Why Hmong Families Left Laos

The Hmongs are an ethnic race, originally migrated from Eurasia and settled in river plains of China. The Chinese hated them, calling them ‘Miao’ or ‘Meo’ meaning barbarians and tried to gain mastery over them but the Hmongs wanting to be left alone began to migrate. By the beginning of the 19th century, half a million Hmongs had migrated to Indo-China. Disliking persecution, some settled in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. They detest being ordered or bullied, do not like to lose, are fighters who would rather die than surrender. Though they never possessed a country of their own, they have marched through the pages of history as free men desiring personal liberty. The Lee family travelled to Merced, California along with other Hmongs who fled to Laos in 1975, when their country became a prey to communism.

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

This source provided by Coffee House Press has included an interview with Annie Choi and Kao Kalia Yang. Choi has asked about Yang memoir of her well-known book, The Latehomecomer, has started. During the secret war, her Hmong family went through difficult times. Coming to America, Yang had to learn English and it became a challenge. However, she was able to learn it and grew a passion to write more on papers. When writing her book, she ties in how love and Hmong family relationships are like others making it a universal theme. She hopes that the readers would get an understanding of the Hmong culture and state that it will strengthen America as unique. This is important because we get an insight of Kao Kalia Yang inspiration when writing a book of the Hmong culture and tying it together of being an American.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, portrays two themes. First, the text refers to Hmong history and the destabilization of the region of Vietnam forcing Hmong refugees to migrate to other parts of the world but mostly the United States. Within the text is another story of a Hmong refugee family and their daughter named Lia Lee who settle in Merced California. Lia is tormented by a misfortunate diagnosis of epilepsy and faced by cultural inequality by her American doctors. Health care providers wrote Lia Lee off as a complex patient with severe communication barriers. Almost all of her admission notes contained the phrase” language barrier” (Fadiman, 2012). As she bounced back and forth between healthcare providers within the Emergency Room and pediatric visits, her doctor, Neil Ernst concurs that her parents are responsible for the communication barrier and non-compliance with prescribed treatment. Dr. Ernst deemed this as neglect and had Lia placed in a foster home but after being separated from the only people she knew, her conditioned rapidly deteriorated. Her seizures progressed in intensity and duration until one

During what is called The Secret War (1953-75), thousands of Hmong fought in the Royal Lao Army led by General Vang Pao against the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese military, on behalf of the U.S. and France, who promised to let them come to the U.S. and receive veterans’ benefits if defeated. France and the U.S. broke their promise, and thousands of Hmong survivors and veterans were forced to evacuate their country by foot in the most agonizing and dehumanizing of conditions, many dying along the way. Many of them, despite all odds, managed to make it to refugee camps where conditions were also miserable. Finally, when the Hmong were forced to resettle, many were brought to the U.S., but not after some delays and without ever receiving veterans’ benefits. They were placed in certain cities in the U.S., including Merced.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a book by Anne Fadiman about a Hmong family (the Lee’s) that moved to the United States. It deals with their child Lia, her American doctors, and the collisions of those two cultures. In Fadiman’s unbiased book I learned that there are many cultural differences between Hmong and Americans concerning opinions, stubbornness, and misunderstandings.

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

In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, there are many different intercultural misunderstandings. A Hmong girl’s life was forever changed because of these misunderstandings and some things could have easily been avoided, had each side taken the time to better understand the other.

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 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

I have to admit when I first read “The spirit catches you and you fall down” I thought it would be pretty boring turns out its one of the most interesting books I have ever read. The cultural conflicts can apply to anyone and knowing a little bit more now what the Hmong people have actually gone through can make everyone develop a great amount of respect for the culture. The Lee family continuously went full force colliding with the American ways in order to protect their traditions so they could preserve their culture. Unfortunately, in the end it didn’t help them but that was all they knew considering the fact that that the doctors at MCMC hospital didn’t really go out of their way to explain procedures it only makes sense for the Lee family to revert back to what they know in their traditions.

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 history of the Laotian civil war is a intresting topic. The war was both an independent and intimately related to the Vietnam War. The U.S. played a covert role in support of anti-Communist forces.  Some of the people that also hepled anti-Communist forces were the Soviet Union. Communist China aided the communist forces. Also, the border of Laos had two different battle zones. The northen side of the border of Loas was one of the warzones. The Royal Laotian Army and the Hmong Guerrillas trained and supported by Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) with American Air Support. They battled Pathet Lao guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army

Unfortunately, Vietnamese Americans make up only a small percent of the total American Population today. There are many stereotypes associated with the Vietnamese, but the truth is, we really know very little about their culture. After the Viet Nam War, many Vietnamese citizens immigrated to the United States to escape political Prosecution and poverty. Faced with a variety of obstacles and

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.