Download or read book Hmong in America Journey from a Secret War written by Tim Pfaff and published by Chippewa Valley Museum. This book was released on 1995 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1961, U.S. President Kennedy sent CIA operatives into northern Laos to recruit a secret army to fight communist forces in Laos and Vietnam. For fifteen years, Hmong highlanders attacked the Ho Chi Minh Trail, guarded U.S. radar installations, and acted as the frontline defense of Laos. In 1975 the Americans withdrew. Thousands of Hmong families fled to Thailand. After months or years in refugee camps, most resettled in the United States. There they faced the imposing challenge of starting a new life in a highly industrialized, technology-driven society with radically different cultural values and practices."--Back cover.
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 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 A People s History of the Hmong written by Paul Hillmer and published by Minnesota Historical Society. This book was released on 2010 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Secret War in Laos written by Steven Schofield and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tale of a young Green Beret medic, Vietnam combat veteran with the top secret Studies and Observations Group (SOG) who was recruited by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).Schofield worked 51/2 years providing medical support for the Hmong and other Hill Tribes who fought the CIA's secret war in Northern Laos, and was among the last Americans to leave SE Asia in May 1975.It was a surreal time and place that would be impossible to even imagine today."Schofiled's book reflects a genuine love for the Hmong and their culture, as well as a vast knowledge of their efforts during our 'secret war' in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s. Read and learn some actual facts; not overblown rhetoric from another barstool hero." -Stephen R. Leopold is Colonel, SF, USA (Ret)"Schofield's book will be a welcome, informative addition to recent books released on the early days of Green Beret history in Southeast Asia. De Oppresso Liber." -John Stryker Meyer is author of SOG Chronicles, Across the Fence and On the Ground
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 Yellow Rain written by Mai Der Vang and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reinvestigation of chemical biological weapons dropped on the Hmong people in the fallout of the Vietnam War In this staggering work of documentary, poetry, and collage, Mai Der Vang reopens a wrongdoing that deserves a new reckoning. As the United States abandoned them at the end of the Vietnam War, many Hmong refugees recounted stories of a mysterious substance that fell from planes during their escape from Laos starting in the mid-1970s. This substance, known as “yellow rain,” caused severe illnesses and thousands of deaths. These reports prompted an investigation into allegations that a chemical biological weapon had been used against the Hmong in breach of international treaties. A Cold War scandal erupted, wrapped in partisan debate around chemical arms development versus control. And then, to the world’s astonishment, American scientists argued that yellow rain was the feces of honeybees defecating en masse—still held as the widely accepted explanation. The truth of what happened to the Hmong, to those who experienced and suffered yellow rain, has been ignored and discredited. Integrating archival research and declassified documents, Yellow Rain calls out the erasure of a history, the silencing of a people who at the time lacked the capacity and resources to defend and represent themselves. In poems that sing and lament, that contend and question, Vang restores a vital narrative in danger of being lost, and brilliantly explores what it means to have access to the truth and how marginalized groups are often forbidden that access.
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 Soul Calling written by Joel Pickford and published by Heyday Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A photographic documentary of the Hmong people, both in the United States and overseas. Divided into two parts, the author explores the cultures and communities of Hmong immigrants and Hmong Americans living in Fresno, California as well as the dramatically different way of life of Hmong villagers in Laos.
Download or read book Dia s Story Cloth written by Dia Cha and published by Perfection Learning. This book was released on 1996-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story cloth made for the author chronicles the life of the Hmong people in their native Laos and their eventual emigration to the United States. Includes a compendium of Hmong culture--their history, traditions, and stitchery techniques.
