Week 3-Yingjun Huang

ASA 002 A01

Yingjun Huang

Week 3

I didn’t know what “Hmong” means as I first saw the title of article Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of Hmong Americans by Kaozong N. Mouavangsou, so I looked up in my Chinese-English dictionary and the first definition it gave was Miao, which is the name of one ethnic group living in China. I was really confused because I never knew Miao can be called “Hmong”, and I doubted whether I was studying Asian American for a minute or so. But reading through the article I feel ashamed for my ignorant and realized that “Hmong ” represents more than just a name of an ethnic group in China. The Hmong in the article refers to Hmong people living the US. The article was about how they were miseducated to hold the idea that their tradition is a problem in the US, and how they were misunderstood by others through books or publications filled with errors.

It’s hard to relate myself to these people describe in the article since I haven’t met any Hmong people before, though from Wikipedia there are around three hundred thousand Hmong people living in the US. I find it sad that they were miseducated and misunderstood for so long. The education system for Hmong people needs to be fixed and their voices need to be heard.

Question:

Maybe not really a question. I was thinking about to give a question and suddenly a question came to me like: Maybe they should just accept American culture and just “live like Americans do”, taking the risk that their own culture might gradually disappear in the US one day? Just as the saying goes: “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”, right?

I quickly said no to myself, but it’s hard to give the reason why. I recalled an article talked about why we should save endangered animals, in which it said something like “Some may ask: through the road of evolution, numerous species disappeared; Now that we are trying to protect some endangered species, isn’t that just contrasting the way of nature? ”

“In fact, every time a species gets vanished, a possibility of the future disappeared. If this keep goes on, our future will just be narrowed to some certain result, isn’t that just sad?”

Maybe this piece of article can somehow relate to this week’s reading here.

North Thailand Hmong girls said to be in their traditional clothes. Beautiful and adorable.

References:

1. Mouavangsou, K. N. (2016). Hmong does not Mean Free: the Miseducation of Hmong Americans. Retrieved October 8, 2017.

2. Hmong People in North Thailand[Digital image]. (2017) Retrieved October 8, 2017, from http://www.thailandsworld.com/en/thai-people/north-thailand-people/hmong-people-thailand/index.cfm