Hmong And Hmong American Society

Being a Hmong-American in the United States was hard. Growing up in a community that was full of Americans, and being in a private school in my early years, (consisting mostly of Americans and little diversity) was difficult. In that kind of environment, I never saw each person differently. The characteristics that I saw were our skin color, and another distinction that I saw was our religious and cultural backgrounds. I started to lose touch of my own culture and identity as a Hmong-American girl. My family told me that in the stages of my toddler years, I used to be good at speaking my native tongue until I started school.

The memoir, The Latehomecomer, written Kao Kalia Yang, presents the oppression and persecution of the Hmong people. Yang is a Hmong woman, who was born in a Refugee Camp in Thailand. Since then, she moved to the United States, graduated from Columbia University and wrote The Latehomecomer. Her book gave her audience a glimpse into the not as recognized topic, the history of the Hmong people, when Laos by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers forced them out of Laos and into the United States. She wants people to know the harsh times of the Hmong people, and let the future generations of Hmong know what their ancestors had to endure. Yang

I think it would be an understatement to say that there are many differences between the American and Hmong birthing process's. Chapter one describes in explicit detail the common process of how a baby is born into the Hmong culture. Specifically following the life of a woman named Foua. Myself being more familiar with the American way of childbirth, I found this woman's story fascinating. The process's and beliefs that the Hmong have toward childbirth are vastly different than American's. The Hmong seem to be more superstitious about the whole thing, and don't believe in modern medicine. While on the American side, we use every medical precaution, to the point that every minute of the babies development and birth is planned to a tee.

The book, The Latehomecomer, is a fascinating story about a Hmong family and their struggle to get out of Laos and come to America as refugees. The Hmong people are a very proud people and they do not want to forget their culture. One can clearly see that the Hmong people hold close their identity and do not want to conform to the Vietnamese way. They take pride in their culture, their society, and the way they view how government should run. Hmong people did not agree with the Vietnamese communist government and were willing to join forces and help the United States as much as possible so that they could fight for what they believed in. Even though most of the young men and boys that fought in the war died in battle or were

     The Hmong had trouble adapting to American life. With no driver’s license or bank account, they had to make a living doing whatever they could. Not knowing the language in a foreign land doesn’t help either. The Hmong women adapted much more quickly than the men did because of the fact that they interacted more with English-speaking people. While the men were at work, the women were spending time interacting. The Hmong men also refused to change more that the women did. This shift of power caused a lot of changes in Hmong households. What even caused more of a power shift was the fact that the Hmong children learned about the culture easier than the women did. Instead of the father having control over the family like it was back in Southeast Asia, the children now had the upper edge. The children could communicate, interact and even drive with Americans. You could see a 16-year-old Hmong

and belongs to the Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien) language family. Hmong students encounter several linguistic struggles when attempting to learn English (Lee and Trapp 2010). English and Hmong differ because Hmong is a tonal language, so variations in a speaker’s tone convey different meanings and messages. Hmong has no verb tenses and does not conjugate verbs which can be a difficult transition for students who are learning English. In the English language, we rely on verb tenses to understand at what point something was done. Understanding these dissimilarities is the first step toward providing the linguistic support these students require.

One of the largest challenges Americans are facing today is coming to an agreement on the issue of immigration. Based on readings from Ruane and Cerulo and Fadiman, evidence of tensions between Americans and immigrant groups has spanned generations, affecting the way our culture perceives and reacts to “the Other,”1(167) cultures outside of our Western thought that we fail to understand due to continuous preconception and unrecognized self-entitlement as the ‘in-group.’ This segregation only continues the relentless cycle of economic and social barriers between an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’ The grand conflict between the Hmong versus the medical staffs in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down highlight the ethnocentrism that incurs blind

This entry book” spirit catches you and you fall down” is talking about the cultural conflict between the Hmong's culture and American culture. These differences are brought by the strong beliefs in the Hmong's culture, and the difficulties to accept a new culture. There is a lot of misunderstanding/conflicts between these two cultures in the book. Usually, when the doctors are trying to convince the Lee's family about Lia's treatments, the Lees are stuck in their ways and really hard to accept what the doctors have to say about their beloved daughter. They believe in their own ways, even if it is helpful or not. They refuse to accept the doctors' ideas, and because the treatments that the doctors give are based on the scientific experiences, so the doctors believe that the Hmong's ideas are unreasonable or even stupid .However, when the culture conflicts face the love, these cultural differences become meaningless, which lead me to think that love is the only way that bring these cultures to connect.

