"I salute the spirit of my communities": Autoethnographic Innovations in Hmong American Literature

Abstract

Autoethnography introduces the cultural informant's own voice, reclaiming authority from the genre of participant observer ethnography. A case in point is the emergence of books on Hmong Americans, refugees of the Vietnam War. Anne Fadiman's work of ethnographic journalism, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, was published in 1997 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2002, the first anthology of Hmong American literature, Bamboo Among the Oaks, appeared, marking the inclusion of another immigrant group into American literature. Earlier works of a less literary nature, such as Dia Cha's children's book, Dia's Story Cloth, and Houa Vue Moua and Barbara J. Rolland's collaborative Trails Through the Mists, also illuminate the folk arts and visual culture. These Hmong American autoethnographies highlight the value of emerging literatures in offering alternative genres and fresh analysis of recurrent cross-cultural concerns: gender inequality and the double marginalization of forced migration.