Publication date:
05 October 2017Length of book:
192 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498546454
This study documents Hmong’s involvement in the Secret War in Laos, their refugee exodus from Laos to the refugee camps in Thailand, and the challenges to find third countries to take Hmong refugees. At the time, Hmong and other highlander refugees from Laos were considered unsuitable to be resettled into the United States. He provides detailed research on the adaptation of Hmong Americans to their new lives in the United States, facing discrimination and prejudice, and the advancement of Hmong Americans over the past 40 years. He presents the Hmong American community as an uprooted refugee community that grew from a small population in 1975 to more than 300,000 by the year 2015; spreading to all 50 states while becoming a diverse and complex American ethnic community. To get better insight into their diversity, complexity, and adaptation to different localities, Kou Yang uses the Hmong communities in Montana, Fresno and Denver as case studies. The progress of Hmong Americans over the past 4 decades is highlighted with a list of many achievements in education, high-tech, academia, political participation, the military and other fields. Readers of this book will gain a deeper understanding of the challenges, complex and diverse experience of the Hmong American community. They will also obtain insight into the overall experience of the Hmong, an ethnic people of Diaspora, found in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Australia, and Europe. They are like bristle-cone pines on the rock that have been exposed to all types of weather, climate and conditions, but they won't die.
Yang (emer., ethnic studies, California State Univ., Stanislaus) presents a detailed account of Hmong American history, recounting key milestones in Hmong American life from the first Hmong to arrive as students prior to 1975 and the refugee resettlement era following the aftermath of the Vietnam War era in Laos. A particular strength of the volume is the emphasis on early Hmong American community life in different locales, including cities in California; Missoula, Montana; and the upper Midwest, including Michigan, Wisconsin. and Minnesota. Yang describes experiences with racial discrimination and obstacles, including poverty. The author also provides valuable information about Hmong American firsts in different professions, with biographies and achievements of numerous Hmong American pioneers and community leaders…. [R]eaders will finish the book with a much fuller understanding of the Hmong American experience at both the community and personal level since the 1970s. This work will be of greatest interest to those students, faculty, and scholars working in Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and US ethnic history. Summing Up: Recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries.