As a senior student at the California State University, Sacramento, the memories of primary school and secondary school is much so like a distant, unfamiliar land that one only passes through when driving across other states. Who would ever predict that one day, I would have to recall my educational journey from Kindergarten to twelve grade, and reflect about the many things which shaped me to who I am today. I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand during October 1, 1993. Unfortunately, I do not have any knowledge regarding my lived life there because I was less than three years old when my parents immigrated to the United States of America. I can remember some of the lived childhood moments while residing in the United States. However, I was unaware that my race, gender, and class would be impactful in shaping my experience from Kindergarten to twelve grade. First, I am the oldest son and the middle child to a Hmong family of seven including my parents. My mother gave birth to my two older sisters in Thailand, and gave birth to my youngest brother and youngest sister in the United States. My parents lived in Laos during the Vietnam War when the United States fought against communism in the Indochina countries of Laos and Vietnam. The fall of Saigon in 1975 marked the day when the Hmong people could no longer safely lived in the communist countries and sought refugees in Thailand.
“The U.S. government had not foreseen that refugees would flood Thailand seeking asylum.
One’s identity has the ability to play a central role in one’s schooling experience and in return, affect the way they perceive the world around them. Growing up in an Asian household located in a predominately Asian American neighborhood located in the San Gabriel Valley, I always identified myself strongly to my race and took pride in being a first generation Asian American child. Race has definitely affected my schooling experience in many different ways, both positively and negatively. In addition, there were a variety of other aspects such as stereotypical gender roles and socioeconomic class status which factored into the way I learned in the U.S. education system. In this paper, I will examine how race, class, and gender played a big role throughout my schooling experience.
In the novel “W, or the memory of childhood” written by Georges Perec, we see the story of a Jewish child that lived through his childhood during World War 2 and the time of the Holocaust which was a depressing time for Jewish people. This is an autobiographical novel which uses alternating chapters to help better describe his journey through this depressing time as a child, with trauma comes emotional and psychological harm which causes you to do whatever it takes to numb the pain, whether it is to find the source of the pain or to submerge them deep inside your heart to forget it. In this case, Perec used alternating chapters
It was very tough for the Hmong’s that were still in Vietnam and Laos after the war. The American armed forces was these people’s only protection and after they just picked up and left for their home shores the Hmong people that were still alive faced severe hardships. They had no food and water and most of their homes were all destroyed. Most of the men and young adult boys were killed in the war and the Vietnamese and Laos soldiers were still pursing the Hmong people because they wanted to terminate the Hmong people. It was also tough for the Hmong people that were left because the American’s had stopped bringing food drops along with medical supplies.
I am Hmong and comes from a family of nine. My parents are refugees from Laos who came to the United States to escape communism after the Vietnam War. I was born in Oroville, California in the year 1994 and moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1997. My parents moved here in hope to find a good job to provide for the family as well as a better education for their children. As I got older, I realized that how important it is to help out one another. I am where I’m at because of the support I received from my family and my community. This is the reason why I tried my best to be a part of my community when I was in high school and while I am in college. In high school I took the opportunity to be involved with my school by joining school organizations.
Life after the vietnam war was and is still today terrible because of not only laos and vietnam but because of the americans who abandoned them. A lot of hmong people moved to minnesota, 10% of the population in saint paul is hmong. Hmong people who stayed in Laos are still being killed today for what happened almost 50 years ago. life in Thailand is no longer a safe refuge for the hmong
During the Vietnam War, Hmong soldiers fought on the side of the United States against the Pathet Lao, the communist faction in the country. When the Vietnam War ended and the U.S. pulled out of the region, the Pathet Lao took control of Laos and persecuted the Hmong for being disloyal (Fadiman 1997). Hmong resisted forced assimilation at the hands of the communist government by fleeing to temporary
Family is one of the most important aspects of life in Hmong culture. An interview with L. Yang, a 52 year-old Hmong man who lived in Thailand for the first forty years of his life supports this assertion. He expressed that Hmong people prioritize the needs of their family before the needs of the individual (personal communication, November 16, 2014). Hmong people value
The Vietnamese woman interviewed moved from Vietnam to the United States when she was thirty years old. She was raised by both parents and five brothers. Parents stayed in Vietnam. Extended family live in Southern California. She has three children and seven grandchildren. Family very important in culture.
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.
Over a period of time, the Hmong people have immigrated from country to country due to oppression from governments and due to their involvement in wars. For this reason, Hmong people are now found living scattered across the globe (Tatman 2004). With no country to call home, they fled to the hillsides and mountain tops of nearby neighboring countries. As a result, the Hmong people had to reestablish their communities and families wherever the settled. Although the Hmong’s lacked a formal government and a central leader, Hmong families were often lead by a dominant male figure within the family who was responsible for the decision making and wellbeing of the group (Long 2008). The social structure found within Hmong communities and Hmong
During the Vietnam War, United States military forces worked closely with a population indigenous to Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam known as the Hmong. The Hmong demonstrated loyalty and dedication in their cooperation during the war at a great cost to themselves. Not only did they suffer losses of 20% if their adult male population (Vang, 1979, cited by Tatman, 2004, p. 223), but once the fall of Saigon in 1975 marked the end of the conflict with a victory for North Vietnam, the Hmong were suddenly targeted for retaliation in the form of a genocidal campaign waged by Pathet Lao with the support of the Vietnamese military. As friends and family members, including children, were murdered mercilessly, many sought safety in Thailand where they were
Learning is the process of gaining knowledge or skills through study, experience or teaching. It is a process that depends on experience and leads to long-term changes in the possible behaviour of an individual in a given situation, in order to achieve a goal.
Memory is defined as "the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information." Our memory can be compared to a computer's information processing system. To remember an event we need to get information into our brain which is encoding, store the information and then be able to retrieve it. The three-stage processing model of Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin suggests that we record information that we want to remember first as a fleeting sensory memory and then it is processed into a short term memory bin where we encode it ( pay attention to encode important or novel stimuli) for long-term memory and later retrieval. The premise for the three step process is that we are unable to focus on too much
When I was a young child I would love to hear my parents tell me that we were going on a trip. I would be full of excitement, because I knew that we would be going to a place that I had never seen before. My parents, my brother, and I would pack our luggage and venture out in our small gray minivan. Three of my most cherished memories in our minivan are when we went to Disney World, the beach, and the mountains.
My earliest memory I remember as a child is around the age of two years old. My Mother would put me in the playpen but I refused to stay. I was able to climb out of it. I remembered my Mother’s face expression that let me know that I better not climb out of the playpen again. This was one of my earliest memories of her setting her boundaries. When I got older, my Mother told me about the situation. She needed to clean and/or cook so she had to put me in the playpen. At the age of two years old, I just wanted to explore and didn’t want to stay in the playpen. This set the tone between us moving forward.