HWTOTW Magazine 2018

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L I M ITE D

E DITION

HWTOTW H M O N G W O M E N TA K E O N T H E W O R L D

45+

stories from around the world Australia, USA, Vietnam, Laos

Hmong Women Take On The World

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TA B L E O F C ONT E NT S

storytellers 10 COMING UP FOR FRESH AIR

56 THE BALLAD OF NPAUJ NYAG

78 FASHIONABLY DIFFERENT

100 VICTORIOUS: TRAUMA & PERSEVERANCE

12 PASSION TO HELP

58 KOJ TXOJ HMOO

80 CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

103 A FEW YEARS OF EDUCATION

82 SEXUALITY & DUTY

104 YOLO: SELFCONFIDENCE & CYBERBULLYING

Kazia Moua, Georgia, USA Written by Alee Fayngold Txaj Vaj, Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam Written by Catherine Thao

14 LIVING ABROAD

Nancy DuQuette, Rhineland-Pfalz, Germany Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay

16 AUTISM

Song Yang, Oregon, USA Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay

18 FROM CHALLENGES COME OPPORTUNITIES Bekki Yang, Wisconsin, USA Written by Catherine Thao

20 CREATE A BOLD & JOYFUL LIFE

Mykou Thao, Minnesota, USA Written by K.M. Lee

22 INTERSECTING IDENTITIES

Doua Kha, Wisconsin, USA Written by Mai Pa Lee

24 ENTREPRENEURSHIP Crystal Lee, California, USA Written by K.M. lee

48 FITNESS

Trish Yang, California, USA Written by K.M. Lee

50 AGAINST THE GRAIN Anonymous, Australia Written by Pa N. Vue

52 HOLISTIC HEALTH

Ia Xiong, Minnesota, USA Written by Mai Pa Lee

54 FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

Nkauj Vang, Minnesota, USA Written by Pa Dao Vang

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Bao Kue, Pennsylvania, USA Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay Mai Yer, Vientiane, Laos Written by Ka Thao

60 LIFE IN VIETNAM

Mee Vang, Minnesota, USA Written by Mina Her

61 FINDING LOVE (AGAIN)

Anonymous, Illinois, USA Written by Pa N. Vue

64 LIVING WITH ADHD Julia Heu, Minnesota, USA Written by MyDer Ly

66 LOVE THYSELF, LOVE THE WORLD

Paku Her, California, USA Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay

PaNyia Vang, Minnesota, USA Written by K.M. Lee

Dolly Vang, Victoria, Australia Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay

84 WOMEN HEROES

Lori Lee, Wisconsin, USA Written by Mai Pa Lee

86 LIVING AUTHENTICALLY

See Cha, Minnesota, USA Written by Mai Pa Lee

Jane Sayaxang, Queensland, Australia Written by Lilian Thaoxaoxchay

88 START BY LISTENING

68 BEYOND THE MIDDLE LANE

90 SKINCARE ROUTINES & MAKEUP

Kaosong Yang, Minnesota, USA Written by MyDer Ly

70 TRADITIONAL VS. MODERN LIFE

Sinh Quan Kong, Lao Cai, Vietnam Written by Pa Dao Vang

72 DREAMING BIGGER

Mai Pha, Minnesota, USA Written by See Xiong

Bao Lee, Wisconsin, USA Written by K.M. Lee

92 CHALLENGES/VIETNAM

Niam Tshuav, Ma Thai, Vietnam Written by Ka Thao

94 SELF-WORTH & DOMESTIC ABUSE

Anonymous, California, USA Written by Pa N. Vue

Mai Nou Moua, Queensland, Australia Written by Alee Fayngold

74 BEAUTY INDUSTRY

96 PASSION & WILL

Michelle Nguyen, New South Wales, Australia Written by Alee Fayngold

76 HMONG WOMEN MENTORS

Chenue Her, Virginia, USA Written by Pa N. Vue

Hmong Women Take On The World

Miranda Xiong, Minnesota, USA Written by Alee Fayngold

98 TEACHING GRIT

Tru Yang, Pennsylvania, USA Written by Pa Dao Vang

Anonymous, USA Written by Pa N. Vue

Dawb Vaj, China Written by MyDer Ly

Christina Xiong, California, USA Written by Pa Dao Vang

106 OUVRE TA GUELE: HMONG WOMEN IN FRANCE Claudia Delahaye, Paris, France Written by Kao Yongvang

108 A FACE FOR HMONG IN MEDIA Gia Vang, California, USA Written by Catherine Thao

110 JOURNEY TO SELF-DISCOVERY

Kimberly Lee, Minnesota, USA Written by Catherine Thao

112 A WOMAN SHAMAN

Angel Lee, Wisconsin, USA Written by See Xiong

114 CHOOSE YOUR OWN JOURNEY Mai Thor, Minnesota, USA Written by Mai Pa Lee

116 WORTH LIVING, WORTH LOVING

Xue Vang Lee, Arkansas, USA Written by Lilian Thaoxaoxchay

118 DELIVERANCE OF TRUTH

Star Bright Lee, California, USA Written by Lilian Thaoxaoxchay

sponsors 26 HOPE

38 FUSION TASTE

30 SURROGACY

41 FINANCIAL GOALS

32 WINNING IN LIFE

44 FINANCIAL CHECKUP

35 CREATING SPACE

46 FILMMAKING

Chelsee Heu, California, USA Written by Pa N. Vue Chelsee Heu, California, USA Written by Pa N. Vue China Chang, Minnesota, USA Written by Pa N. Vue Tia Yang, Minnesota, USA Written by Pa N. Vue

Hue Vang, Minnesota, USA Written by Pa N. Vue Dr. Mai Yang, California, USA Written by K.M. Lee Dr. Mai Yang, California, USA Written by Pa N. Vue Seng Yang, Georgia, USA Written by Pa N. Vue

Hmong Women Take On The World

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FOUNDERS LETTER

The Power of You It’s Cultural Heritage month. My daughter, Nouchi, proudly wears her Hmong-inspired dress to present to her 2nd grade class about the Hmong culture. She’s wearing the dress that she asked me to buy for her during my visit to Minnesota. She is the only Hmong girl at her school. She freely chooses for herself without our prompting.

