Hmong Means Free

Hmong Means Free
Author: Sucheng Chan
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 1994
Genre:
ISBN:

This collection of evocative personal testimonies by three generations of Hmong refugees is the first to describe their lives in Laos as slash-and-burn farmers, as refugees after a Communist government came to power in 1975, and as immigrants in the United States. Reflecting on the homes left behind, their narratives chronicle the difficulties of forging a new identity.

Hmong Means Free

Hmong Means Free
Author: Sucheng Chan
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2010-08-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439901392

Three generations of Hmong refugees expose the trauma and the joy of their lives.

Hmong and American

Hmong and American
Author: Vincent K. Her
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2012
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0873518551

Farmers in Laos, U.S. allies during the Vietnam War, refugees in Thailand, citizens of the Western world, the stories of the Hmong who now live in America have been told in detail through books and articles and oral histories over the past several decades. Like any immigrant group, members of the first generation may yearn for the past as they watch their children and grandchildren find their way in the dominant culture of their new home. For Hmong people born and educated in the United States, a definition of self often includes traditional practices and tight-knit family groups but also a distinctly Americanized point of view. How do Hmong Americans negotiate the expectations of these two very different cultures? This book contains a series of essays featuring a range of writing styles, leading scholars, educators, artists, and community activists who explore themes of history, culture, gender, class, family, and sexual orientation, weaving their own stories into depictions of a Hmong American community where people continue to develop complex identities that are collectively shared but deeply personal as they help to redefine the multicultural America of today.

Hmong

Hmong
Author: Keith Quincy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-07-24
Genre:
ISBN: 9780962864834

Though there are slightly more than six million Hmong worldwide, relatively few Americans know much about them. The Hmong people, who steadfastly retained many of their cultural traditions though they settled extensively in China, were forced to become perpetual migrants and montagnards, due to relentless persecution by the Chinese, who considered all but Chinese culture uncivilized. Most Hmong today live in China, Laos, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma, and are all descendants (it is speculated) of Hmong who originally migrated from central Siberia. Hmong: History of a People is a detailed rediscovery of their saga, following Hmong history and tradition from their early settlements in China, up to and including much of their contribution to the war in Vietnam. It is a book of struggle, prowess, and magic, and it reiterates the importance of cultural memory for any race and specifically the importance of the memory for the Hmong.

The Making of Hmong America

The Making of Hmong America
Author: Kou Yang
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2017-10-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1498546463

This study documents Hmong’s involvement in the Secret War in Laos, their refugee exodus from Laos to the refugee camps in Thailand, and the challenges to find third countries to take Hmong refugees. At the time, Hmong and other highlander refugees from Laos were considered unsuitable to be resettled into the United States. He provides detailed research on the adaptation of Hmong Americans to their new lives in the United States, facing discrimination and prejudice, and the advancement of Hmong Americans over the past 40 years. He presents the Hmong American community as an uprooted refugee community that grew from a small population in 1975 to more than 300,000 by the year 2015; spreading to all 50 states while becoming a diverse and complex American ethnic community. To get better insight into their diversity, complexity, and adaptation to different localities, Kou Yang uses the Hmong communities in Montana, Fresno and Denver as case studies. The progress of Hmong Americans over the past 4 decades is highlighted with a list of many achievements in education, high-tech, academia, political participation, the military and other fields. Readers of this book will gain a deeper understanding of the challenges, complex and diverse experience of the Hmong American community. They will also obtain insight into the overall experience of the Hmong, an ethnic people of Diaspora, found in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Australia, and Europe. They are like bristle-cone pines on the rock that have been exposed to all types of weather, climate and conditions, but they won't die.

A People's History of the Hmong

A People's History of the Hmong
Author: Paul Hillmer
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780873517263

Based on more than 200 interviews during 2002-2009 under the auspices of the Hmong Oral History Project. Several full-text interviews are available on the project's website.

Hmong Refugees in the New World

Hmong Refugees in the New World
Author: Christopher Thao Vang
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2016-05-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1476622620

Almost no one in the West had heard of the Hmong before National Geographic ran a cover story on the Southeast Asian ethnic group that had allied with the United States in the Vietnam War, and few knew of them before their arrival in the U.S. and other Western nations in 1975. Originating in China centuries ago, they have been known by various names--Miao, Meo, Miaozi, Meng or San Miao--some of them derogatory. The Hmong in the West are war-displaced refugees from China and Laos, though they have been misidentified as belonging to other ethnic groups. This mislabeling has caused confusion about the Hmong and their history. This book details the history of the Hmong and their journey from Eastern to Western countries, providing a clear understanding of an immigrant culture little understood by the American public. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Author: Anne Fadiman
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2012-04-24
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0374533407

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child.

The Latehomecomer

The Latehomecomer
Author: Kao Kalia Yang
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2010-12-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1566892627

In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard. Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice. Together with her sister, Kao Kalia Yang is the founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has recently screened The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com.

History on the Run

History on the Run
Author: Ma Vang
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2020-12-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478012846

During its secret war in Laos (1961–1975), the United States recruited proxy soldiers among the Hmong people. Following the war, many of these Hmong soldiers migrated to the United States with refugee status. In History on the Run Ma Vang examines the experiences of Hmong refugees in the United States to theorize refugee histories and secrecy, in particular those of the Hmong. Vang conceptualizes these histories as fugitive histories, as they move and are carried by people who move. Charting the incomplete archives of the war made secret through redacted US state documents, ethnography, film, and literature, Vang shows how Hmong refugees tell their stories in ways that exist separately from narratives of U.S. empire and that cannot be traditionally archived. In so doing, Vang outlines a methodology for writing histories that foreground refugee epistemologies despite systematic attempts to silence those histories.