Her research interests include second language and literacy education, family and community literacy practices of immigrant and minority groups, and the interrelationship between minority literacy practices and mainstream schooling. Li's major publications include three sole-authored books, Culturally Contested Literacies: America's “Rainbow Underclass” and Urban Schools (Routledge, 2008). Culturally Contested Pedagogy: Battles of Literacy and Schooling between Mainstream Teachers and Asian Immigrant Parents (SUNY Press, 2006, winner of 2006 Ed Fry Book Award, National Reading Conference), “East is East, West is West”? Home Literacy, Culture, and Schooling (Peter Lang, 2002), and a coedited volume, “Strangers” of the Academy: Asian Women Scholars in Higher Education (Stylus, 2006).