Elizabeth Yang Founder & CEO

While Nouchi bravely skips into school with her poster ready to teach the Hmong culture, my heart is filled with joy and disbelief. Just 8 months ago, being Hmong made other kids laughed at her. It was on that airy night that ignited my heart as a mother and woman and Hmong Women Take on the World was born. Today, she’s owning who she is. I’m in disbelief that all I did was make her believe that being who she is enough.

If there’s a single theme that dominates our first global digital magazine issue, it’s that we need to first BELIEVE in our own brilliance and take action to live the tough decisions out loud. Each of our storytellers did. Many of our Tribal Leaders did. Across my Quest to Believe that We are Enough tour in nine major cities internationally, hundreds of our sisters and supporters did.

We are resilient all around the world. Our Hmong history reflects that. Resilience and brilliance are in your DNA. Embrace them.

Run with them. My only ask is for you to remember that your family is humanity – not just those immediately around you.

Let status quo be planting seeds of possibilities in each other instead of reinforcing the doubt, judgment, criticism, and negativity. That’s a choice.

Many may have a love/hate relationship with being Hmong and mainstream, whether in America, Australia, Laos, or Vietnam, but we continue to navigate both lanes and can appreciate the best of both worlds. My hope is that you’ll define who you are by your final destination; not from where you started. Believing first is the light to ignite that fire within. Shine even brighter by surrounding yourself with the people who will uplift you.

No one ever built anything meaningful alone. Give yourself permission: Own the power of who you are.

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C O N T R IB U T O RS

Panhia Lee

Pa N Vue

Panhia is a freelance graphic designer and photographer based in Providence, Rhode Island. She enjoys collaborating with others to deliver fresh, modern and compelling brand messages through design and photography. S ​ he is a Wisconsin native who graduated from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh with a Bachelor of Science in Advertising and Photojournalism. On her free time, she enjoys exploring eateries and spending time with friends and family.

Pa is a writer, blogger, storyteller and workshop leader. Her blog is called Cultivate & Refine and focuses on the power and importance of telling your story. She also runs storytelling workshops to help teams connect in a short amount of time. A science fiction and fantasy fan, Pa has written four novels in this genre. She dreams of one day incorporating her experiences as a Hmong woman and as a refugee into this genre. Until then, to support her reading and writing habit, she coordinates the Writing Center at California State University, Chico in Chico, CA and leads a team of writing tutors.

Creative Design Lead

Executive Editor

HWTOTW

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C O N T R IB U T O RS

Alee Fayngold

Mina Her

Padee Khang

Alee Vang Fayngold was born in the Thai refugee camp of Ban Vinai.

She is the middle child of 10 children but has always felt like the oldest, for her older siblings all married at very young ages and were out of the house by the time she had turned 14 years old. She has two beautiful tri-lingual children whom she loves unconditionally and are her pride and joy. She has a passion for education and for writing. In addition, she loves to travel the world with her husband and try new foods.

Authors like E.B. White and J.K. Rowling inspire her as she hopes to one day publish her own children’s book.

Mina is a student studying paralegal and psychology. She is also a photographer and works in a mental health clinic. She loves reading and writing in her spare time.

Padee Khang resides in Wisconsin and is currently a graphic designer for Menards, Inc. Aside from her passion in the creative field, she is a mother of four and guardian to extended family. She is also co-chair of a non-profit, humanKIND of Eau Claire and dedicated to celebrating diversity. Padee enjoys trying new food, coffee, wine, beaches and time with her family.

Catherine Thao

Ka Thao

Lillian Thaoxaochay

Catherine Thao is a first generation Hmong daughter, born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Catherine graduated from Augsburg College (now Augsburg University) in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English Language, Literature, and Theory. She enjoys spending time curled in a blanket on the couch with a sci-fi/fantasy book in hand, and cheese, crackers, and wine within reach. One day, Catherine would like to move into the publishing field, so she can also make others’ writing dreams come true.

Ka Thao is a first generation Hmong woman living in the California bay area. She received her bachelor’s degree in integrative biology from University of California, Berkeley.

She works in the health care sector to deliver excellent and affordable health care to underserved communities. She believes healthcare is not a privilege but a human right.

She channels her passion, skills and time in volunteering and supporting projects that yield healthy communities.

Lilian is doggedly pursuing a PhD in Anthropology – she already has two additional degrees, a BA from Stanford University and an MA from UC Santa Cruz, in the subject.

When she isn’t reading and writing and plotting, she likes to unwind by playing soccer and/or running – which she actually loathes, but knows is “good” for her health and allows her to get out and about.

While she’s visited a number of other and “better” places to be, she always finds her way back to her hometown and heart(h)space in Fresno, CA.

Writer

Writer

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Hmong Women Take On The World

Writer

She was born in Thailand but has lived in Minnesota all her life.

Writer

Graphic Designer

Writer

Kimberly (K.M.) Lee

Mai Pa Lee

Myder Lee

K.M. is a current resident of the Twin Cities. Her academic background includes medical anthropology, Asian studies, Hmong language learning, and accounting. More importantly, K.M.’s current interests include hitting the two-mile mark while running, exploring new music, learning about finance, and trying very hard to make people laugh.

She gives great thanks to the beautiful women in her family, especially her mother and three sisters, for being exemplary teachers of strength, integrity, and grace.

