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A People's History of the Hmong
Over the centuries, the Hmong have called many places home, including China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and most recently France, Australia, and the United States. Their new neighbors, though welcoming, may know little about how they have come to these places or their views on relationships, religion, or art. Now, in A People's History of the Hmong, representative voices offer their community's story, spanning four thousand years to the present day.
"This was the life of our Hmong people," remembers Pa Seng Thao, one of many who describe farming villages in the mountains of Laos. Others help us understand the Hmong experience during the Vietnam War, particularly when the U.S. military pulled out of Laos, abandoning thousands of Hmong allies. Readers learn firsthand of the hardships of refugee camps and the challenges of making a home in a foreign country, with a new language and customs. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews, historian Paul Hillmer assembles a compelling history in the words of the people who lived it.
"This was the life of our Hmong people," remembers Pa Seng Thao, one of many who describe farming villages in the mountains of Laos. Others help us understand the Hmong experience during the Vietnam War, particularly when the U.S. military pulled out of Laos, abandoning thousands of Hmong allies. Readers learn firsthand of the hardships of refugee camps and the challenges of making a home in a foreign country, with a new language and customs. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews, historian Paul Hillmer assembles a compelling history in the words of the people who lived it.
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 9, 2011
We'd made three trips, and then we stopped to refuel, and they washed the airplane out, because so many people had thrown up.
That's a detail I never considered: many Hmong refugees spent the 1974 airlift from Long Tieng into Thailand vomiting all over each other. Yet that was a cake walk compared with those who later tried to escape through the jungle into Thailand -- this book is rife with tales of parents and kids getting picked off by bullets, an infant getting tossed into a river to quiet its screams, whole families being poisoned during a starved scramble for roots, or -- most haunting -- a restless whiny child being abandoned in the jungle with a toy because he was slowing everyone down.
But these are refugee stories that come after years of heroic battle, fighting on the "losing" side during the Laos civil war (aka the "Secret War"), and before some successful immigrant experiences in the U.S., France, Australia, and French Guiana. This book is organized in that tripartite fashion (war-refugee-immigrant), similar to the frame of so many Hmong lives, though obviously things are much more complex.
The "People's History" aspect is mostly outside the Howard Zinn concept -- I'm guessing the title derives from the fact that this is often an oral history, based on the author's own interviews. It's clear he's familiar with the historical record, though -- dismissing Al McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in a balanced footnote, and kinda chiding Tragic Mountains for its hagiography of Vang Pao.
Oh yeah, Vang Pao: he looms over this entire "people's" narrative, definitely not in the way we all expected. Hillmer does a wonderful job of giving equal time to Vang Pao the military hero (who, let the record show, did not magically deflect bullets), as well as the alleged rent-seeking schemer promising to lead his people back to a liberated Laos.
But on the whole, Hillmer's dry detachment -- probably cramped by a very complex culture with emotional ties in all (OK three) directions -- makes for an illuminating history, well worth reading both as a largely ignored chapter in American warfare, and as the fate of a pastoral culture transformed into warriors damn near overnight.
That's a detail I never considered: many Hmong refugees spent the 1974 airlift from Long Tieng into Thailand vomiting all over each other. Yet that was a cake walk compared with those who later tried to escape through the jungle into Thailand -- this book is rife with tales of parents and kids getting picked off by bullets, an infant getting tossed into a river to quiet its screams, whole families being poisoned during a starved scramble for roots, or -- most haunting -- a restless whiny child being abandoned in the jungle with a toy because he was slowing everyone down.
But these are refugee stories that come after years of heroic battle, fighting on the "losing" side during the Laos civil war (aka the "Secret War"), and before some successful immigrant experiences in the U.S., France, Australia, and French Guiana. This book is organized in that tripartite fashion (war-refugee-immigrant), similar to the frame of so many Hmong lives, though obviously things are much more complex.
The "People's History" aspect is mostly outside the Howard Zinn concept -- I'm guessing the title derives from the fact that this is often an oral history, based on the author's own interviews. It's clear he's familiar with the historical record, though -- dismissing Al McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in a balanced footnote, and kinda chiding Tragic Mountains for its hagiography of Vang Pao.
Oh yeah, Vang Pao: he looms over this entire "people's" narrative, definitely not in the way we all expected. Hillmer does a wonderful job of giving equal time to Vang Pao the military hero (who, let the record show, did not magically deflect bullets), as well as the alleged rent-seeking schemer promising to lead his people back to a liberated Laos.
But on the whole, Hillmer's dry detachment -- probably cramped by a very complex culture with emotional ties in all (OK three) directions -- makes for an illuminating history, well worth reading both as a largely ignored chapter in American warfare, and as the fate of a pastoral culture transformed into warriors damn near overnight.
January 15, 2021
This is a great book dealing with Hmong history in Laos, Thailand and finally the United States.
April 23, 2023
More a military history than the "people's history" that I was expecting. A good overview of the Hmong role in the Southeast Asian conflict, but very limited beyond that.
April 27, 2012
I think it’s kind of hilarious that the two previous reviewers of this book (OK, really one reviewer and a copycat) complain that the author “only” covers three roles of the Hmong (war-refugee-immigrant), first because whole books have been written about any single one of those themes, and second because it’s wrong. For example, the whole first section is about Hmong culture, village life, internal politics, in short, stuff that happened before the war started.
If anything, Hillmer tried to bite off more than a person should try to chew in a single book. But it’s clear that his idea is to share a complete narrative arc with his readers.
I think he could have spent less time walking us through what happened between the end of World War II and the start of the conflict in Laos, but I can see why he felt the need to explain it all, and I can skim through the sections I’m less interested in. I think in general he did a fine job of telling the story from a variety of perspectives.
If anything, Hillmer tried to bite off more than a person should try to chew in a single book. But it’s clear that his idea is to share a complete narrative arc with his readers.
I think he could have spent less time walking us through what happened between the end of World War II and the start of the conflict in Laos, but I can see why he felt the need to explain it all, and I can skim through the sections I’m less interested in. I think in general he did a fine job of telling the story from a variety of perspectives.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews