by Staring Down the Tiger- Stories of Hmong American Women (retail) (epub)
I had an unconventional mother who was always running in and out of marriages, battling her own addiction, and struggling with her own cultural limitations. At twelve years old, I suspected there was something fundamentally wrong with the fact that my mother was forced to marry and divorce her four abusive husbands because she couldn’t opt out from the Hmong marriage game—a game in which she would remain the loser every time. She didn’t speak English and she couldn’t drive, which were two of the most essential skills to have in order to obtain autonomy.
I am the second child of six; more importantly, I was the first daughter. That meant I had the most responsibilities. Because of this, I found myself double cast as a child and a parent. At times I played the child who needed permission from my mother to do sleepovers, to add Hot Cheetos to the shopping cart, and to set up my own dentist appointments. Other times I played the parent who executed the payment of bills, translated at parent-teacher conferences for my siblings and me, and forged signatures on field trip permission slips. My unconventional mother was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I had to sacrifice my typical teenage experiences such as dating, clubbing, and shopping at name-brand stores; on the other hand, I learned how to be responsible and mature early on in life.
I didn’t know this then, but in retrospect, this balancing act prepared me to be a cultural broker in the broader American political, cultural, and educational domains. Little did I know that my difficult and convoluted years of firsthand experience growing up on government welfare in a single-parent household as a public-schooled, first-generation, Hmong, female college student would grant me first-class access to a wealth of empathy, tenacity, and bravery.
I remember how my mother used to compare herself with the knife and me with the pencil. She said, “I can control the knife gracefully. I would never die from starvation because of my mastery in cooking.” On the other hand, I was very skilled with the pencil, something she wasn’t. She said my ability to control the pencil would grant our stories eternal life. Therefore reading, writing, and literacy became my tools of emancipation.
To me, education had always been my escape route away from all the cultural and financial problems at home, and quite frankly I excelled in the classroom. At school I was judged on my own merit, on my ability to produce knowledge, to reiterate concepts and theories, and to intentionally reflect on my own experiences. In the classroom I was praised for my eloquence, my intellectual contributions, and my critical opinions. On top of that, I was encouraged to be a leader in the National Honor Society, Link Crew, and various other clubs and organizations. I was encouraged to be a trailblazer. If trailblazing was my fire, education kindled it. Through my achievements in education I began rejecting Hmong patriarchal values because I found them oppressive and unfair.
College wasn’t in my scheme until junior year of high school, which was pretty late. I owe a great deal of my educational success to many mentors, guidance counselors, and organizations such as the Hmong Women’s Circle, Youth Leadership Initiative, HmoobTeen, and the First Step Program, who believed in me and gave me instruments to access higher education. I scored a one-way ticket out of poverty the moment I received the Gates Millennium Scholarship. For me it was the golden ticket to any college or university in the United States. It was as if my entire life had prepared me for this scholarship—the overbearing poverty, the unstable single parent, the struggle of being a political refugee, and the unending cycle of sexist oppression. Going to college was my intervention to end the cycle of oppression in my family. Or so I thought.
Little did I know I was exiting one system of oppression only to enter another. I faced tremendous contradictions in my educational career. At an institutional level, I found it disheartening that educational access and success in college for traditionally underrepresented populations remained a serious problem, most notably students from low-income, first-generation, non-native-English-speaking, and specific racial/ethnic groups. At a personal level, I found myself conflicted about my bicultural identity, struggling to reconcile my Hmong and American identities. I remember continuously fighting for my right to be treated fairly as an American student who was from the Twin Cities (not from abroad), who spoke English fluently, and who was just as deserving and smart as all the other, mostly white students.
Being a Hmong person in a predominately white institution such as the College of St. Benedict in central Minnesota, my experience of “college” was drastically different from that of my white friends. Most Hmong students didn’t study abroad because most of them could not afford to. I was only able to do it because I had a full-ride scholarship. In fact, the concept of studying abroad is so bizarre that when I introduced my mother to the fact that I would spend five months each in India and China, she was shocked as to why I would want to study in a developing country. “The US has the best education system in the world, and most students around the world would die to be in your shoes!” she exclaimed. She reminded me of how she survived the Vietnam War just to bring me to the United States so I could receive the best education in the world. She wanted me to be educated as an American. I told her that studying abroad was what educated Americans do.
While abroad, I observed the ubiquitous tensions in racial and ethnic relations between white American students and American students of color (I was the only Asian girl in both programs). I was astonished to see how white privilege manifested during my semesters abroad, and taken aback as to how unfairly I was treated compared to my white colleagues. Frustrated with the discrimination, I returned to campus and tearfully expressed my concerns to many professors and study abroad directors. Though they offered sympathy, they were ill prepared to give me the comfort and validation I needed. From that point on I concluded that higher education institutions needed to reconsider prior beliefs about and strategies for educating a different population of students, especially minority students like me.