Mai Pa Lee was born and raised in Colorado where most of her family still resides. She moved to Minneapolis, MN about five years ago to pursue her M.A. in Educational Leadership and Policy Development at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Since then, she has earned her degree and now works with college students. Mai is most passionate about supporting underrepresented students. She enjoys the learning process and thinks often about the lived experiences of students and their identities. During her free time, she enjoys reading fiction, hoarding craft materials, and tending to her backyard garden.

Myder Ly was born in Denver, CO and raised in the great lakes state of Michigan. She is a mother of four boys and enjoys the simplest things in life like a cup of cold brew black coffee! When she isn’t too busy making her boys smile, she can be found reading a book and writing short stories. She graduated with her business degree and is passionate about higher education, Michelle Obama, and everything Cinderella.

Chria Vang

Pa Dao Vang

Cheeia Xiong

Chria Vang’s Strengths are Connectedness, Developer, Belief, Responsibility, and Intellection. Chria graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2017 with her bachelor’s degree in Youth Studies, Leadership Studies, and Holistic Health and Healing. She was born in Thailand but St. Paul, Minnesota is her home. Chria’s biggest passions are building genuine relationships and working with young people. In her free time, she enjoys learning about Hmong culture/history, engaging with different communities, and finding new parks to explore.

Pa Dao wears many hats; she is a student, instructor, and mother. After completing her associate’s degree, she decided to chase her other passion in beauty as a licensed cosmetologist. Now, a senior at California State University, Fresno, she is a psychology major and Hmong minor. After graduation, Pa Dao hopes to pursue graduate studies in counseling. In her spare time, she likes to relax by catching up on some of her favorite TV shows like The Resident, Siren, and Deception to name a few. She enjoys going on walks in the park with her family and taking her sons on trips to explore.

Cheeia Xiong is a wife, mother, and full-time lifestyle blogger. Her content focuses on inner beauty and self love. She currently resides in Irvine, CA and spends her free time at the beach.

Writer

Editor

Writer

Writer

Writer

Editor

Hmong Women Take On The World

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C O N T R IB U T O RS

SPECIAL THANKS Official City Hosts

See Xiong

Kao Yongvang

See is a social media creative and globetrotter. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree of science in journalism and a minor in radio/tv/film, she has written and produced multiple promotional videos. An adventurous soul, See has explored the ruins of Greece and tasted the delicacy of street food from Thailand, among many other ventures. She has more than five years of television production experience and now currently shoots product and lifestyle images for social media accounts. She presently lives in Minneapolis and recently started on a journey to learn how to grow a garden.

Kao Yongvang lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband.

She chose to not be a mother. She is a sociable introvert, an atheist, a supporter of pro-choice and euthanasia freedoms, and an environmental consciousness advocate.

Core Planning Team

International Tribal Leaders

Mai Moua, Massachusetts, USA

Ly Ly, Luang Prabang, Laos

Writer

Mai Moua, Queensland, Australia Nischa Xiong, Massachusetts, USA Dia Yang, Minnesota, USA

Cynthia YongVang, Washington, USA

Editor

Dolly Vang, Melbourne, Australia Mai Yang, Ontario, Canada

Mai Yer Xiong, Vientiane, Laos PK Vang, Bangkok, Thailand

Mai Dawb Pha, Minnesota, USA

Crystal Lee, California, USA

Padee Khang, Wisconsin, USA

Doua Kha, Wisconsin, USA Ka Thao, California, USA

Lee S. Moua, Florida, USA Lori Xiong, Alaska, USA

Lorina Thao, Oklahoma, USA

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Lisa Passus, St. Paul, MN, USA Ele Vang, Boston, MA, United States

Mai Zia Lee, WI, United States Matthew Lor, WI, United States

Carrie Agustin, Minnesota, USA

Davoua Vang, Tennessee, USA

Technology Contributors

Video Editing Contributors

United States Tribal Leaders Chong Lo, Washington, USA

Melbourne, Australia Kitchener, ON, Canada Vientiane, Laos Kitchener, ON, Canada Dien Bien Fum, Vietnam Ma Thai, Vietnam Anchorage, AK, United States Fresno, CA, United States St. Paul, MN, United States Portland, OR, United States Boston, MA, United States Seattle, WA, United States

Olivia Vang, Oregon, USA

Pang Foua Xiong, Minnesota, USA Seng Her, Georgia, USA Val Vang, Illinois, USA

Victoria Thaoxaochay, California, USA Xue Lee-Vang, Arkansas, USA

Hmong Women Take On The World

Hmong Women Take On The World

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S T ORY T E L L E R

A Breath of Fresh Air Written by Alee Fayngold

H

uman beings are an exquisite species in that we are built with the tools to comprehend, think, adapt, and evolve, all in one lifetime. Biology teaches us Darwin’s theory of evolution and how genes evolve overtime, which in turn produces what we know to be gene variations. Can biology, then, help us understand sexual orientation?

There is much controversy around one’s sexual orientation, whether it is a choice or influenced by genetic and hormonal factors. Because science cannot yet confirm which one theory is accurate or best, we cannot simply divorce the idea that our sexual orientation is not a choice.

Kazia Moua, a bi-sexual young Hmong woman from Georgia, would agree that she did not choose to be bi-sexual; most importantly, she also believes that her sexual orientation does not define her.

There is still much taboo in identifying as a gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, queer, or transsexual person within the Hmong community. The intersection of sexuality and race is important to note because the hardships and concerns of those who identify

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as LGBTQ may vary among different ethnic backgrounds. In the Hmong community, being attracted to the same sex isn’t yet welcomed and accepted. According to research done by Bic Ngo and Melissa Kwon, a person who identifies with the LGBTQ community usually isn’t dealing with self-discovery but with family acceptance and the fear of being disowned.

