Download or read book Hmong Americans in Michigan written by Martha Aladjem Bloomfield and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hmong people, originating from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, are unique among American immigrants because of their extraordinary history of migration; loyalty to one another; prolonged abuse, trauma, and suffering at the hands of those who dominated them; profound loss; and independence, as well as their amazing capacity to adapt and remain resilient over centuries. This introduction to their experience in Michigan discusses Hmong American history, culture, and more specifically how they left homelands filled with brutality and warfare to come to the United States since the mid-1970s. More than five thousand Hmong Americans live in Michigan, and many of them have faced numerous challenges as they have settled in the Midwest. How did these brave and innovative people adapt to strange new lives thousands of miles away from their homelands? How have they preserved their past through time and place, advanced their goals, and cultivated plans for their children and education? What are their lives like in the diaspora? As this book documents via personal interviews and extensive research, despite the tremendous losses they have suffered for many years, the Hmong people in Michigan continue to demonstrate courage and profound resilience.
Download or read book Hmong Americans in Michigan written by Martha Aladjem Bloomfield and published by Michigan State University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hmong people, originating from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, are unique among American immigrants because of their extraordinary history of migration; loyalty to one another; prolonged abuse, trauma, and suffering at the hands of those who dominated them; profound loss; and independence, as well as their amazing capacity to adapt and remain resilient over centuries. This introduction to their experience in Michigan discusses Hmong American history, culture, and more specifically how they left homelands filled with brutality and warfare to come to the United States since the mid-1970s. More than five thousand Hmong Americans live in Michigan, and many of them have faced numerous challenges as they have settled in the Midwest. How did these brave and innovative people adapt to strange new lives thousands of miles away from their homelands? How have they preserved their past through time and place, advanced their goals, and cultivated plans for their children and education? What are their lives like in the diaspora? As this book documents via personal interviews and extensive research, despite the tremendous losses they have suffered for many years, the Hmong people in Michigan continue to demonstrate courage and profound resilience.
Download or read book Asian Americans in Michigan written by Victor Jew and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-16 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers interested in Michigan history, sociology, and Asian American studies will enjoy this volume.
Download or read book Bamboo Among the Oaks written by Mai Neng Moua and published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of an estimated twelve million ethnic Hmong in the world, more than 160,000 live in the United States today, most of them refugees of the Vietnam War and the civil war in Laos. Their numbers make them one of the largest recent immigrant groups in our nation. Today, significant Hmong populations can be found in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, and Colorado, and St. Paul boasts the largest concentration of Hmong residents of any city in the world. In this groundbreaking anthology, first-and second-generation Hmong Americans--the first to write creatively in English--share their perspectives on being Hmong in America. In stories, poetry, essays, and drama, these writers address the common challenges of immigrants adapting to a new homeland: preserving ethnic identity and traditions, assimilating to and battling with the dominant culture, negotiating generational conflicts exacerbated by the clash of cultures, and developing new identities in multiracial America. Many pieces examine Hmong history and culture and the authors' experiences as Americans. Others comment on issues significant to the community: the role of women in a traditionally patriarchal culture, the effects of violence and abuse, the stories of Hmong military action in Laos during the Vietnam War. These writers don't pretend to provide a single story of the Hmong; instead, a multitude of voices emerge, some wrapped up in the past, others looking toward the future, where the notion of "Hmong American" continues to evolve. In her introduction, editor Mai Neng Moua describes her bewilderment when she realized that anthologies of Asian American literature rarely contained even one selection by a Hmong American. In 1994, she launched a Hmong literary journal, Paj Ntaub Voice, and in the first issue asked her readers "Where are the Hmong American voices?" Now this collection--containing selections from the journal as well as new submissions--offers a chorus of voices from a vibrant and creative community of Hmong American writers from across the United States.
Download or read book The Making of Hmong America written by Kou Yang and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Romanies in Michigan written by Martha Aladjem Bloomfield and published by Michigan State University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book relates the oral histories of Romanies in the United States. It focuses on the Hungarian-Slovak Romani musical community originally from Delray, Michigan, as well as others from outlying areas in and near Michigan. Originally Romanies came from India and hundreds of years ago traveled to Europe, Latin America, the United States, and, eventually, Michigan. Their stories provide a different voice from the stereotypical, bigoted newspaper articles from Michigan newspapers in the late nineteenth century through today that reflect law enforcement agencies’ prejudices or “racial profiling.” Romanies in Michigan introduces their diverse, rich, resilient history in Michigan, based on oral histories, photographs, newspaper articles, legal documents, and other research. The book explores traditional modes of travel; Romanies’ identity, history, perspective, and challenges with non-Romanies; their feelings as a minority group; and their self-efficacy, respect, and pride in their culture and work.
