Jeanette Smith

Research Journal Project  

The Hmong in Me: Discovering the Voice of America’s Newest Immigrants – the Hmong

“A lot of people that see me as American don’t understand all of it – what my history has been. They don’t see the Hmong in me” - Dr. Tony Vang, Professor of Asian Studies at California State University, Stanislaus

Table of Contents

1.      Introduction

2.      History of the Hmong

3.      Interesting Facts About the Hmong

4.      Secondary Sources

5.      Websites

6.      Conclusion

7.      Glossary of Terms

Introduction

        Who are the Hmong? I had never heard of them until I took an anthropology class this year. Even then, I came away with only bits and pieces of information about them. I yearned to hear the Hmong voice - I wanted to know them as individuals. That is the purpose of this journal.  In my research, I hope to find answers to the following questions: Who are the Hmong? What makes them unique from other Asian American immigrants? What are their conflicts as they assimilate into American society? What does the future hold for Hmong-Americans? I will look for the answers to these questions in my journal, beginning with researching the history of the Hmong. Next, I will focus on three books that I have chosen in order to take a closer look at the Hmong people themselves. Finally, I will explore some web sites to discover what is happening in the lives of Hmong today.

The History of the Hmong

Sources: Faderman, Lillian. I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant   

 Experience. Boston: Beacon, 1998.

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

         The history of the Hmong is somewhat of a mystery. Some scholars have said that their origins were in Mesopotamia. There is a Hmong legend that they once lived “behind the back of China”. Because “Hmong” sounds like “Mongol” some feel that the Hmong came from Mongolia. Others say that the Hmong have always lived in China. No one really knows. What is known is that they lived in China as far back as 5,000 years ago. The Hmong claim that they had a written language once but the Chinese forced them to give it up. The Hmong did not have a written language again until the 1950’s, when missionaries developed it for them.  The Chinese tried to force the Hmong to assimilate into mainstream Chinese society. When the Hmong refused, they suffered great persecution, with many Hmong being forced to emigrate to other countries. The Hmong have a long history of refusing to assimilate into other cultures. A French missionary once stated that the Hmong are “allergic to all kinds of authority” (Fadiman 15). It has been said that the Hmong “do not like to take orders; don’t like to lose; would rather flee, fight, or die rather than surrender; that they are not intimidated by being outnumbered; are rarely persuaded that the customs of other cultures, even those more powerful than their own, are superior; and they are capable of getting very angry” (Fadiman 17). According to Anne Fadiman, though the Hmong have never had a homeland (much like the Jews), neither have they known servitude or slavery (Fadiman 18). It has been claimed that the Hmong who remained in China were forced to wear identifying clothing, much like the Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. The Chinese viewed the Hmong as “barbarians, “bumpkins”, and “people who sound like cats”, which insulted the Hmong. The feeling was mutual with the Hmong calling the Chinese “the sons of dogs” (Fadiman 15).

       In 1810, under serious threats from the Chinese, large groups of Hmong fled China and settled in Vietnam, Thailand, Southeast Burma, and Laos (it is the Laotians that are the ancestors of most of the Hmong immigrants in America today). As an ethnic group, the Hmong have been able to maintain their shared religion, language, and unfortunately, their persecution, much like the Jews. Hmong share an independent spirit and feeling of separateness, symbolized by their terrain of choice – the mountains. The Hmong were slash-and-burn farmers whose main cash crop was opium poppies.  In Laos, there were many different ethnic groups, yet mainly because of their animist religion, other groups disliked the Hmong. The Buddhists, Laos’s largest ethnic group, had a particular hatred for the Hmong.