Even though science tells us there is a possibility of gene factors, as more LGBTQ Hmong youth feel safe to come out, many elders still blame it on “western influence.”

Before Kazia came out, she lived in the shadows, hidden and afraid. She is a bi-sexual young Hmong woman, born into a community that isn’t yet accepting or knowledgeable of the LGBTQ community and which may not be ready for her.

Even though Kazia was full of life, cheerful, and happy when we spoke, she wasn’t always like that. She used to live in a lonesome, dark, and depressed world,

where she shut out everything and everyone close to her while she tried to discover herself. In December of Kazia’s freshman year in high school, she finally came out by confessing her affection for a guy who actually ended up telling her he was gay.

It was then that she admitted to him she was bi-sexual. He introduced Kazia to a girl he knew, whom Kazia grew very fond of.

While their relationship didn’t take off, the conversations with that girl led Kazia to find the courage to finally reveal her sexuality to her cousin, and then to her mother.

They were driving home from an event. “I told my mom [in the car], and she was really upset.” Holding back her tears, Kazia explained to me, “She called me stupid and crazy.” As the eldest daughter and a person who respects her elders, Kazia didn’t talk back.

Referring to her mother, she added, “She just kept yelling at me.” Filled with anguish and hurt, Kazia kept silent the rest of the ride home.

When asked why or what inspired her to tell her mother, Kazia replied, “I have to let everyone know because I don’t want to stay trapped or I don’t want to be left out.” The conversation she had with her mother left her sad and unwanted, so Kazia did something that most people couldn’t begin to do in her state: “I held what she said to me in my mind.” Kazia took these words from her mother and used it to light the fire inside her: she started telling her aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. It was only after telling her relatives that she realized the immense support she actually had in her life.

Kazia’s life, especially being that in the Hmong community bisexuality is still considered shameful and unacceptable to many. To Kazia, having her parents’ validation was a big win.

Kazia has won the hearts and support of her parents, friends, and relatives, but she still has some distance to go. To this day, her grandparents are still in the dark about her sexuality, and she hopes that one day she can build enough courage to also let them know. Kazia said, “I want them to know, I’m still me, the same granddaughter… I really want to let the Hmong community know that being bi, gay, lesbian, doesn’t define who you really are, you’re still a normal, sane human being. We shouldn’t be judged based on our sexuality.” Kazia still fears rejection because her grandparents are from an older generation but she does believe in her heart that she will eventually receive acceptance from them as she’s received from her parents. Kazia is young and hopefully in time she will eventually come to tell her grandparents.

“Having different

sexualities doesn’t define you.”

Kazia also found the courage to come out to a school counselor who gave her affirmation that she was not stupid or crazy, and that made Kazia feel better. Furthermore, her high school counselor said, “Having different sexualities doesn’t define you.” That stuck. Kazia had the courage to text her mother that day, and to her amazement, her mother responded. “It’s okay,” she said. “You be you, you like what you like, you’re still my daughter.” These were words of support, encouragement, and love, everything Kazia had hoped to hear.

Again, fighting back tears, Kazia explained how these sweet words meant everything to her. They meant acceptance.

Soon after that conversation, Kazia found out that her mother had told her father about her sexuality too and, to her amazement, he took it well. He said to her, “You’re my daughter, and it’s okay.” Those six words brought relief and comfort to

For the longest time Kazia felt trapped and stuck underneath a pile of dirt. “Suffocating,” was how she explained her journey of being a young bi-sexual woman who was suicidal at times. But it’s clear today, that Kazia has since come up for air by using the pain she felt as fuel and motivation. She’s persisting towards a better life, better future, and at being an example to the rest of the Hmong LGBQT community so that they, too, can come up for air.

Many things can be learned from Kazia’s journey to become transparent with her family about her sexuality, but perhaps the biggest lesson is we will never know until we try. The world and our lives are in our grasps, opportunities and possibilities are endless. Today, Kazia is using her sexual orientation, something she once hid because she was ashamed and scared, to educate and inform. She’s currently helping a neighbor go through the discovery of his sexuality and offering her guidance through her own experience. This has helped him a lot.

Kazia chose to live and celebrate her life and that of many other women who identify with the LGBTQ community. Her goal is to empower, to inspire, and to help those that still struggle with their sexual orientation within the Hmong community. She is currently applying for college at Georgia Gwinnett College to study film, something she’s always wanted to do since the eighth grade.

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S T ORY T E L L E R | Q& A

A Passion to Help Hmong Women in Vietnam Overcome Their Adversities Translated and Written by Catherine Thao

Txaj Vaj is a Hmong woman living in Vietnam. She is a pastor’s wife, and tries to live her life finding ways to assist her fellow sisters in achieving their dreams and rights. She and her husband have now been married for 19 years and have eight children. HWTOTW Tribal Leader Mai E. Moua had the chance to interview Txaj and to speak with her about her life and aspirations.

My mom brought us up as Christians, and that was where I learned to sing two songs in my songbook. I really wanted to learn to read, so I memorized the two songs and followed the lyrics and taught myself how to read Hmong. When I learned to read Hmong, I wasn’t proficient since I was self taught, so things didn’t always make sense to me, but I learned my name and always knew when people wrote my name.

Can you tell us what your name is, where you live, your country and town, and what you do?

Because I didn’t have the luxury of getting an education when I was growing up, I tell my kids the importance of education, of reading and writing so that their life doesn’t turn out like mine.

My name is Txaj, last name Vaj. I live in Vietnam in Dien bien Phu. I have eight kids, and a total of ten people in my family. I have a son in tenth grade, he is 16. My younger son is 12 and is in seventh grade. Among my daughters, I have one in fourth grade and one in second grade. There are still three of them who are younger and at home.

In my younger years, I didn’t have anyone to support me. In my family, I have two brothers and four sisters. The only one of us who had an education was my second brother, the rest of us stayed home and worked. My mom didn’t teach me much, and my dad passed when I was 10, so I didn’t have anyone to teach me. I think about my life when I was little and think about how poor we were and how I wanted to, when I got older, live life differently from my mother so my children wouldn’t suffer like I did. That was my dream.

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When I was little, one of my dreams was to be able to work and save money so that one day, I could open up a store and make a lot of money to support my family and be successful. I was in the process of opening up a store, but I didn’t have any friends to help me so I am waiting until my children are a little older so they can help around the house. I am waiting a year to see how much I can save and prepare, and then I will try again.

I have a couple of things that I am really passionate about in terms of helping the Hmong women here. The Hmong women here often farm to support their families, but this year has been bad and there has been a shortage of food and everyone is suffering a little. I am hoping to figure out a way to help all these women make things better so that they don’t suffer. I don’t just want this for myself and children, but for everyone.

Another one of my passions is helping Hmong women here who are being forced to marry and, therefore, live lives they don’t want and are in relationships they don’t want. It happens that a couple years after getting married against their will, the men will abandon their wives and send them back. There are a lot of women without husbands and I want to find a way to help them find justice.

A subject that I find really important is domestic violence. Often, men go and drink, and when they come back home, they beat their wives. If the wives even dare to speak out against the drinking, they get beat like they are a sack of rice. I want to help with this so that there is equality and justice in every relationship and so women can have better relationships.

Even if I am not able to do everything, if I can just help in these areas, I will do everything in my power to do so.

Something you mentioned earlier is the topic of the abuse and the kidnapping of women in the name of marriage.

Why do you think that men still do that and why don’t they respect women as fellow humans with the same human rights?

Here in Vietnam, it’s a man’s world. Women don’t have rights, so whatever a man does to a woman is considered within his rights.

Are there government officials and laws that could protect women?

Government officials don’t get involved in domestic affairs. In regards to the kidnapping of women for marriage, government officials will help if they are 15 and younger, but the problem there lies in that a lot of women are too scared to go to the government for help. Something that hinders justice and rights for Hmong women in Vietnam is that the Vietnamese government considers these to be Hmong traditions and Hmong laws and don’t interfere.

What can we do here to support the sisters there?

Here, if there is a family member who can go to town to get a government official to help, they have to help, but if there is no one to go ask for help and a problem is taken to the local officials, they can’t help.

If the women who are victims to kidnapping go to the government officials and they won’t help, and they go to local officials and they won’t help, who can they turn to? Can they turn to their families? It seems like they reach a dead end at every turn for help.

Families won’t help either. If the families aren’t Christian, they follow the old laws. Once you are taken past the threshold of your family’s house, they will not accept you back. Since the women have nowhere else to turn to, they resign themselves to that life. Families who follow the old law say that you are now your husband’s family and refuse to upset the ancestors.

Do the majority of Hmong in Vietnam still follow the old traditions, or have many of them taken on Christianity?

The men who still kidnap women for brides still follow the old traditions.

If we want to change things for women, we’ll have to change our way of thinking. How do you think we can do that?

We would have to go higher, and make sure that the government laws are followed by the smaller villages.

In Vietnam, are the boys taught that in order for them to achieve success, they will have to leave some of the old ways?

Yes, they do teach that. Among the Hmong men who pursue higher education, there are none that kidnap women for marriage. The ones to still kidnap women aren’t high in percentage.

Tell me more about your oldest son­—you said he is going to be studying in Canada?

Yes, he’ll be done with tenth grade in a couple of months. Between June and July, he will start to study English. Every year for three years, he will study two months of English. He will study for an additional six months before we send him to Canada.

Do you have family in the United States or Canada?

Not in Canada. We do have a brother who has been in the United States for ten years, but he is still struggling. People often think that he sends us a lot of money, but I tell them not to say that because I know he is still struggling to support this family.

I just wanted to thank you for your time and sharing your words with the Hmong sisters overseas, and for sharing with us what life as a Hmong woman is like in Vietnam. I also wanted to thank you for sharing your life with me. For us sisters overseas, we’ll have to put our heads together to come up with ideas to help you in your endeavors to make life better for the Hmong sisters in Vietnam.

Txaj moves forward with her passion for helping the Hmong women and girls in Vietnam who are voiceless. She has her mind set to do everything in her power to improve the lives of the Hmong-Vietnamese sisters, and she welcomes all the help that she can get. For sisters who live in first world countries and have had a chance to pursue success, Txaj hopes that her words and her perseverance will inspire you to join hands with her to work together to support the less fortunate sisters in Vietnam, and to give each of the Hmong girls and women in Vietnam a chance to succeed and achieve their dreams.

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S TORY T E L L E R

Advice from a Hmong American Sister Living Abroad Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay

G

rowing up, Nancy DuQuette née Lor thought she would go to school, get a degree, take on a decent paying job in an office-type scenario, and then marry a nice Hmong guy who would consent to living somewhere either near her parents’ or his parents’ home. Txiv yawg and niam tais (grandpa and grandma) would be able to help watch the kids before and after school. On weekends, they could all go on small family vacations to the Wisconsin Dells or visit extended family. Nancy never imagined herself living halfway across the world from her relatives. She was born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Most of her family still lives there or nearby. However, Nancy currently lives in Germany, in a small village off-base with her husband, who is in the Air Force, and her two children, a daughter and a son.

Nancy and her husband met when they were in their 20s—she was just graduating from college and he was finishing up his service with the Marine Corps. They married in 2007 and lived briefly in New York before attempting civilian life in Wisconsin. Because Nancy’s husband’s non-military work experience only included his summers as a grocery boy—work he did parttime as a teenager—to better help support his family, he re-enlisted in the Air Force. Nancy and her husband were then sent to live in Idaho where her daughter and her son were born. Not too long after, when Nancy’s daughter was about three and her son seven to eight months old, they were told to pack their bags, drop off their belongings in Seattle, Washington, and prepare for relocation to Germany. Nancy’s husband is now stationed at an airbase near the French-German border, centrally located between neighboring Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Hmong-Germans are somewhat rare compared to HmongFrench. Whereas France was a colonial power explicitly oper-

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ating in Southeast Asia throughout the 20th century and had felt obligated to take in Hmong refugees after the collapse of the Royal Lao Government, Germany had no such feelings. But in 1979, a handful of Hmong refugee families were resettled in Gammertingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, after the Argentinian government rescinded their offer to take these families. Many of these “original” Hmong-German families still live in Germany today. However, Nancy is the only Hmong person living in, on, or around her husband’s airbase, approximately three hours north of Gammertingen. Additionally, there are very few Hmong in the military or married to military personnel and it is even rarer for them all to be stationed in the same place or within reach of one another. Hmong in the military have an online Facebook forum, but it’s not often that they are able to meet in person, if at all.

Nancy described her early months in Germany as difficult and depressing. She and her husband underwent some expected culture shock—Germans are very direct people: they have no patience and/or interest in small talk. Ironically, they are very slow when it comes to service. A dinner at a restaurant once took two hours for their small family of four—the restaurant was not busy. Germans, she says, like to indulge and linger in the moment like many other Europeans. But the DuQuettes’ greatest early struggles stemmed from their unfamiliarity with the language. They also didn’t have a car initially and didn’t know how to arrange transportation to where they needed to go, and when they finally found a house to live in, they had no idea where to procure home goods, including mattresses. “It was just like starting out again with our lives.” Things became even more difficult when Nancy’s husband was deployed and she was left alone. It was just her and her two children until he returned home safely.

Nancy is a stay-at-home mom. While her daughter, age five, now attends Sure Start, the overseas military equivalent to Head Start, her son is still too young for school, and childcare is so prohibitively expensive, even abroad, that she chooses to care for him instead of taking a job, where she might be paying her daily income (or more) for someone else to watch him. This is a difficulty many overseas military families with small children experience. Despite an executive order signed in early May to improve military spousal employment stemming from a 2017 report that the unemployment rate among military spouses was approximately 23%, six times the national unemployment rate, such struggles remain overlooked. Instead, many military spouses have to wait until their children are older and can attend school before they can pursue work outside the home.

In the interim, Nancy strives to stay busy. She’s found a passion for planning day and weekend trips to picturesque and historical locales. The DuQuettes live 45 minutes from the French border, one and one-half hours from Luxembourg, and three hours from Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. Travel within Europe is relatively affordable, and sometimes it is both cheaper and faster to fly than drive. For example, London, England, one of Nancy’s favorite places, is about an eight to nine hour drive from the airbase.

However, it is less than a two-hour flight and, through certain airlines, it may only cost $30 for a round trip ticket. Some of Nancy’s most memorable visits include Colmar, a beautifully preserved town in the northeast of France along the Alsatian Wine Route, and Marseilles, which she describes as a “charming seaside” getaway. The family also recently visited Amsterdam in the Netherlands. “Dutch people are so very kind.”

for Americans. Be wary of differing bathroom cultures. We laughed and cringed over a story of her early ventures in Germany with her daughter who suddenly needed to use the potty.

It took over 30 minutes for Nancy to find someone who could even understand her request and then to figure out where to find one and how to procure the correct change to use it.

While this is not the life Nancy had imagined growing up— “not too far from home, my parents would be able to help as I worked in an office...that’s what you were conditioned to think your life was going to be like”—she’s never regretted her decision to move away from home, to support and be near her husband, and raise her children in a foreign country. In a sense, she told me, it was like experiencing first-hand some of the struggles her own refugee parents must have felt when they left their homeland for safety elsewhere.

“It can be [hard] to immerse yourself in another country’s culture..., but our parents did this with very little guidance and a huge language barrier.”

While the U.S. military provides translators and some support services for families settling abroad, Nancy had to learn about local customs, national holidays, and even where to find decent Asian food-facsimiles on her own.

“...if you get the chance to live

abroad, do it... [at first] it is the most difficult, most isolating, probably most depressing

experience of your life, but it

will also be the most rewarding experience of your life.”

She also gave me some very practical travel tips: keep your passport in the hotel, don’t carry it around with you; always make sure someone knows your schedule and can check to make sure you’ve arrived/departed; and learn a few local phrases. “Do you speak English?” is a pretty standard phrase

As a HWTOTW storyteller, Nancy encourages other vivncaus to break the mold, be fierce, and explore the world. “Don’t apologize for taking your space”—especially to Hmong men who might feel ousted. “And if you get the chance to live abroad, do it...[at first] it is the most difficult, most isolating, probably most depressing experience of your life, but it will also be the most rewarding experience of your life.” Beyond the discomfort and in the adaptation to new rhythms of life, “you learn how strong you are, how capable you are”. This resiliency is what it means to be Hmong, to be human, and to live life most fully.

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Autism, the Journey of One Hmong Family Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay

A

n English to Hmong medical dictionary that I consulted online translates autism as “kab mob ua ib tug menyuam muaj teeb meem ua phooj ywg nrog tib neeg”. This translation describes autism as an illness (kab mob) which makes it difficult for children to make friends or to be friends with other people. And while some autistic children do struggle with social interactions, not all autistic children are vehemently antisocial. Saying “Hi!” is one of eight-year-old Eason’s favorite activities.

“He’s very sociable. He’s very happy when we have visitors,” his mother, Song Yang, tells me.

Song has three children, a daughter who is two years older than Eason as well as an eight-month-old baby.