Download or read book Hmong American Concepts of Health written by Dia Cha and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Hmong American concepts of health, illness and healing, and looks at the Hmong American experience with conventional medicine. In this, it identifies factors that either obstruct or enable healthcare delivery to the Hmong.
Download or read book The Latehomecomer written by Kao Kalia Yang and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hmong Story Cloths written by Linda Gerdner and published by Schiffer Craft. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hmong story cloths provide a visual documentation of the historical and cultural legacy of the Hmong people from the country of Laos. The Hmong first began making the story cloths during their time in refugee camps, and featured here are 48 vibrant story cloths that provide a comprehensive look at their lives and culture. The creation of a story cloth begins with the selection of fabric and images outlined onto the fabric. Long satin stitches of multi-colored threads fill in the image, while details are applied with intricate satin stitches and borders pieced together and hand-stitched. Topics include history, traditional life in Laos, Hmong New Year, folk tales, and neighboring people. The quality and diversity of content of the story cloths build upon one another to provide a holistic understanding of the Hmong culture and history. Augmented with personal stories and artifacts, this book is perfect for history buffs and textile artisans alike.
Download or read book Voting Together written by Carolyn Wong and published by Asian America. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the paths taken by Hmong Americans towards a participatory citizenship and active engagement in politics in the United States.
Download or read book The Song Poet written by Kao Kalia Yang and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “memorable and moving immigrant story” chronicles the life of the author’s father, a Hmong refugee and keeper of cultural memory (Booklist). Winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses. He keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning memoir The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father, Bee Yang, the song poet—a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by America’s Secret War. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. The songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a St. Paul housing project and on the factory floor, until, with the death of Bee’s mother, they leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has burnished a life of poverty for his children, polishing their grim reality so that they might shine.
Download or read book The American Midwest written by Andrew R. L. Cayton and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-08 with total page 1918 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first-ever encyclopedia of the Midwest seeks to embrace this large and diverse area, to give it voice, and help define its distinctive character. Organized by topic, it encourages readers to reflect upon the region as a whole. Each section moves from the general to the specific, covering broad themes in longer introductory essays, filling in the details in the shorter entries that follow. There are portraits of each of the region's twelve states, followed by entries on society and culture, community and social life, economy and technology, and public life. The book offers a wealth of information about the region's surprising ethnic diversity -- a vast array of foods, languages, styles, religions, and customs -- plus well-informed essays on the region's history, culture and values, and conflicts. A site of ideas and innovations, reforms and revivals, and social and physical extremes, the Midwest emerges as a place of great complexity, signal importance, and continual fascination.
Download or read book Hmong and American written by Vincent K. Her and published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book My Grandfather s Knocking Sticks written by Brenda J. Child and published by Minnesota Historical Society. This book was released on 2014 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Child uses her grandparents' story as a gateway into discussion of various kinds of labor and survival in Great Lakes Ojibwe communities, from traditional ricing to opportunistic bootlegging, from healing dances to sustainable fishing. The result is a portrait of daily work and family life on reservations in the first half of the twentieth century"--
Download or read book A Great Place to Have a War written by Joshua Kurlantzick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how America’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy. January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA’s Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public—and most of Congress—Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. With “revelatory reporting” and “lucid prose” (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA’s clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since—all the way to today’s war on terrorism.
Download or read book Critical Theory and Performance written by Janelle G. Reinelt and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated and enlarged, this groundbreaking collection surveys the major critical currents and approaches in drama, theater, and performance
Download or read book Asian Americans 3 volumes written by Xiaojian Zhao and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 3039 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on Asian Americans, comprising three volumes that address a broad range of topics on various Asian and Pacific Islander American groups from 1848 to the present day. This three-volume work represents a leading reference resource for Asian American studies that gives students, researchers, librarians, teachers, and other interested readers the ability to easily locate accurate, up-to-date information about Asian ethnic groups, historical and contemporary events, important policies, and notable individuals. Written by leading scholars in their fields of expertise and authorities in diverse professions, the entries devote attention to diverse Asian and Pacific Islander American groups as well as the roles of women, distinct socioeconomic classes, Asian American political and social movements, and race relations involving Asian Americans.
