Hmong Culture Research Articles

Translation of Hmong Folklore Terms in Hmong Oral Epic “Creating Heaven and Earth” From the Perspective of Eco-Translatology

The Hmong, a Chinese ethnic minority, possess a rich cultural heritage. Due to their unique history of exile and migration, the Hmong have scant documentation of their vanishing cultural heritage. The Hmong oral epic constitutes a vital component of documenting Hmong culture. Thus, this paper delves into the translation of the Hmong Oral Epic 'Creating Heaven and Earth', focusing on folklore terms as fundamental units for analyzing Hmong culture. Eco-Translatology has the great importance in protecting the languages of Chinese ethnic minorities and enhancing the dissemination of their literature (Li, 2017). Hence, this paper examines the translation of Hmong folklore terms in the Hmong Oral Epic 'Creating Heaven and Earth' from the perspective of Eco-Translatology. The study reveals 53 translations of Hmong folklore terms, encompassing material, social, and spiritual aspects, within the Hmong oral epic 'Creating Heaven and Earth'. For Hmong material folklore terms, translators predominantly employ the 'target contextualization' strategy, along with 'extending substitution' and 'vitalization' methods. For Hmong social folklore terms, translators favor the 'source contextualization' strategy, supplemented by 'adaptive addition' and 'vitalization' methods. For Hmong spiritual folklore terms, translators predominantly utilize the 'source contextualization' strategy, in addition to 'extending substitution' and 'naturalization' methods.

Digital Game Art Design for the Purpose of Inheriting Hmong Culture

Digital Game Art Design for the Purpose of Inheriting Hmong Culture

The history and current situation of the Hmong writing system

The Hmong, or Miao, is a worldwide ethnic group. The Hmong writing system has developed over the centuries, with different writings produced successively in different historical periods. This study analyses several typical Hmong writing systems from a philological perspective and discusses the impact of history and human planning activities on creating and developing writing systems. The findings show the following. (1) The font of Hmong writing includes graphic style and stroke style, and the glyph of Xiangxi Square Writing has been squared. Some Hmong writing systems use the letter as a symbolic form, the syllable as a language unit and the phonetic expression as an expression method. (2) Social background and language planning activities were significant factors that influenced the creation and development of Hmong writing forms and structures. Analysing the Hmong writing system from a philological perspective is a significant reference for future Hmong language research and world language study. Exploring the factors affecting the development of the Hmong writing system is of great significance for protecting Hmong culture and the diversity of world civilizations.

“You Get Hit or You Get Put in Check, at the End of the Day, the Love is Still There”: Hmong Culture, Diaspora, Immigration, and Gang Continuity

There has been an increased focus on the factors that influence gang continuity given the short- and long-term consequences associated with gang membership. Despite this, Asian gangs—notably the Hmong—have rarely been at the center of these academic inquiries. This is especially troubling given that their cultural and historical profile provides a unique vantage point for assessing how culture, diaspora, and immigration affect social deviance and crime. Considering these empirical gaps, the current study examines the motivations associated with gang persistence by analyzing life history interviews and ethnographic observations among a sample of 34 current and former Hmong gang members in the United States. Emergent themes suggest that brother love, perceptions of power, and a sense of obligation ensnare individuals in gang life for extended periods of time, with notable geographic and cultural distinctions. These findings highlight important avenues for future research and practice.

Disrupting Deficit Discourses about Hmong Culture

Dominant discourses persistently portray Hmong Americans as stuck in time and tied to Hmong cultural traditions. This article suggests dominant discourses about the oppression of Hmong culture are mechanisms of White supremacy. It examines research with Hmong Americans on gender and sexuality to disrupt deficit discourses about Hmong culture. It provides recommendations for teachers to counteract dominant discourses that instantiate the values, worldviews, culture and structures of White supremacy.

Perspectives of Queer Hmong Youth

This article highlights some of the tensions that exist for Hmong people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ). It uncovers differences and similarities found between the experiences of queer Hmong youth and the larger population of queer youth living in the United States. Despite the perception that a traditional Hmong culture holds no place for queer Hmong Americans, individuals are finding spaces for acceptance and slowly moving the larger Hmong community to a place of understanding and tolerance. A vital part of this movement was Shades of Yellow (SOY), an organization that supported queer Hmong from its inception in 2005 until the group disbanded in June 2017. The life stories of three of its members inform this study, offering a more nuanced look at the experiences of queer Hmong youth living in the Midwest.