At birth, the Hmong view their newborns as a gift and extremely special. At birth, it is called “Mus Thawj thiab, “go become again” or more simple, “reincarnation,” is a traditional Hmong belief (Bankston 2000). When a child is born, they are automatically seen as a gift and reborn as a reincarnated soul. Though, if a child dies after three days of living there are “no funeral ceremonies…since the child did not have a soul yet” (Bankston 2000). The Hmong believe if the child lives past three days, their soul is present though if they die, the infant never had a soul to begin with. If the child lives past day three, then a shaman is brought in and he “evokes a soul to be be reincarnated in the baby’s body” (Bankston 2000). This is considered

A little under fifty years ago, there was a sudden increase in Vietnamese refugees. In order to save their independence and lives, immigrating to another country was the only option for these people. Throughout their time in California, an area dominated by Asian refugees, they have found ways to practice their traditional culture thousand of miles away. However, the difficulty in assimilating to a new culture was a hurdle they needed to fight. With this in mind, the Vietnamese community constructed business such as: salons, markets, and restaurants. A band of refugees who were originally exiled, steadily adapted to their new home in which they flourished by innovating the Vietnamese culture with American life.

The Hmong are a group of people who originally lived in the mountains overlooking Laos, China, Vietnam, and Thailand-- though most have since emigrated to other countries and areas due to political conflict. They have valued self-sufficiency and resisted authority throughout history, as they have constantly been the minority and often seen as the Other and persecuted for being such. Still, many have managed to survive and preserve much of their culture, such as religious beliefs and shamanic healing practices.

Vietnamese by birth, my parents were the first in their families to immigrate to this land of infinite opportunities in pursuit of a higher education and superior life. Although they have somewhat assimilated American culture into their lives and allowed my brother and I to absorb it, they haven’t let us forget our Vietnamese heritage. Being integrated into Vietnamese culture, its ancient history, language, and old fashioned customs, has caused me to reconcile and balance the differences between the typical life of an American child and the one imposed upon me by my parents’ deep-rooted traditional beliefs.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed the national quota system for immigrants and allowed a new wave of immigrants from Asia, who were severely restricted from entering the U.S. prior to this change.1 The seven-category preference system created by this act allowed millions of people, including my uncle, Abdur Razzak Talukder, to immigrate to the U.S. The new wave of immigration after 1965, like the immigration of different periods of American history, raised questions about the willingness and ability of new immigrants into assimilate to the American society.2 Assimilation to the American society is only not about learning English, adopting an American-sounding name, or obtaining American citizenship, but it is also about making the U.S. as a home by being invest in American society and political process, seeing other Americans as fellow nationals, and developing a new identity. While many view the process of assimilation of immigrants as a straight-line path which ends by obtaining American citizenship, I would argue that this process is actually a long and complex path of overcoming various obstacles, discovering new cultures, and changing the way one view oneself. Although my uncle’s decision of immigrating to the U.S. was primarily motivated by the desire to achieve political and economic freedoms, it became a struggled journey, in which he overcame the challenges of discriminations, redefined himself due to social pressures to become Americanized,

This paper explores the false promises that the Chinese were given by the Americans during the mass migration between the time of 1880 and 1965. The promise of wealth, education, and equality lead to a massive migrations to the United States. Excited and restless to start anew, many left their homeland for a better tomorrow. This lead to the immigration of people from all around the globe, each group with different backgrounds, skin color, and culture were all heading towards the same direction. Among these groups were the Chinese who played a significant role in the Asian American community in American. With the mass migration everyone was not given the opportunity to be treated equally. The injustice between the law and the people will leave

I will discuss in three sections issues that I deemed necessary in researching the effect of immigration on parents’ and child’s relationship. The first section investigates Vietnamese and Asian Indian family cultures and how a parent responses to immigration due to his/her assigned gender role. I will provide examples drawing from research literatures on Vietnamese American and from my respondents’ answers. My respondents, a male and a female university students, identified themselves as a second generation Asian Indian immigrants. I chose the participants to demonstrate that family tension affects not only Vietnamese American but also other Asian American groups. The next section analyzes the parents versus children’s experiences in the U.S