         Hmong life remained the same until the 1950’s and 1960’s. Laos was by then a French protectorate, with the French making lots of money from the exporting of opium. In 1953, the Viet Minh invaded northern Laos (the home of most Laotian Hmong) in order to build trails to help with a takeover of South Vietnam. America supported the pro-French forces fighting the Communists, but the French withdrew from the region in 1954. Laos was declared a neutral zone. In 1955, America sent a disguised military group to advise the Royal Lao Army in their fight against the Laotian Communists, the Pathet Lao. By 1959, the CIA was secretly recruiting Hmong to gather intelligence for them. The Hmong did not realize that their peaceful mountain world would soon be coming to an end. The Hmong were later recruited to fight for the Americans. Though the Hmong were peaceful farmers, they had a reputation for being fearless fighters when forced. These Hmong soldiers were assigned a military leader, Col. Vang Pao, and were formed into special guerrilla fighting units. They attacked Communist forces, blocked supply shipments, rescued downed American pilots, built airstrips, and flew intelligence-gathering plane missions. Why did the Hmong fight for the U.S.? Some say it was to gain respect of their countrymen who often called the Hmong “parasites” (a word the Nazis also called the Jews, revealing a commonality between these two very different ethnic groups). The Hmong participation in the Viet Nam War was costly. Before it was over, one-third of the Laotian Hmong population was killed, including half of all males over fifteen. In May 1975, The Communists overcame the Royal Lao Army. Americans airlifted Van Pao and his supporters to Thailand. Over 40,000 refugees headed toward the airlift area. Approximately 15,000 got on planes. Fearing extermination by the Communists, the remaining Hmong frantically attempted to make their way to safety in Thailand.

       The CIA promised the Hmong that if the Vietnam War was lost, they would provide for them.  But since American involvement in Laos “never existed”, the CIA felt that the secret must be kept. America resettled the Vietnamese refugees. The Hmong were, in their own words, “abandoned”.

       In December 1975, the Laotian Communists formed the Lao People’s Republic. They began  “reeducation” programs for the Hmong. These programs included hard labor, starvation, and torture (much like the concentration camps during the Holocaust).When the Hmong formed the Chao Fa resistance movement, the Pathet Lao launched air strikes against Hmong villages and jungles. The Hmong had one hope – to risk their lives by traveling through the heavily mined jungles and crossing the Mekong River into Thailand. The Hmong became like the Israelites on their mass exodus from Egypt as they streamed out of Thailand by the thousands.

        Those fortunate Hmong who made it to Thailand experienced profound changes to their old way of life, foreshadowing what they would experience when they arrived as immigrants in America. In 1983 Ban Vanai, the largest camp was closed. The Hmong were treated harshly, often violently, in the smaller camps in order to encourage the Hmong to leave. It worked.

        The Hmong dreamed of returning to their mountain homes, but their homes no longer existed. America was to be the new home for most of the Hmong. About 130,000 Hmong refugees came to the United States, being settled mainly in St. Paul, Minnesota and Fresno, California. These self-sufficient mountain-dwellers would soon be city dwellers, suffering one of the most extreme culture shocks of any immigrant before them. Hmong families were split up. Most of the  elderly, being too frail to travel, were separated forever from their children and grandchildren. Hmong men, who used to be the head of the household, now had nothing to do in the camps and hoped for a better life in American. The fiercely independent Hmong were determined that in American they would “begin their lives all over again” (Faderman 69).

Interesting Facts About The Hmong

Birth – Hmong’s believe that the placenta is a “jacket” that must be buried at the home. When a Hmong dies, the soul travels back home and puts on the jacket, which will offer protection on the dangerous journey back to find its ancestors. If the jacket cannot be found, the soul will be condemned to an eternity of wandering.

Naming Children – Some Hmong parents have given their children American names like: Kennedy, Nixon, Pajama, and Guitar.

Illness – Hmong believe that illness has a variety of sources. For example, failing to offer sacrifices to an ancestor, bumping into a dab,  touching a newborn mouse, or having bird droppings fall on one’s head. The most common source of illness is soul loss. They believe that you cannot treat the body without treating the soul (This has been a problem when Hmong seek medical treatment in America).

Secondary Sources

Faderman, Lillian. I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience. Boston: Beacon, 1998.

