As a Hmong person, I’ve accepted over my lifetime that many people I meet very often have never met a Hmong person or even heard of the Hmong people. How could they when my people’s stories were never written in history books and only told by the few who were brave enough to speak them forward?
As a first-generation Hmong American woman and daughter of refugees who fled from the Secret Wars in Laos, I strive to live out the stories, hopes, and dreams of my parents and generations before me. For me, that has been reflected in how I learned to navigate the world, especially in the context of the U.S., where deep-rooted systemic constructs of race and ethnicity continue to influence quality of life.
The Hmong people are an ethnic minority in Asia, and here in the U.S., we continue to be an ethnic minority among the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community. Even as so many cultural groups are labeled and grouped together (i.e., AANHPI), we are not a monolith. Even within the Hmong community, through a shared history, we are still not a monolith. I think about the importance of individual stories and how they shape a community, not the stereotypes or prejudices often made from harmful historical narratives and pervasive racist tropes. That is what grounds the work I do in building relationships with partners.
To learn more about the Hmong people, I encourage you to review this timeline from the Minnesota Historical Society.
