Stories from Hmong in STEMM

Abstract

The Hmong are an ethnic minority group residing mainly in Asia and Southeast Asia. In the 1960s, the US Central Intelligence Agency recruited the Hmong people who mainly lived in the mountains of Laos to fight on behalf of the USA in the Vietnam War. Their involvement in this operation, referred to as the Secret War, eventually led to their persecution and diaspora as political refugees. These refugees were mainly farmers, and few possessed any level of formal education. After immigrating to the USA and other Western countries, the children of these Hmong refugees became some of the first ever to receive a compulsory formal education that went beyond the primary years, leading to a high school diploma. In the decades that followed, many of these Hmong and their descendants faced enormous odds in their quest to succeed in higher education and in life.