hmong and African American rites of passage in America, focusing on New Year celebration costumes of Laotian Hmong youth in St. Paul, MN, and how this clothing reflects conflicts between the old male-dominated culture and the new gender roles and values found in US society. Methodology is discussed at length, but Lynch never provides a detailed overall description of Hmong New Year's celebrations and how clothing fits into festival planning and celebration, individually or collectively. Indirect references are obscured with interview quotes. This sociological tome would be improved if the Hmong were treated alone, expanded, and given much greater depth. Hmong clothing and ornaments are so elaborate that readers would appreciate more in-depth details about their creation and symbolic meanings, such as why "rooster hats" (formerly worn by small children) are being designed and created for teenagers. Lynch's research, which closed in 1992, could be updated. Her few pages on African American debutante balls (which encourage academic, social, and athletic excellence in black teenage girls) and "beautillion" balls (the same for boys) are worth documenting but ought to be in a separate article, not "added on" to flush out a thin book. Academic collections. B. B. Chico; Regis University