        In her book I Begin My Life All Over, Jewish author and second-generation immigrant Lillian Faderman begins by telling an unusual personal story about how her life intersected with the Hmong. While teaching a writing class in Fresno, CA in 1991, she noticed that many of her students had similar Chinese-sounding names (the Hmong have no more than 20 “clan” last names, though sometimes with different spellings such as “Lee” and “Ly”). She learned that they were Hmong. These students wrote of far-away mountain villages and harrowing escapes from their enemies. That was interesting to her, but one day their stories became more than just interesting. One of her students wrote about a heart-breaking story of the difficulties of trying to communicate with his parents. They spoke different languages – his, English and theirs, Hmong. Faderman began to weep, remembering the time when she had the same experience with her Yiddish-speaking mother many years before.  

       This moment caused Fadiman to realize that the Hmong and the Jews have much in common. Both have a history of having to flee from ethnic persecution only to experience it over and over again in a new land; both endured an attempted genocide, similar to Hitler’s Final Solution, the official Pathet Lao newspaper declared: “it is necessary to extirpate down to the root, the Hmong minority” (43); both were war-time “scapegoats” – the Jews were the Nazi’s , the Hmong became the Communist’s;  both suffered the brutalities of a camp – the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps, the Hmong in the Thai relocation camps; both came from areas where they were once self-sufficient, geographically and sociologically isolated in communities that were unaffected by technology; both experienced language barriers in the New World; both groups’ young people experienced guilt because they know that they are separating from their parent’s Old World culture.  This feeling of connection with the Hmong led Fadiman to put together I Begin My Life All Over, a book of essays written by the Hmong. Her essayists are young (who either came to America as very small children or are American-born), “the middle generation”(Faderman gave this name to the Hmong who came as teens) , and the war-weary older Hmong. Here are some excerpts from the Hmong essayists:

Bee Thao (Bee is a middle generation Hmong who wandered with his family in the jungle for three years before arriving in Thailand. He came to the U.S. in 1987 at the age of sixteen. He is the President of the Hmong Student Association at California State University, Fresno where he is a pre-dentistry major)

“Sometimes in the middle of the night, you just had nightmares…it was horrible to live in that situation, day after day...and so we all had to run off. We went from cave to cave, from mountain to mountain…All we could think is, “Maybe tomorrow will be the end of our lives”…There were seven of us, including me. We lived in the jungle… three years. But for three years my dad didn’t want to try to escape to Thailand because a lot of people who tried got killed…Then we got up to the Mekong…looking back to Lao, you didn’t see much hope…but facing Thailand, you saw all kinds of light – houses, the cars moving, all kinds of noise, which made me very excited, which made me very anxious to get there. There was also a lot of fear” (51)

Mee Vue (When the Vietnamese invaded her village, she and her children ran to the jungle with a group of Chao Fa resistance fighters. She came to the U.S. to reunite with a married son, but her other children remained in Southeast Asia. She is in her sixties and has not been able to learn English. She takes care of her grandchildren).

“There were so much bombs dropped…When it hit people, I saw them just explode like the bombs explode…I was so scared that I just forgot what scared is in my heart…I was numbed…You don’t even know where to run anymore. Whatever trees you see you just run toward it and try to hide behind it…I ran with my kids hanging on to my arms and holding on to my back. I was just stepping on dead people…I was so scared I didn’t look …I saw my relatives dead everywhere…First, though you were scared, you remembered to hang on to all of your kids… later…you just forgot about them, and it’s them that were hanging on to you.”(52-54).

Kia Vue ( a second generation Hmong):“Now we ride on their shoulders, through lands that are of gold, jungles that are of paradise – and yet I feel that we’re drowning, like many of our people who did not make it across the Mekong”

Vicki Xiong (sister of gang members): “My father doesn’t have any power here. He doesn’t know what to do, how to get along in America. So maybe my brothers just thought they had to find another family in gangs”

Mee Vu (older Hmong, thinking of her sons and daughters who remain in Thailand): “Though I eat  or smile there is till one part of me that is hungry and sad”

Moua, Mai Neng, ed. Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writings by Hmong Americans. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002.

Biographical information

       Mai Neng Moua is cofounder and current editor of Paj Ntaub Voice. A poet and creative nonfiction writer, she has been published in Healing by Heart, Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and We Are the Freedom People. She has a B.A. from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She is the public policy coordinator for the Institute for New Americans. She enjoys teaching creative writing to Hmong youth at the Jane Addams School for Democracy. Mai Neng Moua is an America Hmong.