When Song had Eason, though, her life changed most dramatically. “My son and my daughter were like night and day. I felt like I didn’t know parenting anymore. He needs me so much. [Sometimes] I wanted to give up.” Song is a nurse who lives with her husband and his family in Oregon. No one on either side of their families had dealt with neurodevelopmental illnesses like autism or related spectrum disorders (ASD) before. Song and her husband greatly disagreed about Eason’s early developmental struggles and failures to meet childhood milestones like making and maintaining eye contact and learning to speak. For a while, they thought that perhaps 16

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Eason was deaf. He didn’t respond to his own name. Some family members commented that maybe because Eason was a boy and he was simply going to be slower than his sister in “maturing”. Someone even suggested that Eason might be destined to become a shaman. All of these misunderstandings about what was “wrong” with Eason led to further disagreements about whether or not his parents should seek additional help, including putting him in therapy. But Song was sure something was wrong. She knew something was different about her son; they just hadn’t figured it out yet. Song insisted they move to Minnesota where they might find the help and support they needed to diagnose their son.

Eason was diagnosed with autism in Minnesota when he was two years old. They estimated that he was approximately two years behind his “normal” peers’ development. However, the robust speech and occupational therapy programs in the Midwest helped Eason to learn how to talk and then express his feelings. At age five, Eason finally began washing his own face. He was potty-trained at six, and now at eight, he is learning to initiate play with other children.

Eason’s therapy was a balm for Song’s heart. Before the move to Minnesota and Eason’s diagnosis, she struggled with depression. Whereas she had a relatively easy time raising her daughter, Eason’s special needs were a game changer. She cried often. “He couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand him—what kind of mother was I?” While Eason was in therapy, Song and her husband were also taught how to better understand Eason’s needs. Autism is different in every child, but established routines help maximize the potential of and accomplishments in daily activities such as self-grooming, school, and meal times. Song tells me that Eason is a visual learner.

They started him out with a visible schedule which he followed everyday. He has moved on to understanding verbal directions.

Deviations are hard on him, but he is currently learning about personal space at school. At home he enjoys playing on his iPad and watching both Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. He is obsessed with trains. He’ll only eat certain foods, but most of the time he is a happy, loving little boy.

Song and her husband were also directed to various parent support groups at the hospital and surrounding clinics, but many of them only met once or twice a month. She later found additional communities online where mothers in particular posted about their daily progress. Song credits these various forums for teaching her how to better deal with her son’s diagnosis.

She also feels less alone in dealing with the everyday struggles and difficulties of raising a child with autism. Song recently started blogging on the power of positive thinking. You can find her online at Song’s Jar of Hope (songsjarofhope.org) and subscribe to see her most recent posts.

There is no cure for autism. Autism is not a disease, and neither is it contagious. Rather, autism is a brain-disorder, resulting in social-communication struggles. Therapies are directed at teaching families how to care for and communicate with their child’s special needs. Scientists are currently still unsure about what causes autism, but it is thought that autism is the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors. In 2013, the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM-V) was released, reclassifying autism as part of a spectrum of developmental disorders or ASDs and collapsed the need for “sub-diagnoses” such as Asperger’s to better capture patients who might have been left out of the DSM-IV catalogue. This movement is meant to expand access to therapy options for families with children with developmental difficulties.

Whereas it was once believed that ASDs were rare in children, in recent years it has been shown to be on the rise. Currently 1% of the world’s population is affected by ASDs with an increase in prevalence anywhere from 6-15% per year. Boys are much more likely to be diagnosed with an ASD than girls, and while some ASD adults may find jobs, most need support services throughout their lives. One of the greatest struggles for ASD families, however, is overcoming stigmas. In the mid-20th century, ASD was thought to be caused by “frigid mothers”. It was hypothesized that emotionally cold or distant mothers caused antisocial and disruptive behaviors in their children. This ignorant perspective was overturned by clinician Bernard Rimland who disagreed that he and his wife’s parenting had caused

his son’s autism. Therapies eventually began to take place. An increase in ASD research in the late-20th century and more recently has helped debunk many myths about what causes developmental challenges among young children (including the mistaken belief that childhood vaccinations cause autism), but social stigmas—judgments, by family and strangers alike that parents of children with ASD are either inattentive or incapable of controlling their children, as well as the perception that children with ASD are simply bad or undisciplined—persist.

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly declared April 2nd as World Autism Awareness Day. Organizations all over the world come together to share their knowledge and research as well as to promote acceptance of ASD. These campaigns have done a great deal over the last decade to raise awareness of autism, what it is, and what to expect for both families and friends who want to know more.

Song and her family moved back to Oregon from Minnesota approximately a year ago. Eason’s daily routines have helped him to handle and take on more and more daily tasks, the family has discovered how to laugh and be light again. Song has also achieved a new perspective on her son’s destiny. In his infancy, she feared for his future and blamed herself—“maybe it was something I ate, was it something I didn’t do, like take enough prenatal vitamins?” Now they take it one day at a time.

“The future is unpredictable.”

“My strongest wish is for families to get help early,” says Song.

In many respects Eason is an average little boy. “He says the funniest things, atypical, wonderful things that I would never have thought of. Sometimes he makes these little noises when we are outside and there are a lot of people. It’s like he is filming the world.” Organizations like Autism Speaks and the Developmental Disabilities Institute (DDI) based in New York have made tremendous strides in ASD research as well. They have also contributed a great deal of literature for ASD children, adults, and families. Additionally, their outreach and advocacy work aims to improve acceptance of people with ASDs. Song, Eason, and their family have experienced great hardships, but she retains: “God gave him to me. Cherish the little things. I came to good things too [with Eason’s diagnosis]—I now know that Eason is different, [and] I am not alone, there are other parents [too].” Song hopes her story can help to inspire other parents and families dealing with ASDs. She also wants to raise awareness about ASDs so that parents can better help themselves and their children. The earlier a child is diagnosed with an ASD, the better their life-long outcomes are.

