Hmong Community Case Study

The only dilemma I might face if I were to be involved in a Hmong

The book goes into detail on how the Hmong felt like fishes out of water. An example of this is when Fadiman describes the idea of role lost. In Laos the role system used to go Grandfather is the most important and is obeyed by father, who is obeyed by his wife, who is obeyed by her children, and younger children obey their older siblings. But Fadiman described what happens to a lot of Hmong families when they come to America, “Grandfather has no job.

The Hmong became frustrated with the American medicine as seen when the author says that it was typically Hmong for patients to appear passively obedient only to later ignore everything they had supposedly assented to after they left the hospital. It therefore stressed the doctors who considered the Hmong as the most difficult patients. This was well brought out by a doctor who said that the only easy way to treat the Hmong people was with a bullet in their head known as “high velocity transcortical lead therapy” (63). Lia was equally difficult to the point that nurses would pray she is not admitted any time she fell epileptic. The uncooperative nature of the Lees made Lia be taken away from them

During the Vietnam War several Hmong’s relocated to America as political refugees. There was an enormous culture shock from both the Hmong and Americans and misunderstandings due to language barrier. Struggling to adapt to a new society with different norms the Hmong were highly underestimated. The author’s encounter with the Hmong patients were very heart felt, she grew especially close to the Lee family whose daughter had been diagnosed with a disease with radically different meanings for Western physicians. The Hmong had viewed epilepsy as state of being not necessarily psychological defect or even series of events.

Several chapters in this book are devoted to Hmong’s history, cosmology and the multiple challenges they have faced while trying to settle in the United States. According to Fox (2005), Western medicine is a more reliable and effective way of curing diseases as compared to the traditional, and old-fashioned cultural methods, such as sacrificing pigs and chicken as depicted by the Hmong Lee family. I think that a better and more profound understanding of diverse cultures and their beliefs will play a key role in enabling Western doctors to overcome cultural resistance towards science. Consequently, they will have a more cooperative attitude towards the patients, which will likely change the ancient beliefs as held by some patients. Besides, the societies should not fully trust the cultural healing modalities.

Another example of upward economic mobility is that of the Hmong community, in Chia Youyee Vang’s work, Hmong America, Hmong engaged in a process of reinvention and forms of cultural adaptation and ethnic-political agency. By staying engaged with the governments around them they’re able to seek political recognition or resources from state and federal government departments to get jobs and goods and create distinct changes for their communities. On the one hand, they created peace amongst the clans that were rivals in Laos so there was mutual support amongst the different groups, which created an abundance of dialects, sub clans, voluntary, political organizations, ethnic churches. In time it created a schism in religion as some Hmong became

We can defy this set of rules because we should conclude—the Secret War and General Vang Pao—the history behind this word and name is equally important to other historical wars and names in past centuries. Inedibility, the Secret War was a time that still ponders in the hearts of the Hmong community, “…described them as a tiny force of desperate people clinging to the hope that the CIA would come back to rescue them (Thompson),” describes George. The Hmong community did hope, and still is hoping. As this is something that is worth to be mentioned, and culturally literate for a well-rounded individual to learn something about our history—the Hmong community, the Secret War, and General Vang Pao.

In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.

Conclusion: The rich and vibrant culture of the Hmong people is slowing dying and its traditions will soon perish as well. The Hmong community have moved so far from their origin, and little at a time a piece of them were lost and some becoming distance to their own cultures.

In her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman describes the story of the Lee family and the frightening task they had to to undergo to provide their daughter with medical aid. The Lees along with the other thousands of Hmong immigrants, tried to understand the and navigate the complex and sometimes confusing healthcare system in the United States. As the book points out, the values and ideals of the Hmong culture and the United States health care system are not always the same and sometimes come into great conflict with each other. Lia Lee was unfortunately the person stuck in the middle of this great conflict.

Reading Reflection Paper #1 The intersection of race, family, war torn experience and cultural diversity have played a crucial role in shaping many Hmong Americans and their acculturation to American society. With the racial tension that has long grouped Hmong students as part of the American model minority stereotypes, this has hampered Hmong students’ success in K-12 schools, and it is long overdue for academic discourse in order to propel Hmong students’ educational success into new heights. It is no longer acceptable for school district to accept the model minority stereotypes and ignore the fact that Hmong students has long struggled and underserved in public schools.

Historically, groups of people whose “label” is comprised of conjunctive ethnicities experience a difficult time finding their true identity, but identity is found when unidentifiable individuals find a common goal. In the course of the last two weeks, we explored a concept called “Pan-Ethnicity” which deals with the unification of multiple ethnicities. It’s concept and practice is displayed by Yen Le Espiritu’s “Coming Together: The Asian American Movement”, and in chapter eight and nine of Diane C. Fujino’s book, “Samurai Among Panthers” respectively. In Espiritu’s text, a pan-ethnic organization or more specifically, a pan-Asian organization did two things for the Asian American movement.

During the ancient times, the Hmong people and their leaders created a kingdom that was later destroyed by the Han Chinese (Cha 2010:9). From historical records, many Hmong were almost killed until extinction; however, some did escape and were able to live quietly and deep within the mountains and forests (Cha 2010:9). Since the Hmong people isolated themselves from the world there were not much records that recorded what happened during their time of isolation. Decades later the Hmong people were able to peacefully coexist with the Chinese; however it was destroyed again due to the greed of the successors of China. After decades of resentment and oppression, the Hmong people eventually migrated into Laos and Vietnam.

Most museums in Singapore do not have such an extensive collection of Malay artefacts and culture, The MHC also caters their programmes, events and exhibitions to invigorate the Malay communal identity. Singapore’s culture is slowly but surely booming diluted (Ng, 2014). If we deny the heritage centres the right to preserve and maintain our multifarious community identities, we would lose our social identities and become homogenous. It is imperative for each individual to have a place where they can strengthen and reaffirm their community identity. In order to have a consistent sense of community identity across all communities however, heritage centres and sites should be well publicised.

Singapore is a multi-ethnic society with around 77% Chinese, 6% Indian, 15% Malay and about 2% expatriates. To analyze the country’s cultural specificities, we used the Hofstede cultural dimension tool to help us understanding how different is the culture there compared to France. We started off with Individualism: Singapore, with a score of 20, is a very collectivistic society. This means that the “We” is important, people belong to in-groups (families, clans or organisations) who look after each other in exchange for loyalty. Here we can also see the second key principle of the Confucian teaching: family is the prototype of all social organizations.