        Maua was once asked: “How many Hmong writers are there? Her answer was “Just because they aren’t as visible as other groups doesn’t mean we don’t exist (6). She searched and discovered that there was not even one piece of Hmong voice in any mainstream Asian or Asian American anthologies. In Paj Ntaub Voice, she called the Hmong “the undocumented people”. Moua asked herself “Why are we so undocumented? Where are the voices of the 27,000 Hmong in St. Paul and Minneapolis? Why are we always waiting for others to tell our stories, to define us, to legitimize us? What are our stories?” (6). She is concerned that the Hmong have been described as either illiterate welfare recipients, and gang members, but never artists. She states: “It is essential for the Hmong…to express themselves – to write our own stories in our own voices and to create our own images of ourselves. When we do not, others write our stories for us, and we are in danger of accepting the images others have painted for us” (7).

Following are some complete poems  (and excerpts from poems and essays)  by the Hmong:

D.C.

by Mai Neng Moua

I stood my ground

It’s not enough that I am here

I want the imprints of their names

Some American proof that they were known

Their courage recognized

The sacrifices of their lives acknowledged

The ranger in khaki shorts and Smokey-the Bear hat said

“You have to know someone who died there”

I stood my ground

Letting the emotions clog my throat, sting my eyes

What had I expected him to say?

“Your father Tooj Cib is right over there”

My mute tongue could not scream

But I do know someone who died there

Grandfather Soob Tseej Vws

Uncle Txooj Kuam Vws

Uncle Kim Vws

Uncle Looj Muas

Men who are supposed to be –

But are not-

Here taking care of me

Showing my little brother how to be a man

The white man had moved on

To other people – tourists gathered

Around the memorial as if

It was an exotic exhibit

Talking loudly, laughing, downing

Their Evian in the humid heat

Disturbing the memories of the chaos

Just another thing you do while in D.C.

I stood my ground.

My Dad the Mekong and Me the Mississippi

By Peter Yang (a student of literature with hopes of someday becoming a writer, filmmaker, and speaker)

He fought through a war

Helping his clan

I forgot the war

Not giving a damn

Searching the woods

for family that night

Searching my mind

for anything right

I’ve never had

to look for freedom

He crossed a thousand miles

to learn a language he did not know

I crossed no land

yet his language I do not know

Remember the past

he says

I can’t

I say

I was never meant to be there

join me here

I say

I can’ t

He says

I was never meant to be here

Twinkies

By Kay Vang (Kay was born on Long Chen, a CIA military base in Laos, just days before the country’s fall to communism in 1975. Her family moved to America five years later. She attended the University of Minnesota and has been a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Chicago Tribune. She was named 2002 recipient of the Many Voices Playwright Fellowship).

Paint your face red, white, and blue

Decorate your eyes with stars and stripes

Insert color contacts until it gives you cataracts

Bleach your hair blonde

Don’t forget the roots

You’ll never wash your skin white

Consider yourself a Twinkie

Yellow on the outside –

Tasteful.

In between –

White fluff.

Some Old Hmong Woman

By Mayli Vang (graduate of the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN. In addition to Paj Ntaub Voice, her writings have appeared in Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asia Writing)

Some Old Hmong woman

Lives in the yellow high-rise

Projects of North Minneapolis.

Each morning, she cracks

An egg in boiling water.

Adds salt and black pepper to flavor.

In the afternoon,

sitting on the faded blue love seat,

She eats Texas

oranges and licks her fingers.

Her eyes have become too bad

to sawv paj ntaub. In the evening,

She boils a store-bought chicken

leg

in water; adds lemon grass to flavor.

At the small wooden table,

With the chicken leg and a bowl

Of rice, she eats in silence.

Anthropologists have noted:

Old people in the Eskimo culture

Who became too feeble to contribute

To the family were left out in the snow

To die.

