Carving out Hybrid Cultural Space:Building a Thai Buddhist Temple in the United States

Many Americans have never visited a Buddhist temple.Most,however,think that they know what a temple looks like—grandeur and a lot of wood.The reality is different.Most Buddhist temples in the United States look like ordinary houses from the outside(See Figures 1 and 2).It is challenging to build a

Many Americans have never visited a Buddhist temple. Most, however, think that they know what a temple looks like-- grandeur and a lot of wood. The reality is different. Most Buddhist temples in the United States look like ordinary houses from the outside （See Figures 1 and 2）. It is challenging to build a Buddhist temple in a predominantly Christian society. In building a temple from scratch or converting a house into a tem and Vietnamese communities ple, Chinese, Cambodian, Burmese, Laotian, have repeatedly encountered enormous resis and outright racism. For example, in Texas in teacher who signed ＂I don＇t want a a Catholic boys＇ a petition against the bunch of monks building under my nose. Thai, tance the early 1980s, one retired of a Vietnamese temple said.