Conquergood’s other: materializing the cultural text of Hmong and Latinx

ABSTRACT Dwight Conquergood’s ethnographic performance studies research, much of which featured Latinx and Hmong cultures, influenced the Communication discipline. Analytically critiquing those Latinx and Hmong representations, we reinterpret them through our lived experiences. Via three separate vignettes of our culturally forefronted academic lives, we depict how Conquergood has reified and expanded the discursive constraints of our academic beings. Centering on three types of text (urtext, text, and context), we argue that our Hmong and Latinx cultures were and continue to be foundational to a humanistic and humane turn in the study of culture as embraced and advanced by Conquergood and ourselves.

Hmong Textiles, Symmetries, Perception and Culture

As part of this Special Issue, this paper attempts to add to a reflexive discussion and confront the simplistic understanding of why humans construct symmetries. This paper examines Hmong textiles called paj ntaub. The Hmong became a transnational people due to happenstance and the Vietnam War. Despite great trials and tribulations, the Hmong people and their art and culture survived. They express themselves and their identity through oral traditions and cultural practices, one of which is their textiles. The old textile styles, known as paj ntaub, are non-representational symmetric designs. The research for this paper was done in Laos. Grounded research, textual analysis and participant observation were the methods used. Though their textiles are a salient part of Hmong culture, little work has been done on the ontology of paj ntaub. This paper proposes a novel perspective to examining the paj ntaub by using anthropological symmetry, the gestalt theory on perception, and ethnographic analysis of the culture, meanings, and choices in design embedded in the textiles, as well as the process of making of the paj ntaub. This work proposes that the paj ntaub is not merely an expression of identity but a holistic expression in Hmong culture and reflects their relationship to their world.

Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam by Lonán Ó Briain

Reviewed by: Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam by Lonán Ó Briain Marie-Pierre Lissoir (bio) Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam. Lonán Ó Briain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xxi + 208 pp., figures, tables, music examples, website content (audio and video), glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-19-062697-6 (paperback), $29.95; ISBN: 978-0-19-062696-9 (hardcover), $99.00. Companion website: http://www.oup.com/us/musicalminorities. Hmong populations, belonging to the Hmong-Yao ethnolinguistic family, are settled in several countries of continental Southeast Asia: China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Many also migrated to other continents—primarily North America (United States and Canada) and Europe (especially France). Part of the many minority groups of these Southeast Asian countries, the Hmong and their identity are often clearly and rigidly defined, either by the former colonial power, the local authorities, or neighboring ethnic groups. Due to the community's history and numerous migrations, Hmong culture and music have been described largely by scholars and amateurs in comparison to other ethnic groups of the region. Rare are the research works, however, that provide as subtle and nuanced an understanding of the sounds of the Hmong community as does this book by Lonán Ó Briain. The book is introduced with two case studies that directly plunge the reader into Ó Briain's fieldwork in Vietnam. These sketches from the field are regularly used throughout the different chapters of the book, describing musicians or providing specific interpretations. The author bases his reflections and analyses on these empirical examples that perfectly illustrate the "several ways of experiencing ethnicity" (5). As indicated by its title, the book discusses several aspects of the sounds surrounding Hmong communities, which are influenced by history, economy, politics, tourism, and religion. The different recordings available on the companion website are a valuable addition, as the twenty-four videos and seven audio recordings of traditional and pop music, rituals, and touristic performances illustrate the variety of sounds and music of the ethnic group. The author uses the Hmong RPA (Romanized Popular Alphabet) for the Hmong terms and explains the writing system to the reader. A very useful glossary of Hmong and Vietnamese words also appears at the end of the book. Ó Briain approaches ethnicity and its boundaries not only "in relation to the state" but also as a complex and multivalent phenomenon carried out by a population endowed with agency and resilience (8). He examines "the manifestation, manipulation, and contamination of ethnicity through sound," pointing out that "the circulation of these symbolically loaded sounds perpetually reformulates the meanings of Hmong ethnicity and minority identity in Vietnam" (9). This use of sound as a medium to approach Hmong identity "liberates the concept of ethnicity from fixed boundaries and categories," [End Page 149] illustrating the malleability and complexity of the concept (9). As he does for ethnicity, the author avoids compartmentalized musical categories, as they don't produce "conclusive results because of the diversity of contexts" in which Hmong music is performed. These categories should be understood as continuously in mutation, in flux (80). With this volume, Ó Briain offers a work of great intellectual integrity and transparency, based on empirical work illustrated by case studies, discussing the research of other scholars and presenting his own interpretations based on his personal experience and his informants' perceptions. The book genuinely reflects the constant mutations of Hmong culture and the representations of their identity. The first chapter, "On Becoming Vietnamese," examines how popular Vietnamese-language songs build the image of minority groups in Vietnam and participate, with all the stereotypes these songs carry, in its inscription within Vietnamese national consciousness. Chapter 2, "Hybridity and the Other in Modern National Music," explains through the case of a modified Hmong reed pipe how Hmong musics and sounds were integrated into the national musical landscape. This case study illustrates "the potential of music to reflect and refract social and political dynamics" (57). The next chapter, "Hmong Traditional Music and Folklore," presents different perspectives on Hmong traditional and folkloric music performed in the Sa Pa district that counter reductive portrayals of minority groups in Vietnam. The chapter is built around...