A Tropical Garden in the San Joaquin Valley

By Soul Choj Vang (born in Laos and came to the U.S. as a teen. He spent two years at California State University before dropping out to search for his soul. After serving in the U.S. Army, he continued his education by earning an M.A in creative writing)

In the Fresno backyard

Of my subdivision home

Enclosed by block and wood fencing, in the little yardage of compacted dirt

I co-own with my wife and the First American Mortgage Co.,

I attempt to recreate a place that would comfort the child who continues to live within me,

Who has grown more estranged and withdrawn with each new day that I attempt to make my way into this society.

I try to quiet the child, to calm his fears with the sounds that used to lull him to sleep – the whistling of tropical leaves in the wind. So I plant bananas, papayas, lemon grass, elephant grass, guava, mango, bamboo…

They struggle to live as I scramble to save and nurture them in this foreign soil,

But the mango died in the summer heat and the guava died from the winter freeze.

What remains is a patchy semblance of the landscape the child was born into, but it has made him more than happy to see.

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.

Biographical Information

Anne Fadiman is the editor of The American Scholar. Recipient of a National Magazine Award for reporting, she has written for Civilization, Harper’s, Life, and The New York Times, among other publications.

       The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells the poignant tale of the Lee’s, a Merced, CA. Hmong family and the “collision” they experience with their Western doctors as they seek treatment for their epileptic toddler daughter, Lia. According to the Lee’s, Lia’s epilepsy occurred when her sister slammed a door, causing baby Lia’s soul to be frightened away. Because Lia’s soul was gone, an evil dab “caught” her and made her “fall down” in an epileptic seizure. The Hmong consider epilepsy an honor, a spiritual “gift”, causing many epileptics to become shaman healers.

       Fadiman describes the collision of cultures beginning with the language barrier between Lia’s family and the medical community. The Lees are fearful of Western medicine (they believed that Western doctors ate brains and if you were hospitalized you would never be able to leave). They attempted to use “some medicine, and some neeb” in helping their daughter, often with disastrous results. For instance, they did not tell their doctors that they cannot understand the instructions on Lia’s prescription bottles. Sometimes they overmedicated her and sometimes did not give her medicine at all. The  doctors and hospital are frustrated and even angry with the Lees. They consider them stupid, stubborn, and bad parents. Because of this, Lia is placed in a foster home for six months, devastating her parents. The Lees are eventually matched up with a social worker that attempts to bridge the culture gap for them and help get Lia back.  Because of the misunderstanding between the Hmong and her American doctors, Lia suffers some permanent brain damage, even though she does find relief from her epilepsy. The book presents both sides of the medical issue and gives hope that finding common ground is possible.

Websites

 www.hmongnet.org

Though I was surprised to discover so many websites for the Hmong this is the most complete site – the Hmong home page, as it is called. Here are just a few of the many categories listed on this site ) with a sampling of the offerings in the categories :

Current events - Five Senses Show: An Exhibition of Traditional and Modern Hmong and Lao Art will be curated by SatJaDham (www.satjadham.org) at the Babylon Gallery at 1624 E. Lake Street in Minneapolis, MN from April 12th to May 2nd. The official website can be found at http://members.aol.com/sjdminnesota Featured artists include: * Laotian muralist Malichansouk Kouanchao from Minnesota * Hmong abstract painter Morgane Tongkhuya from France, currently living in MN * Laotian painter Thep Thavonsouk from Canada * Laotian visual artist Vong Duane from Texas * Hmong photographer Yeng Lor from Minnesota * Hmong illustrator and cartoonist John Kong from Michigan/Ohio * Hmong visual artist Thao Vang from Minnesota Other artists are still being confirmed. For several of these artists, this is their very first gallery exhibition in the United States. This is one of the very first times this century that both Hmong and Lao visual art has been displayed like this to allow the community to compare and contrast Hmong and Lao art as it has grown.

Hmong Cultures and Traditions: Information on Hmong films, music etc.

General information about Hmong People, History, and Culture –e.g. The Hmong Experience in Asia and the United States (which includes an excerpt from the book Hmong Means Free by Susheng Chan.

