Presenting a holistic perspective of the Hmong way of life, this book touches on every aspect of the Hmong culture, including an overview of their history and traditions, relationships between Hmong parents and their children, the rites and traditions of Hmong wedding and funeral ceremonies, the celebration of the Hmong New Year, home restrictions and other superstitious taboos, arts and politics. The book features and explains many Hmong words, phrases and proverbs. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
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.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child.
“Calling in the Soul” (Hu Plig) is the chant the Hmong use to guide the soul of a newborn baby into its body on the third day after birth. Based on extensive original research conducted in the late 1980s in a village in northern Thailand, this ethnographic study examines Hmong cosmological beliefs about the cycle of life as expressed in practices surrounding birth, marriage, and death and considers the gender relationships evident in these practices. The Hmong (or Miao, as they are called in China, and Meo, in Thailand) have lived on the fringes of powerful Southeast Asian states for centuries. Their social framework is distinctly patrilineal, granting little direct power to women. Yet within the limits of that structure, Hmong women wield considerable influence in the spiritually critical realms of birth and death. Calling in the Soul will be of interest to sociocultural anthropologists, medical anthropologists, Southeast Asianists, and gender specialists. Replaces ISBN 9780295800424
A principled decision brings unexpected consequences for a Hmong American woman struggling to reconcile the two cultures--and to be a good daughter while breaking the rules.
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.
Simple, earthy, fiery, and fresh, Hmong food is an exciting but still little-known South Asian cuisine. In traditional Hmong culture, dishes are created and replicated not by exact measurements but by taste and experimentationfor every Hmong recipe, there are as many variations as there are Hmong cooksand often served to large, communal groups. Sami Scripter and Sheng Yang have gathered more than 100 recipes, illustrated them with color photos of completed dishes, and provided descriptions of unusual ingredients and cooking techniques.
From the author of The Latehomecomer, a powerful memoir of her father, a Hmong song poet who sacrificed his gift for his children's future in America In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning book 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 American's Secret War. Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until, one day, a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine. Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story -- of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.
Hmong students interviewed their elders in the community to capture the history and culture of their people. A minority in every country where they have lived, they value their independence and self-sufficiency. This book reunites the Hmong youth, who have become alienated from their culture in living in the United States, to Hmong culture and inspire self-esteem as well as helping others learn about this amazing culture. An excellent collection of stories, writings and photographs by Hmong students in Minnesota. Hmong people are refugees from Laos via Thailand.
This nonfiction children's book teaches about the Hmong people. It gives a brief history of the Hmong people and it also gives information about their culture, traditions, religion, food, and clothing.
