Kwon, H. (2024) Language Brokers: Children of Immigrants Translating Inequality and Belonging for Their Families. Stanford University Press

What does it mean to be young, working class, and a person of color in a society that marginalizes all three social categories?In Language Brokers: Children of Immigrants Translating Inequality and Belonging for Their Families, Hyeyoung Kwon examines how working-class Mexican and Korean American children of immigrant parents become active social agents within the realm of language.Through their bilingual skills, they function as "language brokers" on behalf of their immigrant parents (for whom English is a second language) as they navigate racially hostile, classist, monolingual institutions.In her preface, Kwon offers a poignant reflection as a point of departure: " the anger and confusion I felt as [a] working-class daughter of immigrants left me with an intense curiosity to understand how multiple forms of inequality shape the lives of working-class children of immigrants" (ix).As a Korean American sociologist of working-class origins, Kwon provides a finely detailed examination of the internal/social lives of Mexican and Korean American language brokers as they work through the contradictions of race, class, age, and citizenship.