Because I am a Daughter: A Hmong Woman’s Educational Journey

This paper is a critical reflection on the author’s educational experience as a Hmong woman. The author draws on feminist theories, and intertwines the Hmong culture and US education. The paper begins with an introduction about the author’s US-centric perspectives she had about her Hmong community. Her narrative focuses on how these perspectives influenced her interpretations of the events that took place surrounding her decision to attend college away from home. To unpack this experience, the author focused on a need to understand Hmong culture and gendered ideologies by deconstructing her then-western-perspective of why her relatives discouraged her. Through this process, she discusses the complex influences of education and culture. Although her experience is only one of many, it demonstrates how much her education influenced her negotiation between the Hmong and American world. Overall, her personal narrative sheds light on the educational experiences of women who choose to pursue a higher education away from home. In addition to discussing the more general issues of pursuing opportunities in education, her narrative also documents the complex negotiations that many women of color face.

Hmong of French Guiana and Hmong of France: from family and roots tourism towards tourism experience of existential authenticity

French Guiana is a French overseas department located between Brazil and Surinam. Hmong refugees have been settled there in 1977 and 1979 and Hmong villages have become an important tourist attraction. Most of these tourists are Hmong from mainland France or US relatives. This family-oriented tourism has gradually shifted towards a form of roots and nostalgia tourism in which Hmong tourists aim to rediscover a setting and a way of life lost during the diaspora. But in the last ten years, another reason to visit Guiana has emerged: the yuj siab life or, to quote the Hmong, living according to one's heart. This article intends to explore all these tourism experiences and practices, and how identity tourism shifts towards this new form of inward-looking tourism focused on the emotional experience, released of any clear reference to Hmong culture and history in an Asian context.

The Meaning of Giving Birth: Voices of Hmong Women Living in Vietnam.

Increasing knowledge about the sociocultural context of birth is essential to promote culturally sensitive nursing care. This qualitative study provides an ethnographic view of the perspectives on birthing of Hmong mothers living in the highlands of Vietnam. Unique cultural beliefs exist in Hmong culture about the spiritual and physical world as well as ritual practices associated with childbearing. This includes variations of ancestor worship, reincarnation, and healing practices by shamans. Traditionally, Hmong families take an active role in childbirth with birth frequently occurring in the home. Situated within a large collaborative anthropology project, a convenience sample of 8 Hmong women, who had recently given birth, were interviewed regarding the perinatal experience. In addition, ethnic traditional birth attendants (midwives) and other village women contributed perspectives providing richly descriptive data. This ethnographic study was conducted during 6 weeks of immersed participant observation with primary data collection carried out through fieldwork. Data were analyzed to derive cultural themes from interviews and observations. Significant themes included (1) valuing motherhood, (2) laboring and giving birth silently, (3) giving birth within the comfort of home and family, (4) feeling capable of birthing well, (5) feeling anxiety to provide for another child, and (6) embracing cultural traditions. Listening to the voices of Hmong women enhances understanding of the meaning of childbirth. Gaining greater understanding of Hmong cultural beliefs and practices can ensure childbearing women receive respectful, safe, and quality care.

Working with the Hmong Population in a Genetics Setting: Genetic Counselor Perspectives.

The Hmong language lacks words for many familiar Western medical genetic concepts which may impact genetic counseling sessions with individuals of Hmong ancestry who have limited English proficiency. To study this interaction, a qualitative, semi-structured interview was designed to address genetic counselors' experiences of genetic counseling sessions working with individuals with Hmong ancestry. Genetic counselors in the three states with the largest population of Hmong individuals (California, Minnesota and Wisconsin) were invited via email to participate in a telephone interview. Eleven counselors' interviews were transcribed and analyzed for emergent themes. Each of the counselors had served Hmong patients in a variety of clinics and possessed counseling experience ranging from approximately one to greater than 20years. Interviews highlighted strengths and challenges in genetic counseling sessions with Hmong patients with limited English proficiency in each of five categories: 1) relevant training during graduate school, 2) session preparation, 3) content of the counseling session, 4) perception of Hmong culture, and 5) reflections on working with Hmong interpreters. Cultural awareness and education in training programs were highlighted by all genetic counselors as valued components to patient care. All interviewees had worked with professional Hmong medical interpreters, but had different expectations for the interpreter with whom they worked. To help improve genetic services for Hmong individuals in the United States, we offer suggestions to improve some of the challenges mentioned, and recommend further studies to investigate the genetic counselor and interpreter relationship.

