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Publications
There have been
a number of books published recently on the Hmong. For a full
list, please see:
http://www.hmongstudies.org/.
In 2004,
three publications I was involved in as author or editor
were released and are available from their publishers, or
from
www.hmongabc.com.
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Dust of
life: A true Ban Vinai love story (novel)
by Dr
Gary Yia Lee
$12.95 (HmongABC bookstore)
  It
was 1977 and Ban Vinai had just been set up as a refugee camp for
thousands of Hmong who fled the new communist regime in Laos to the
safety of Thailand. Mua, a young Hmong man, had recently completed
his university studies and was living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He was asked
by Pafua, a Hmong girl in Ban Vinai refugee camp, Thailand, to
help sponsor her and her family to settle in the United States.
Although he hardly knew her, he travelled to Thailand to see what he
could do. It was agreed that if they got on well, he would marry her
and apply for her and her family to come and live with him in
America. In the meantime, he went to work on a Thai government
project with Hmong opium growers in Chiangmai where he met a young
Thai woman named Phorn. She was the opposite to the Hmong girl in
many ways and he became inadvertently involved with her.
After a few
months of visits and courtship, Moua asked Pafua for marriage. To
his dismay, her mother refused him her hand. Hurt and disappointed,
he turned to Phorn but would soon learn that she was very different
from what he understood her to be. Shattered by these events, he
returned to the US where he continued to
work for Hmong refugees. It was not until many years later when Mua
went to Australia, where Pafua and her mother had gone to live, that
he discovered the awful truth about her refusal to marry him - a
discovery that would profoundly affect him for the rest of his life.
This novel is
both a mystery and a love story. It is about the Hmong as much as
the Thai people and their cultures. The
author, who is an anthropologist, has woven many facts into the book
that will help the reader appreciate different facets of life among
the poor in Thailand, the recent history of the Hmong refugees from
Laos, their difficult life in the refugee camp of Ban Vinai and
their rich traditions. The novel can also be seen at a metaphorical
level as a representation of the Hmong people who, like the male
protagonist in the story, live in many different worlds going from
one country (or woman) to another and never feeling fully welcome.
He wants to become Westernised to be accepted in America but loses
his Hmong heritage in the process – again like the Hmong in the
diaspora who are forced to assimilate into other cultures only to
lose their very own.
Readers’
comments:
“Dust of Life,
great book! Well written for a first time Hmong author. I fell in
love with Pahua. I found myself in Mua. THe descriptions were
amazing and poetic. 4/5 stars for Hmong Author”.
(Dai Thao, 7/19/04).
“I stayed up and
read it until 1 AM. It was very well written and easy to read.
The poetry is beautiful. I was so absorbed by the story. Is it
based on the author's own life? I could not forget it
for 4-5 days after I finished the book. I told my friends
about it and they all want to read it. We are so pleased it
was written by one of our very own" (Manivong, 12/28/04).
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Hmong/Miao in
Asia
Edited by Nicholas Tapp, Jean Michaud,
Christian Culas, and Gary Yia Lee
[Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2004]
$30.00 (Amazon.com)
 This
volume presents the most comprehensive collection of research on
Hmong culture and life in Asia yet to be published. It compliments
the abundant material on the Hmong diaspora by focusing instead on
the Hmong in their Asian homeland. The contributors are scholars
from a number of different backgrounds with a deep knowledge of
Hmong society and culture, including several Hmong. The first group
of essays addresses the fabric of Hmong culture by considering
issues of history, language, and identity among the Hmong/Miao from
Laos to China. The second part introduces the challenges faced by
the Hmong in contemporary Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
Nicholas Tapp is senior fellow in anthropology at the Australian
National University. Jean Michaud is associate researcher in Asian
studies at Université de Montréal. Christian Culas is a member of
the National Center for Scientific Research in Marseille. Gary Yia
Lee was a former senior ethnic liaison officer for New South Wales
government in Australia.
