Hmong Americans

Significance: Laotian mountain tribespeople from a preliterate society experienced culture shock when they migrated to the United States as refugees beginning in 1976. Their adjustment difficulties contradict the stereotype of Asian Americans as a highly educated, successful “model" minority.

The Hmong (pronounced “mong”) people have a long history of weathering adversity. For centuries the Hmong were an ethnic group persecuted in China. In the early nineteenth century, they moved to Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. In Laos, the Hmong settled in the isolated highlands. During the political turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s, many Hmong fought for the anticommunist army under General Vang Pao. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly ran and financed this Vietnam War effort in which Laotian men served in rescue missions and guerrilla operations. When the Communists took power in Laos in 1975 and the United States withdrew from Vietnam, there were reprisals against the Hmong. To escape persecution, many Hmong fled to United Nations refugee camps in Thailand. In Ban Vinai and other refugee camps, Hmong families waited to establish political refugee status so that they could emigrate to the United States.

Refugees on the Move

The first Hmong refugees arrived in the United States in 1976, assisted by world relief organizations and local organizations such as churches. Between 1976 and 1991, an estimated 100,000 Hmong came to the United States. Because of their high birthrate, the population increased substantially. The Hmong dispersed throughout the United States, settling wherever sponsors could be found. The Hmong later followed a secondary migration pattern within the United States, moving to concentrations in California, Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. Areas of second settlement were selected based on climate, cheap housing, job availability, state welfare programs, and family unification. In the early 1990s, Fresno County, California, had the largest settlement, followed by the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The reception the Hmong received varied from hearty welcome to ethnic antagonism on the part of some Americans who were ignorant of Hmong bravery and sacrifices in the Vietnam War and who did not grasp the difficulty of Hmong adjustment to life in the United States.

Culture Shock

Three branches of the Hmong came to the United States: the Blue Hmong, the White Hmong, and the Striped Hmong. They spoke different dialects and wore distinct traditional clothing but shared many cultural traditions that made it difficult to adjust to life in a modern society. Most refugees had never experienced indoor plumbing, electricity, or automobiles. For many Hmong, their only work experience before coming to the United States was as soldiers and as farmers. The traditional crops of rice and corn were raised on fields so steep that sometimes farmers tethered themselves to a stump to keep from falling off their fields. For the Hmong who tried farming in the United States, adjustment was difficult. Their slash-and-burn method of clearing land was not permitted. They were unfamiliar with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Refugees worked as migrant farmworkers and in many low-paid urban positions that did not require English proficiency. The unemployment rate was very high for many Hmong communities. In 1988, 70 percent of the Fresno Hmong depended on welfare and refugee assistance.

Education was another area of difficult cultural adaptation. In the 1990s, many Hmong children struggled in US schools. Many attended English-as-a-second-language classes, and many were placed in a vocational track. Hmong children often had low scores on standardized tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension. When large numbers of Hmong children entered certain school systems in the late 1970s and 1980s, administrators and teachers were completely unprepared. Learning English proved difficult, especially for the older Hmong who had never attended school in Laos. Special training programs first taught Hmong language literacy, then English.

Hmong beliefs about religion and medicine are very different from common attitudes in the United States. Traditional Hmong religion is a form of animism, a belief that spirits dwell in all things, including the earth, the sky, and animals. Hmong attempted to placate these spirits in religious rituals that often included animal sacrifice. In medical ceremonies, a shaman or healer tried to locate and bring back the patient’s runaway soul. Many bereaved Hmong refused autopsies, believing they interfered with reincarnation.

Hmong family traditions often put them at odds with US culture. The Laotian practice was to arrange marriages, usually interclan agreements in which a bride price was paid. Women married as teenagers, then derived their status from being a wife and mother of many children. Marriage by capture was part of Hmong tradition but led to US criminal charges of kidnapping and rape. Divorce was discouraged but possible in Laos, and children could be kept by the husband’s family. Such practices conflict with many US laws and folkways.

Other conflicts arose over US laws that the Hmong did not understand. Carrying concealed weapons was common in Laos but led to arrest in the United States. Zoning laws stipulating where to build a house or plant a field were unfamiliar to the Hmong. Disputes arose over Hmong poaching in wildlife refuges.

Culture shock seems to have taken a toll on the Hmong. In the 1970s and early 1980s, many apparently healthy Hmong men died in their sleep in what was labeled Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome. Possible explanations were depression, “survivor guilt,” and the stress of a new environment in which the men lacked control of their lives. The peak years for the syndrome were 1981 and 1982.

Strengths of the Hmong

Not all aspects of Hmong tradition handicapped their adjustment to life in the United States. Some members possess fine-motor skills honed in their intricate needlework. Without sewing machines or patterns, older Hmong women embroider and appliqué to produce marketable products that also preserve their cultural memories. Flower cloths are square designs with symmetrical patterns. Story cloths are sewn pictures depicting past events, including war brutality and refugee camp life. Hmong developed memorization skills as part of their oral tradition of elaborate folktales. The Hmong have devised a custom of group support as clans form communities for mutual aid; the Hmong typically possess a fierce independence and will to survive.

Bibliography

Cao, Lan, and Himilce Novas. Everything You Need to Know about Asian American History. Penguin, 1996.

Faderman, Lillian, and Ghia Xiong. I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience. Beacon, 1998.

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997.

Sherman, Spencer. “The Hmong in America: Laotian Refugees in the Land of the Giants.” National Geographic, October 1988.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: History of Asian Americans. Little, Brown, 1989.

Walker-Moffat, Wendy. The Other Side of the Asian American Success Story. Jossey-Bass, 1995.