Bamboo Among The Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans

Introduction

Introduction Power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality. Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families [W]hen we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak audre lorde, “A Litany for Survival” How much Hmong history and culture must I provide before we can have a conversation about Hmong literature? This is a question that I as a Hmong writer often contemplate. Sometimes it feels like an added burden, one not imposed on writers who are white and from the majority culture. But as a Hmong writer, I must engage the question in order to have dialogue. How then do I answer it without painting myself and every other Hmong writer with one stroke? This little I can tell you briefly: No one knows for certain the origin of the Hmong people. Mention of the Hmong is found in four- or five-thousand-year-old Chinese documents. Southern China still has the largest Hmong population in the world. In the 1800s some of the Hmong migrated into Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam). In Laos (home to most of the Hmong who eventually settled in the United States), the Hmong were self-sufficient farmers who lived in mountaintop villages. The Hmong started arriving in the United States in the mid-1970s as a result of the Vietnam War. Most of the Hmong men were soldiers of the Second Military Region of the Royal 3 Lao Army, led by General Vang Pao. Hmong soldiers collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency to defend their own territory and way of life and to rescue American pilots downed along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. After the Americans pulled out of Southeast Asia, the Communist Pathet Lao targeted the Hmong for destruction. Many fled into Thailand, where they lived in refugee camps before resettling in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States.* According to the U.S. census for the year 2000, there are more than 169,000 Hmong in the United States. The five states with the largest Hmong population are California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan. An estimated 40,000 Hmong live in Minnesota, ranking it second in this list. The Hmong in Minnesota are concentrated in the St. Paul– Minneapolis area. In fact, St. Paul has the most Hmong residents of any city in the world. The Hmong culture is based on oral traditions—knowledge handed down verbally from father to son and mother to daughter . The Hmong did not have a writing system until the 1950s, when Catholic missionaries developed the Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) to translate the Bible into Hmong—or Hmoob, as it is spelled in the RPA system. At about the same time, a Hmong man by the name of Shong Lue Yang developed Ntawv Phaj Hauj, a script made up of characters similar to those used in the Lao or Thai languages. Although there were at least eight known writing systems developed in the 1950s, RPA is the most commonly used today. To our knowledge, there is no earlier tradition of written Hmong literature. Because the traditional Hmong arts have not been written down (offering no convenient texts for historians and anthropologists to pore over), some may think they do not exist. 4 * See notes beginning on page 203. This is not true. Art in the Hmong community is all around. In China, Laos, and Thailand, we Hmong lived our art. It was in the hand-sewn costumes we wore to the Hmong New Year; it was in the kwv txhiaj we sang at the farms; it was in the hoes and knives we used; it was in the religious rituals we performed; it was in the houses in which we lived. It was such an integral part of our everyday lives that there was no separation between what was art and what was culture. Traditional Hmong arts include oral arts, such as paj haum, kwv txhiaj, and dab neeg; textile art such as paj ntaub; the making, dyeing, and weaving of hemp into clothing; the smithing or metal-working of knives, guns, axes, and farm tools; the construction of musical instruments such as qeej, mouth harps, flutes, and xiv xaum or raj nkauj nog; the...