Calling in the soul: gender and the cycle of life in a Hmong village

Notes

Notes preface 1. The wic program provides supplemental food for low-income mothers and their children. It is administered by the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service and is distributed by individual states. 2. Funds for research on the Hmong in Providence were provided by the Ethnic Family Life Project of the O‹ce of Adolescent Family Life, Department of Health and Human Services. 3. An episiotomy is a surgical incision of the vagina to widen the birth outlet, considered by some to be an unnecessary procedure. The chorionic membrane is the outermost of two membranes enveloping the fetus. 4. See Jordan 1983 for a cross-cultural comparison of birthing systems. 5. The Hmong National Development Program is an umbrella organization that grew out of earlier programs run by the O‹ce of Refugee Resettlement, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In the late 1980s, General Vang Pao began the Lao Family Association, which has branches all over the United States. Several women’s groups, such as the Hmong/Lao Women’s Association and Women’s Allied Health Network (wahl) educate and assist women in di‹cult 279 or crisis situations. Hmong Allied Health Network Support assists people with questions and health issues. 6. See Symonds 1992, 1997b, and 1998. Introduction: Conducting Research in a Hmong Village 1. See Mead and Newton 1967:142–244; McClain 1975:38–56; Muecke 1976:377– 83; MacCormack 1982:1–23; Jordan 1983:3–12; Kay 1982:1–24; Fruzzetti 1982:24–25, 101; Fruzzetti and Oster, 1976:97–132; Newman 1969:112–35, 1972, 1985; Laderman 1983:172; Martin 1992:54–67; Davis Floyd 1988:153–72 and 1990:175–89. 2. Hanks 1963; Hart et al. 1965; Mougne 1978:68–108; Manderson 1981:509–20, Laderman 1983. 3. Anne Fadiman (1997:1–11) opens her book—which was published after I began my study—with a description of a Hmong birth that is consistent with my observations, as does Pranee Liamputtong Rice’s Hmong Women and Reproduction (2000:87–104) which deals comprehensively with reproductive issues in Thailand and Australia. 4. Other anthropological studies on the Hmong in Southeast Asia have mentioned birth in passing (Cooper 1984:15, 145; Tapp 1989a:67–68). Howard Radley, in his dissertation on the Green Mong in Thailand, recounts that a shaman informed him that “a child receives 32 bones from its father at birth” and reports that Hmong “distinguish between the male principle of a child: the bones, and the female principle: the flesh” (1986:245). Although the bone/flesh dichotomy is common in many Southeast Asian and other cultures (Leach 1954:13–14, 20; Boddy 1989:66–67, 67n29; Lévi Strauss 1969:393–405; Fox 1971:219–252; Traube 1986:93), the White Hmong in Flower Village seemed unaware of it. For more on Hmong/Miao social structure, see Ruey Yih-Fu 1960:152–53; Radley 1986:125–32; Lee 1981:75–86; Tapp l989b:19. A few of the studies on Hmong refugees in the United States mention birth. In an oral history, May Xiong, a Green Mong woman living in the United States, and Nancy Donnelly (1986:201–44) discuss the problems she had giving birth duringthewarinLaos .PotterandWhirren(1984:48–62)andHahnandMuecke(1984) investigateculturalaspectsof birthing,whereasRumbautandWeeks(1986:428–65) present quantitative data on fertility. All of the authors presenting data on Hmong reproduction are impressed by the consistently high fertility rates. 5. This section appeared in an earlier form in The Political Economy of aids, 280 NOtes to pages xii–xxiv edited by Merrill Singer (Farmingdale, N.Y.: Baywood Publishing Company, 1998). 6. Hmong and Mien (Miao/Yao) speak linguistically related languages. Linguists are not in agreement on the genetic roots of this language family. On the Hmong in China, see Tapp 2001 and Schein 2000. 7. Ibid. 8. The 1990 census on the populations of Chinese nationalities reported 7,398,035 Miao (Beijing Review 33, no. 52 [Dec. 24–30, 1990]: 34, quoted in Schein 200:70). 9. By “traditional” I do not mean to imply that cultures are static; I am speaking only of aspects or “themes” of Hmong culture that are discernable over time. 10. Tapp (1990:113) asserts that the two “dialects” of Green Mong and White Hmong in Southeast Asia should be considered subdialects of the main Chuanqiandian dialect of Hmong in China. 11. See Alting von Geusau (1986:41–77) for a discussion of the terms used for minorities. 12. The...