Hmong America: Reconstructing Community in Diaspora (Asian American Experience)

Vang, Chia Youyee

ISBN 10: 0252077598 / ISBN 13: 9780252077593

Published by University of Illinois Press, 2010

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00084207801

Synopsis:

The first scholarly work to come from inside the Hmong community, Hmong America documents Chia Youyee Vang's own migration from Laos to Minnesota at age nine and the transformations she has witnessed in Hmong communities throughout the migration and settlement processes.

Vang depicts Hmong experiences in Asia and examines aspects of community building in America to reveal how new Hmong identities have been formed and how they have challenged popular assumptions about race and ethnicity in multicultural America. Combining participant observation and archival research with personal experience, Vang constructs a nuanced and complex portrait of the more than 130,000 Hmong people who came to the United States as political refugees beginning in the mid-1970s. Her critique of previous representations of the Hmong community provides the sociological underpinnings for a bold reassessment of Hmong history in the greater context of globalization. This new understanding redefines concepts of Hmong homogeneity and characterizes ordinary Hmong migrants not as passive victims but as dynamic actors who have exercised much power over their political and social destinies.

About the Author: Chia Youyee Vang is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Fly Until You Die: An Oral History of Hmong Pilots in the Vietnam War and Hmong in Minnesota.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Hmong America: Reconstructing Community in ...
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Publication Date: 2010
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good