Connecting as “Family” in Educative Relationships: Insights From a Media Program Serving Hmong Immigrant Youth

This article draws on an ethnographic study of a media program serving Hmong immigrant youth to illuminate perspectives and practices of teaching and learning that draw on Hmong culture’s emphasis on family and collectivism. Our explication is guided by the following question: How do a Hmong adult youth program advisor and Hmong youth connect as “family” in an educative relationship? It reveals insight for understanding the ways in which low-income, immigrant youth may be supported within educational contexts imbued by an intimacy and reciprocity that revalues the social and cultural dimensions of their lives. The article significantly advances research on the ways in which educators who share with youth the same racialized identity, neighborhood, and community construct learning environments.

Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women ed. by Chia Youyee Vang, Faith Nibbs, Ma Vang

Reviewed by: Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women ed. by Chia Youyee Vang, Faith Nibbs, Ma Vang Lori Kido Lopez (bio) Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women, edited by Chia Youyee Vang, Faith Nibbs, and Ma Vang. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. 347pp. $30.00 paper. ISBN: 978-0-8166-9778-6. Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women dives headfirst into rectifying the classic problem of the burden of representation—that Hmong women compose a minority population that is often forgotten or overlooked, and that when we do hear about them, their stories are inevitably limited to a set of reductive portrayals. Indeed, the book is wholly preoccupied with underrepresentation, or the concern that single images of Hmong women as rendered in photographs, scholarship, literature, and media will come to stand in for all Hmong women. Given that a meaningful solution to these problems is to populate the landscape with a plenitude of powerful scholarship that serves to diversify the available voices and perspectives, this collection is well positioned to address these concerns and others. Editors Chia Youyee Vang, Faith Nibbs, and Ma Vang have assembled an impressive collection of twelve chapters (plus introduction and afterword) documenting and theorizing the experiences of Hmong women that is both long overdue and sorely needed. The book is organized into four sections: “History and Knowledge Formation,” “Social Organization, Kinship and Politics,” “Art and Media,” and “Gender and Sexuality.” While these sections reveal a broad interdisciplinarity and wide range of foci, the individual contributions connect strongly across sections. Throughout discussions of everything from military histories and divorce customs to Facebook use and genderqueer identities, the writers hew closely to the stated mission of the book—to center the voices and stories of Hmong women, and to theorize their agency and empowerment in doing so. The writers often build from seminal works in gender studies, postcolonial studies, as well as South and Southeast Asian scholars in their literature reviews—a citational practice that offers a strength to the collection, as it points to the larger conversations in which these pieces are engaged, and provides points of access and connection for scholars across disciplines. Moreover, the chapters often reference one another in building their arguments, which provides a coherency and depth akin to that of a monograph. The portrait that emerges is of a thriving and vibrant Hmong culture in which women are often at the helm, if we only know where to look and what questions to ask. One of the central arguments of the book is that Hmong women’s empowerment can take place through and within Hmong culture, repudiating the assumption that Hmong culture is to blame for oppressing women, or that Western norms and cultures provide the only possibility for liberation. This is demonstrated through examinations of the active role that Hmong women have played in taking up employment and becoming educated, in rewriting [End Page 130] the spiritual consequences of divorce, in creating supportive communities using online social media, and in developing sewing practices that document Hmong histories and support entrepreneurship and innovation, among others. Julie Keown-Bomar and Ka Vang hone in on the question of agency in a chapter that repositions Hmong families as a key form of support in helping Hmong women to achieve their goals, while Mai Na M. Lee reveals the agency embodied by military leader Vang Pao’s many wives, whose matrimonial form of political power has long been neglected and misunderstood. The collection is at its strongest in chapters that move beyond critique and revision to specifically focus on building new theory and methodological approaches, such as Ma Vang’s “Rechronicling Histories: Toward a Hmong Feminist Perspective.” In closely examining Hmong women’s life stories and personal histories in terms of “narrative refusal,” or the limits and incoherencies of their accounts, she is able to posit a theory of movement as central to Hmong knowledge formation. This focus on the impact of forced migration and displacement upon Hmong families gives new meaning to the title of the book, as we see that the fraught act of “claiming place” itself is deeply connected to the production of knowledge...

“Like a Second Home”: Conceptualizing Experiences within the Fox River Watershed through a Framework of Emplacement

We propose and implement a new emplacement framework through exploration of the socio-spatial landscape of the Fox River Watershed (FRW) in Northeastern Wisconsin from a particular cultural perspective. Based primarily upon interviews conducted with 16 Hmong people to better understand and learn from the experiences of an important but overlooked FRW stakeholder group, we present our findings through the components of this framework: displacement, misplacement, replacement, and emplacement. Our research reveals that the strength of Hmong culture has persisted through tremendous loss and displacement, to survive and evolve in a new setting. The resettlement of Hmong people in the FRW has afforded relatively widespread access to landscapes that facilitate recreation, social interaction, and food production, enhancing physical and mental health and augmenting household incomes. It has also led to empowerment of women and the emergence of a generation of group members with formal ecological knowledge to add to their existing ethnobiological understanding and cultural foundation of ecological conscience. For such reasons, conservation organizations, policy makers, and departments of natural resources should look to build linking social capital between those in power and marginalized groups such as the Hmong.

Hmong Culture Club as a Place of Belonging: The Cultivation of Hmong Students’ Cultural and Political Identities

In this article, I draw on a year-long ethnographic study of an after school “Hmong Culture Club” to illuminate the ways in which it provides students with a place of belonging. I reveal the ways in which Hmong students in this setting take up ideologies of multiculturalism in response to a sense of the “loss” of Hmong culture. I explore the ways in which the Hmong Club provided Hmong students with a place to belong that simultaneously cultivated their cultural and political identities. Ultimately, I suggest that school extracurricular cultural clubs may provide insights to subtractive schooling (Valenzuela, 1999) as well as ways forward for understanding the importance of spaces for (ethnic, racial) group identity. This article will advance knowledge of the spaces of co-curricular ethnic student clubs that are the contexts for the changing dynamics of immigrant culture and identity.

From Detention Camps of Thailand to Freedom in the Foothills of North Carolina: One Family’s Remarkable Story

In the 1980s, a number of Hmong families relocated from Thailand detention camps to the United States. This research explores one such family. The family became the key informant in snowball sampling for a larger, ongoing study. Following a series of interviews, qualitative narrative life stories were created and themes of family preservation, survival, and perpetuation of Hmong culture began to emerge. Importantly, parental concerns about how to keep the family intact despite different levels of acculturation surfaced during the process. The purpose of this research was to examine one family’s attempts to preserve the oral history of the Hmong culture and to promote understanding across generations and community members from different cultural backgrounds. The interviews gave the family a forum to expose and discuss their secret journey along with their sacrifices and triumphs. Significantly, the sense of urgency to blend the Hmong and American cultures was profound.

试析贵州蜡染图画中苗族图腾文化的内涵

贵州古朴的蜡染文化是苗族图腾文化的产物，至今仍保持着惊人的生命力。无论是蝴蝶纹、鸟纹、鱼纹、花草纹，还是龙纹等等，都取自大自然，苗族人崇拜它们并奉为氏族图腾，寄托着原始而又真挚的积极生命观，传达了一种万物有灵、万命同源、众生平等、和谐共处的理念。古代苗文化与华夏文化存在着千丝万缕的联系。As a product of ancient Hmong Totem culture, Guizhou Batik Art has kept its amazing vitality. They are all taken from nature, regardless of the pattern of butterfly, bird, fish, flowers and stripes, or dragons. They are worshiped by Hmong people as their clan totem entrusted with a primitive and positive view of life that can convey an idea of animism, homology, equality and harmony among all creatures. There are inextricable links between ancient Hmong culture and Chinese culture.

“Happy to Be Born Hmong”

Members of the Hmong ethnic minority group in Vietnam are making up for shortcomings in state broadcasts by accessing transnational media principally via three new music technologies: video compact discs, cell phones with MP3 playback capability, and the Internet. The musical media supplied via these recently introduced technologies are permitting an unprecedented intensification of cultural interactions with Hmong in other parts of the world. Despite numbering over one million people, the Hmong minority group in Vietnam have been largely ignored by music scholars until recently. This article examines how the Hmong are accessing these musical technologies and considers the impact that the resulting interactions are having on Hmong culture in Vietnam.