Table of
Contents:
Foreword
Introduction
Part 1: Issues of History, Language and Identity
History
1. The State of Hmong Studies (An Essay on Bibliography) - Nicholas
Tapp
2. From Culture Circle to Cultural Ecology: The Hmong/Miao as
reflected in German and Austrian Anthropology - Christian Postert
3. A Contribution to the Study of Hmong (Miao) Migrations and
History - Christian Culas and Jean Michaud
4. Innovation and Tradition in Rituals and Cosmology: Hmong
Messianism and Shamanism in Southeast Asia - Christian Culas
Language
5. Pa-hng and the Classification of the Hmong-Mien Languages -
Barbara Niederer
6. Vocabulary of Environment and Subsistence in the Hmong-Mien
Protolanguage - Martha Rafliff
7. A Note on the Ethno-Semantics of Proverb Usage in Mong Njua
(Green Hmong) - Thomas Amis Lyman
8. Problems in the Interpretation of Hmong Surnames - Kao-ly Yng
Identity
9. The A Hmao in Northest Yunnan and Northwest Guizhou Provinces:
Perspectives on the Encounter with the A Hmao from some Western
Protestant Missionaries - R. Alison Lewis
10. Miao Identity in Western Guizhou: China during the Republican
Period - Cheung Siu-Woo
11. Hmong/Miao Transnationality: Identity beyond Culture - Louisa
Schein
Part 2: Current Issues
Vietnam
12. Hmong and the Land Question in Vietnam: National policy and
Local Concepts of the Environment - Claes Corlin
13. The Hmong and Forest Management in Northern Vietnam's
Mountainous Areas - Vuong Duy Quang
Thailand
14. Ntoo Xeeb: Cultural Redefinition for Forest Conservation among
the Hmong in Thailand - Prasit Leepreecha
15. Following Hmong Cultural Pathways for the Prevention of
HIV/AIDS: Notes from the Field - Patricia V. Symonds
16. Hmong Marriage Patterns in Thailand in Relation to Social Change
- Peter Kunstadter
17. Rape: Perceptions and Processes of Hmong Customary Law - Robert
Cooper
Laos
18. Transnational Adaptation: An Overview of the Hmong of Laos - Gar
Yia Lee
19. The Hmong and Development in the Lao People's Democratic
Republic - Jan Ovesen
Epilogue
20. Hmong Refugees from Laos: The Challenge of Social Change - Yang
Dao
Index and Notes on Contributors
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The
Hmong People of Australia: Culture and
Diaspora
Edited
by Tapp, Nicholas, & Lee, Gary
(Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004), 217pp, ISBN
1740760417 -
(softcover)
AUD$31.78 / GST: AUD$34.96
(ANU bookshop)
 The Hmong
first arrived in Australia in 1975 from war-torn Laos, settling in
Australia as a small population of under 2,000. In Australia, as in
other resettlement countries, the Hmong have been active in founding
local and national associations, and there is alarm about the
younger generation's loss of traditional cultural heritage. The
Australian Hmong is a small community, but a dynamic and rapidly
changing one.
This collection of
interdisciplinary papers - ranging across anthropology and
linguistics, musicology, material culture, gender issues and
sociology - gives the general reader an introduction to this
fascinating and relatively unknown community as well as an
understanding of the wide range of issues which research on the
Hmong in Australia has covered to date.
Both editors have
extensive experience of Hmong populations in Asia and bring this
experience to bear on a project that deals solely with the Hmong in
an Australian context. The contributors to the book represent
virtually all the serious researchers who have devoted their
attentions to the Hmong in Australia.
In many ways the book
is a tribute to the richness and importance of the cultural system
the Hmong of today have inherited. In other ways more abstract
issues to do with the effects of globalisation on local communities,
social changes and the relationship of minority groups to the state,
are also addressed. As such, this collection contributes to general
understandings of processes of social change among recent immigrants
to new countries of settlement, the relations they may hold with
homelands and the new relations forged with other diasporic
communities overseas.
© Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific
and Asian Studies (RSPAS)
CRICOS
Provider Number: 00120C.
Please direct all comments or suggestions to the maintainer,
rspas-web@anu.edu.au
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