There is no doubt my scholarship and my desire to attain higher education has put me on a trajectory beyond my childhood circumstances. It has indeed afforded me the social and financial mobility to explore uncharted territories that my family would never be able to provide me, territories such as my two study abroad experiences in both India and China and privileged spaces such as the College of St. Benedict and the University of Pennsylvania. I am enormously grateful.
However, it would be dishonest of me to not address the social reproductive system of education, a system that trains the wealthy to take up places at the top of the economy and conditions the poor to accept lowly status in class structure. It would be disingenuous of me to not recognize the problematic neoliberal discourse used by higher education institutions to recruit low-income, high-achieving students like me. Individualism, college as success, social upward mobility, and the “yes you can” rhetoric are some of the major components of the neoliberal discourse used by recruiters. Higher education has provided a safe, comfortable, and secure space away from poverty, but has it taken me out of poverty? Can I really use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house? That I am still trying to figure out.
What I know for sure is this: Education has given me critical skills to differentiate what is truth and what is perspective. Education has acted as a microphone to amplify my voice. Education has transformed my understanding of social justice. As a trailblazer who is, among other things, a high-achieving Hmong woman, refugee, and first-generation college student, I believe it has always been in me to contribute to the development of international education, multicultural education, and diversity in education. I was born to formulate new trails for people to follow. I believe it is education’s responsibility to be a space of reflection, transformation, and liberation.
Kia M. Lor was born in a Thai refugee camp and came to the United States with her family when she was four years old. She is the second of six children and the eldest daughter. At a young age, Kia acquired skills to be a cultural broker between her immigrant mother and the mainstre
am American culture. Today, she acts as an academic cultural broker as assistant director of Language and Intercultural Learning at the Fries Center for Global Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Kia is also an active fellow at the Intercultural Communication Institute in Portland, Oregon.
Craving to Be a Hmong Woman
Npaus Baim Her
It was near the end of my elementary school years when we all sat around the table and the white English as a second language teacher asked a simple question about our favorite colors. Being last to answer, I thought about my favorite color while Chue, Vang, and Lee each took turns to answer the question. At the time, I liked yellow, but it seemed too plain of an answer, so I said white. In my mind, I imagined a white wall. It was a color so easily painted over, transforming to any color I desired. I enjoyed the thought: liking every color.
I was so excited to give my answer and the reason behind it. I thought it was the coolest answer of all. When I said my favorite color was white, Chue said, “That’s because you like white people.” I can clearly remember the words slipping out of his lips and the way he looked at me with a smile on his face showing his big teeth. His eyelids squeezed together almost as if they were closed because of his cheeks. My mouth dropped, and I denied it immediately, saying, “No!” After that, everything’s a blur. I do not remember if the teacher said anything. I do not remember if Chue replied back to me. I do not remember if I told him my reason or if the words “I do not like white people” slipped out of my lips.
Chue had always used words against me to keep a distance between us. Lee was being influenced by his actions and started to also tease me. Vang did not tease me, but he would not stick up for me, either. Those words made me feel as if I was just some Hmong girl who could not speak her cultural language and was whitewashed for hanging out with only white people.
I spent the rest of my elementary school time trying to prove to Chue that I am truly Hmong. I felt the need to have him accept me for being Hmong, but really, all I wanted was to find a place to belong. However, I couldn’t do that with three Hmong boys.
Middle school was starting, and I was filled with excitement. Different elementary schools from the district came together to attend one middle school, meaning I was finally not going to be the only Hmong girl in a whole grade. Unfortunately, in the first two years of middle school, things were not going well with making new Hmong friends who were girls. The girls I met were a year older, and in middle school, that age gap feels huge. I tried so hard to fit in with them, but ended up becoming an annoying person instead. I knew it, too. I became someone I was not proud of. Not only that, I was not developing a sense of Hmong identity with them as I had hoped. I thought if I could find Hmong friends, I would finally be Hmong. In the end, I could still hear Chue calling me “whitewashed.”
During this identity crisis, a few Hmong girls and I were invited to join a Hmong Girl’s Reading Circle created by a Hmong staff member, Malia Yang-Xiong. Together, we read the first Hmong book I was ever exposed to: Hey, Hmong Girl, Whassup?: The Journal of Choua Vang by Leah Rempel (2004). It was a fictional story about a girl who wrote about her experiences and expectations of being a traditional Hmong daughter. This story discusses the traditional gender roles placed on Hmong girls during the early migration to the United States, roles that restrict them from pursuing an education and career path. Some common issues were teen pregnancy, early marriage, and commitment to younger siblings as well as household chores.
I was addicted to Hey, Hmong Girl, Whassup? and constantly read ahead of everyone. I couldn’t help but continue to turn each page! I wanted to know about other Hmong experiences, and unexpectedly, I was craving to explore my Hmong woman identity. In the reading circle, Mrs. Xiong encouraged us to read up to certain pages, so when we come back as a group, we could reflect on our own Hmong woman identity. She told us this situation may have happened to many Hmong women and maybe it was happening in our lives. Whenever she discussed or questioned the circle, I could see the excitement in her face waiting for us to answer as she made eye contact with each and every one of the girls. Her excitement to hear our answers encouraged me to engage with her.
Mrs. Xiong and I developed a close relationship, and I fail to remember the chronological order of our experiences together. However, I will never forget the memories made. Maybe sometime during or after the Hmong Girl’s Reading Circle, Mrs. Xiong invited me to explore the Minnesota History Museum with her. She probably saw my eagerness to understand my Hmong woman identity and was trying to help satisfy my craving. There, shows and stands were sharing Asian cultures and traditions. It was my first time at the Minnesota History Museum. As we entered the building and walked up the staircase, we first encountered a set of tools displayed behind a glass case. The tools looked like small versions of a pickax. A Hmong woman asked those around if we had ever seen this tool and to guess what it could be used for. After I and others placed a guess, she revealed that the tool made ripples in Hmong skirts. It blew my mind because never had I questioned what made ripples in Hmong skirts. I realized I had never questioned many Hmong cultural aspects when I should have been curious by exposing myself to such rich traditions.
When the last year of middle school came, I was more confident to accept my identity without someone else’s approval. Chue’s words were no longer echoing in my ears. It was thanks to Mrs. Xiong’s guidance and because I was learning to be myself. I was finally making friends with people I could connect with. After the Hmong Girl’s Reading Circle, I no longer met with Mrs. Xiong and had to explore how to expose myself to empowerment and different experiences. I saw flyers about after-school clubs and joined Culture Club and Journey. Coincidentally, Mrs. Xiong and I crossed paths again because she was involved in both clubs. In Culture Club, she made the students think critically about how to express ourselves through activities, such as writing poetry. I learned about different ethnicities and their cultures. In Journey, we did activities to build our leadership skills, and she would always tell me how she could see a leader within me.
Now I am a first-year graduate student. I have learned not only to expose myself to a variety of new experiences but also to involve myself in the community. I’ve developed a passion to create visual designs of my Hmong woman identity because I’m still learning to understand that identity. I also collect stories of Hmong elders because I’m still curious about Hmong history and culture. What I’m doing isn’t only to satisfy my cravings; it’s also to give something back to the community, especially the youth. Mrs. Xiong’s guidance and empowerment made me reflect on my Hmong woman identity and taught me to always ask questions if I’m curious. I express my thanks to her by inviting her to my small art exhibits. Each time she attends, she has the same excitement I saw back in middle school during the Hmong Girl’s Reading Circle. She looks at my art and smiles throughout the whole showing. After, she comes to talk to me, saying, “I always knew you had a leader within you.”
Npaus Baim Her is furthering her education through University of Minnesota Duluth’s English master’s program and has been given the opportunity to teach college writing as a graduate instructor. She serves as secretary on the board of directors for a nonprofit organization, Minors, and also volunteers as a writing assistant, collecting Secret War stories for the organization’s book project to educate Hmong youth about their elders’ history. She has exhibited her art and literary work with HECUA (Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs) Alumni, Prior Affairs, and the Coalition of Asian American Leaders.
Breaking Worlds
Renee Ya
I was fifteen years old, and it was a hot day in May. In Fresno, summer starts early, and beads of sweat were building behind my knees and on my neck. The sun was beating down on me as I walked to the mailbox to retrieve the mail. I was anxiously waiting for my test results. I remember seeing the envelope addressed to me: Renee Ya. The “From” address said “California High School Proficiency Exam,” als
o known as the CHSPE: passing this exam allows you to receive a certificate of proficiency in high school, which translates to the equivalent of receiving a high school diploma so you can continue on to higher education such as vocational schooling, community college, or a university. And as I ran my fingers across the lettering of the envelope, a jolt of energy carried me swiftly past five houses and back through my front door.
“Daddy! Daddy! It’s finally here! My test results are back!” He knew exactly what I was talking about. I had taken the exam about six weeks prior, and every day that passed left my stomach in a knot.
“Well, open it!” He sat up from the couch excitedly.
“I … can’t! I’m too nervous.” I pushed the unopened envelope to him.
He grabbed the edge and ripped it down the side, careful to not tear the paper within. He upended it into his hand and opened the letter. He screamed.
“AYYIA!!! you PASSED!” He grabbed me in his arms, and we jumped up and down.
“I passed? I PASSED!”
A simple letter stating that I had successfully completed the CHSPE meant that I was on my way to college.
I chose DeVry University in Fremont, California, because it allowed me to get an accredited undergrad degree within two years. The university also had a lot of Hmong students due to its accelerated engineering programs, and it had an established Hmong student club.
I had already started attending community college classes while at Sunnyside High School in Fresno, so even though I was the youngest student, I walked in having completed four of the required general education classes.