Hmong Organizations – Community support organizations, Hmong school and business organization, and personal websites

Conclusion

         This journal has helped me to get a better understanding of the Hmong. I am now aware of the bitterness they feel about the Vietnam War. I have learned about the difficulties the older Hmong are experiencing because they do not know English and are still trying desperately to hold on to their old ways and to hold on to their rapidly assimilating children.  I understand the peculiar problems of the “middle generation” Hmong and their feeling of being in “limbo”.  Bee Cha is an “middle generation” Hmong American architect who describes the worrisome state of younger Hmong this way: Hmong are placing too much emphasis on education and not enough on character: “It is disturbingly ironic that although Hmong means “free”, the majority of us feel just the opposite “trapped”…Momentarily, we stand right in the middle of this shambled confusion where the notion of being born Hmong and raised American has made it extremely troublesome for us to know (or even accept) who we are anymore…the American Dream can be a Hmong’s worst nightmare…For those of my generation, it appears that becoming a typical Hmong has developed into a careless and casual routine…this so-called higher education won’t be able to provide ethnic redemption or personal exemption from this social disgrace due to our inflated emphasis on looking good rather than being the best…Knowing that with a B.A. one is lionized, with an M.A. one could be glorified, and with a Ph.D. one would be deified, many have tossed their minds onto this shelf of convenience in search of a pretentious spot along the community wall to showcase their (often exaggerated) merits…These are sad consequences because the Hmong way of life used to be simple; now the fad is to conspicuously display more wealth and power than we are worth…As we enter a new millennium, I wonder what it will take for us to realize and accept that change isn’t progress if its not thoughtful…What pride is there in being Hmong if we don’t take part in re-shaping our diminished cultural mentality?” (Moua 26 – 29).   Through my research, I have experienced the triumphs of the up-and-coming young, educated Hmong who have their sights on The American Dream and I have also experienced the tragedy of the disillusioned Hmong gang member who is living The American Nightmare. They are the Hmong’s future. Because the history of the Hmong is an oral one, I recognize the importance of listening to the voice of the older Hmong who are starting to pass away. It is also important to hear the voice of the “middle generation”, like Bee Cha, who feel lost between two worlds.  

          If I were to continue my studies on the Hmong, I would review more of the websites, especially the Hmong homepage, to get more information on the current activities of the Hmong communities. If possible, I would like to interview and maybe meet a Hmong American to discuss what they want other Americans to know about them.

       Perhaps some day all Americans will know who the Hmong are and the great sacrifices that they made during the Vietnam War. As the Hmong continue their struggle to find a place in “the land of the free”, I wish them success and hope that they can rediscover that “Hmong”  can once again mean “free”.

“It is an exciting time to be Hmong in America…We have written and are writing our own stories…Although the Hmong have not had a tradition of written literature, we are building one. We are the creators of our own history from this point on” – Mai Neng Moua

Glossary of Terms

dab – Spirits which can be either benevolent or malevolent

hu plig – The calling of the soul to return to or stay with a person’s body; hu plig guards against

an attack of evil spirits by preventing the loss of soul or by restoring a soul that may be lost. When a Hmong child is born, a hu-plig takes place on the third day after birth. Until the ceremony is performed, a child is not considered a member of the human race. If a child dies before its hu-plig, it is not given a proper funeral.

paj ntaub – intricate needlework stitched with brightly colored threads to be worn on skirts, collars, vests, etc. It is uniquely Hmong.

qeej- bamboo pipe; the major Hmong musical instrument

sawv paj ntaub – sew flower cloth

shamanism – ritualistic healing religion 

soul-loss – separation of the life-soul, which is necessary for health and happiness, from the body. A soul can separate from the body by grief, fear, curiosity, and wanderlust. Babies are especially prone to soul-loss; Hmong are careful not to say that a baby is pretty, lest a dab be listening and steal it away. Hmong parents sometimes try to fool a dab into thinking a baby is a flower by embroidering hats for their babies that have flower motifs. They may wear silver shackles around their necks for protection. Sometimes, when children go on outings, their parents can be heard calling loudly for their child’s souls to return home with the child (this has been seen in local Merced, CA parks according to Anne Fadiman)

slash-and-burn – method of farming where trees and shrubs are cut down, then burned to create soil-enriching ash, after which crops are planted. When the soil is depleted in a few years, the farmers move to a new area and repeat the process.

 twix neeb – shaman