Download or read book Modern Jungles written by Pao Lor and published by Wisconsin Historical Society. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a five-year-old boy, Pao Lor joined thousands of Hmong who fled for their lives through the jungles of Laos in the aftermath of war. After a difficult and perilous journey that neither of his parents survived, he reached the safety of Thailand, but the young refugee boy’s challenges were only just beginning. Born in a small farming village, Pao was destined to be a Hmong clan leader, wedding negotiator, or shaman. But the course of his life changed dramatically in the 1970s, when the Hmong faced persecution for their role in helping US forces fighting communism in the region. After more than two years in Thai refugee camps, Pao and his surviving family members boarded the belly of an “iron eagle” bound for the United States, where he pictured a new life of comfort and happiness. Instead, Pao found himself navigating a frightening and unfamiliar world, adjusting to a string of new schools and living situations while struggling to fulfill the hopes his parents had once held for his future. Now in Modern Jungles, Pao Lor shares his inspiring coming-of-age tale about perseverance, grit, and hope. Included are discussion questions for use by book clubs, in classrooms, or around the dinner table.
Download or read book Afterland written by Mai Der Vang and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2016 winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Carolyn Forché When I make the crossing, you must not be taken no matter what the current gives. When we reach the camp, there will be thousands like us. If I make it onto the plane, you must follow me to the roads and waiting pastures of America. We will not ride the water today on the shoulders of buffalo as we used to many years ago, nor will we forage for the sweetest mangoes. I am refugee. You are too. Cry, but do not weep. —from “Transmigration” Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture’s ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived.
Download or read book Hmong in Wisconsin written by Mai Zong Vue and published by Wisconsin Historical Society. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unknown to many Americans at the time, the Hmong helped the US government fight Communists in Laos during the Secret War of the 1960s and 1970s, a parallel conflict to the Vietnam War. When Saigon fell and allies withdrew, the surviving Hmong fled for their lives, spending years in Thai refugee camps before being relocated to the United States and other countries. Many of these families found homes in Wisconsin, which now has the third largest Hmong population in the country, following California and Minnesota. As one of the most recent cultural groups to arrive in the Badger State, the Hmong have worked hard to establish a new life here, building support systems to preserve traditions and to help one another as they enrolled in schools, started businesses, and strived for independence. Told with a mixture of scholarly research, interviews, and personal experience of the author, this latest addition to the popular People of Wisconsin series shares the Hmong’s varied stories of survival and hope as they have become an important part of Wisconsin communities.
Download or read book Special Air Warfare and the Secret War in Laos written by Air University Press and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of special air warfare and the Air Commandos who served for the ambassadors in Laos from 1964 to 1975 is captured through extensive research and veteran interviews. The author has meticulously put together a comprehensive overview of the involvement of USAF Air Commandos who served in Laos as trainers, advisors, and clandestine combat forces to prevent the communist takeover of the Royal Lao Government. This book includes pictures of those operations, unveils what had been a US government secret war, and adds a substantial contribution to understanding the wider war in Southeast Asia.
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 Somewhere in the Unknown World written by Kao Kalia Yang and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From “an exceptional storyteller,” Somewhere in the Unknown World is a collection of powerful stories of refugees who have found new lives in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet. All over this country, there are refugees. But beyond the headlines, few know who they are, how they live, or what they have lost. Although Minnesota is not known for its diversity, the state has welcomed more refugees per capita than any other, from Syria to Bosnia, Thailand to Liberia. Now, with nativism on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang—herself a Hmong refugee—has gathered stories of the stateless who today call the Twin Cities home. Here are people who found the strength and courage to rebuild after leaving all they hold dear. Awo and her mother, who escaped from Somalia, reunite with her father on the phone every Saturday, across the span of continents and decades. Tommy, born in Minneapolis to refugees from Cambodia, cannot escape the war that his parents carry inside. As Afghani flees the reach of the Taliban, he seeks at every stop what he calls a certificate of his humanity. Mr. Truong brings pho from Vietnam to Frogtown in St. Paul, reviving a crumbling block as well as his own family. In Yang’s exquisite, necessary telling, these fourteen stories for refugee journeys restore history and humanity to America's strangers and redeem its long tradition of welcome.
Download or read book A Map Into the World written by Kao Kalia Yang and published by Carolrhoda Books (R). This book was released on 2019 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heartfelt story of a young girl seeking beauty and connection in a busy world.
