Project: Hmong Village: Resilience, Home, and Hope

This project was created by students in the GWSS/GLBT 3404 spring 2023 class. To explore other projects created by students in this class, please visit the complete collection available at this MNT project library page.

One of the main things we wanted to showcase through this project was the importance of Hmong Village to the Hmong community in the Twin Cities. We thought splitting the project into three sections, each symbolizing the past, present, and future, would help the audience feel more connected to our project. We wanted to tie in a traditional aspect to this work as well, and we were able to get Elizabeth Mouacheupao (Instagram @eri_chestnut423) to create a digital paj ntaub (pronounced pan dau) or Hmong story cloth that is traditionally used to visualize the Hmong people’s shift from Asia to the U.S. during the Vietnam War. However, we wanted to focus on the three themes chosen for our story cloth.

Resilience: We wanted to start by discussing the Hmong diaspora from southeast Asia to the Twin Cities and its impact. We also wanted to discuss immigration policies as well in addition to this. On the story cloth, this is represented by the grey airplanes.

Home: After sharing about the past, we wanted to focus on the present space of Hmong Village itself by centering the concept of home as an idea rather than a physical space or location. One of the main links to home is comfort and association; Hmong Village holds much of that through the five senses. We also wanted to discuss Dr. Martin Manalansan’s queerness of mess as well as Gloria Anzaldua’s borderlands theory and how Hmong Village connects to each of these concepts. This section is represented in the center of the paj ntaub.

Hope: We framed our connections and hope to the Hmong Village to showcase our attachment to the Hmong community. We wanted this on the story cloth by portraying us on a plane in the left corner.

Hmong Village Section

Videos that we took when the three of us were visiting.

Photos of the photo wall and mural we took as a virtual walk-through showcasing it.

Photo of map of the inside of Hmong Village.

We wanted to show the concept of home, not just as a physical space, through the five senses. This photo of Hmong Village shows each section that relates to this.

Focused on the 5 senses: points written in order from top to bottom

• Taste: Food vendors
• Touch: Clothing stores
• Smell: Produce sellers
• Sound: Language
• Sight: Photo wall

Personal Connections Section:

We wanted to incorporate our personal testimonies about the Hmong Village and our ties to it. The borderlands theory also ties into our personal connections, so we wanted to express that here. One quote from a TED Talk by Michelle Navarro called “Moving Beyond the Chicano Borderlands,” where she discusses Anzaldua’s theory, specifically relates to our own feelings about the Hmong Village. “I have never really belonged here, and I have never really belonged there…” (1:16) was a particularly impactful statement made during her talk that stuck with all three of us.

Regina: In connection with Anzaldua’s borderlands theory, I always felt I was never Hmong enough. I am Hmong from Thailand, but I never learned how to speak Hmong. I felt I didn’t engage in different Hmong activities and culture enough. This feeling pushed me to engage in this project as I got to learn more about Hmong history and culture. I felt that deconstructing the dominant discourse and engaging in my own lived experiences as a Hmong individual would allow me to construct my own definition of being Hmong as well as home in relation to a Hmong Village. My connections to Hmong Village started at a very young age. I was able to gain a connection with the food, language, and people there with my own experiences in Thailand and within my family. Growing up in Hmong Village and the different experiences allowed me to see Hmong Village as a place of home for people to come together. However, this may be different for others as they may see home in other places. I hope exploring this topic will encourage people to think about the future for the Hmong community coming from the past and present and how they will continue to engage with the Hmong Village to further support each other or establish their own place to call home.

Kasha: Home is somewhere I always want to return to when I’m tired and ready to rest. It’s special in ways that I don’t have to do much, and I can truly wind down when I’m in the safety of my own space, either with family or by myself. Hmong Village has provided this sense of safety in the way that I don’t have to worry about how my outward physical characteristics, specifically my Asian appearance compared to a majority European population, affect the way that other people look and treat me. I am highly aware of my inability to speak Hmong as a Hmong American when ordering food from the vendors, but I never feel too harshly judged by the people manning the shops. There are many times when I struggle with the idea that I’m not Hmong enough because I don’t actively participate in my culture all the time as someone who was not brought up one hundred percent in it, but I’d say that’s the beautiful mess of being both Hmong and American. There’s no wrong way to exist as a person living in this borderland of two worlds, which is why Hmong Village is a beacon of peace for me, as I can simply enjoy the quotidian existence of eating food that feels like home.

Amelia: I have very limited stories of visiting Hmong Village and do not have a deep connection to it. Since I do not have any ties to the Hmong Village, I thought I would share the story of the first time I visited. I was with my mom during my fifth-grade year, and we were trying to find a traditional Hmong New Year’s outfit for me to wear to my school’s annual Hmong New Year. We went there after getting a nudge from one of my mom’s close friends, who happens to be Hmong, saying, “This is where you should go to find the entire outfit you are looking for.” After strolling around for a bit, we didn’t happen to settle on an outfit, but I remember feeling very curious and wanting to look around more. At this point in my life, I had been going to a predominantly Hmong school where I was the minority for two years, so I had some background knowledge but this was my first time being in a space dedicated specifically to those in the Hmong community. Seeing some of the instruments and foods my friends had told me about for the first time was wonderful. I remember being excited to try nava or naab vaam, a tapioca coconut jelly drink, for the first time. Even though I was not as big a fan of it as I am of bubble tea, it was still a really nice moment to have; to be able to feel more connected to my close friends' culture was a very powerful feeling, even if I did not understand the severity of it at my young age. I also think that being exposed to different cultures and backgrounds from such a young age made me who I am today, and I have a lot to thank my friends for that regard.

Sources

Anzaldúa, G., Cantu, N., & Hurtado, A. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Fourth ed.). Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Manalansan, M. F. (2014). The “Stuff ” of Archives: Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives. Radical History Review, 2014 (120), 94-107. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2703742

Michelle Navarro: Moving Beyond the Chicano Borderlands. (2018). TED. Retrieved April 24, 2023, from https://www.ted.com/talks/michelle_navarro_moving_beyond_the_chicano_borderlands