Early detection, within 24 months, allows for early intervention, including access to services and resources following diagnosis to help improve future outcomes and institute transition plans for each unique child’s diverse needs. “Now even when we don’t know what’s to come, we can still stay positive and hopeful because you know yourself, remember the hardships, [and you know] this is your child.”

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From Challenges Come Opportunities Written by Catherine Thao

As a first-generation-born Hmong woman in the United States, Rebecca (Bekki) Yang is the second oldest of six children.

While her parents struggled with assimilating to American culture, Bekki struggled with her identity and the balance between Hmong cultural values and American pop culture. “In the early 90’s, the Hmong community was still very new to pop culture, fads, or trends, such as wearing bleached jeans, or having big hair, but it was frowned upon by many Hmong parents, including mine,” said Bekki. Feeling unsupported and torn between her individualism and her parents’ rules, Bekki got into trouble at a young age, became pregnant, and ultimately became a single parent at the age of seventeen.

“I thought to myself, there has to be more to life than this,” Bekki stated. Her daughter became the source of her motivation and driving force, and for the sake of her daughter and her own future Bekki applied for college. Her parents were encouraging, supportive, and helped look after her daughter while she went to college.

When asked how Bekki decided what she wanted to do with her life, she stated, “Well, sometimes you have to start with what know you don’t want to do to figure out what you do want to do.” Bekki didn’t like math or science, but knew she wanted to work in something creative like marketing. So while some of her friends accepted paid opportunities outside of their field of study, she decided to take on unpaid opportunities within her field of study—internships. She strongly believes that internships are good opportunities for college students to gain experience and truly understand their field of study and its line of work.

“When college students ask me how can they become successful in their careers I tell them to get an internship in the field or industry they want to get into, even if it’s unpaid,” she said. “Sometimes, you’ll even discover that perhaps what you thought you wanted to get into as a career isn’t what you really want to do after all. Or, your internship validates that this is the career path you want to take, and now you have the opportunity to learn as much as you can about it through your internship.”

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While pursuing her marketing degree, Bekki responded to a radio call for a promotion intern and shortly thereafter, landed an internship with iHeartRadio (formerly, Clear Channel Radio).

“I was the one who helped set up events, pass out fliers, and sit out in that sun. I didn’t get paid, but we were compensated in other ways,” she said. “I basically worked for free for a year and a half,” she laughed. Then a part-time opportunity for a Promotion Assistant finally opened up at iHeartRadio.

During her time as a Promotion Assistant, Bekki encountered many moments when she had to make quick, hard decisions in order to pursue her career in an industry she wanted to grow in.

She recalled a moment in particular when she drove an hour away with her friends to enjoy a day at Six Flags in Illinois.

They already paid for parking and just passed the park’s entrance gate when she received a call from her manager. He gave her an ultimatum—she could either return to Wisconsin and do a promotion that she was not previously scheduled for, or she could stay at Six Flags with her friends and be terminated. Bekki chose to make the drive home and work the promotion for two hours.

“It was actually a really hard decision! I was 22, looking to have fun with friends on a nice sunny day; and here was my manager, who was unorganized, and due to his failure to schedule people accordingly, I had to make an hour drive back to manage a twohour promotion. But I knew my hard work would pay off some day,” Bekki said.

Soon after, her manager was terminated, and his position as the Marketing Director became available. Although Bekki was still working on her marketing degree, she decided to apply.

“What’s there to lose?” she remembered asking herself. “I can either take this opportunity to apply for this position now, or risk working under another poor manager and have my career path taken away because of his or her poor management, so I applied for it—and got it!” Bekki said. “Don’t be scared to take action when an opportunity comes your way.”

Two years into her position as Marketing Director, Bekki’s supervisor left to pursue an opportunity in Michigan and asked Bekki to go with her. Faced with a difficult choice—finish up her last six weeks and graduate from college or leave with her Program Director—Bekki went to her father, whom she refers to as her guardian angel, for advice.

Bekki’s father witnessed her early mornings of school and late nights of work with the radio station. He advised her to go to Michigan because he knew how hard it would be to find someone willing to take her under their wing and teach her the tricks of the trade. She could always return and finish college, but might not ever come across someone willing to train and lead her again. Following her father’s advice, Bekki moved to Michigan.

“I had to move within two weeks, so I asked one of my best friends to go with me to look for an apartment,” Bekki said. “I couldn’t find an apartment the first day, and because it was so late and we didn’t book a hotel a night in advance, we ended up just sleeping at a casino.” She laughed as she remembered this. When Bekki secured an apartment for herself the following week, three of her best friends helped her move to Michigan with everything they could fit in two cars.

“I went to the movie theater by myself for the first time!”

Bekki laughed. “Living in Michigan truly taught me how to be independent. I was always surrounded by family and friends but there I was in a big city, not knowing anyone else but my manager.”

One of the biggest challenges that Bekki faced in those years was that her daughter was still in Wisconsin. She spent a year going back and forth between Michigan and Wisconsin to see her daughter all the while maintaining her career. She got into a serious relationship with her current husband, and he moved out to Michigan to be with her, bringing along her daughter to join them. When Bekki became pregnant with her second child, they decided to move their family back to Wisconsin.

“I had to reevaluate my career path and my personal path when I became pregnant. I thought about where the opportunities of my current position would wind up along the corporate ladder. I had to really examine if this career path was something I

wanted to continue pursuing,” Bekki said. “When I came back, I did something I told myself I would never do. I went into sales.”

One year into her position as a sales representative for iHeartMedia, Bekki was awarded with the President’s Award, an award based on merits, recognizing her hard work. Three years into her position, she was promoted to General Sales Manager and worked her way up to Vice President of Sales. Bekki has been the Vice President of Sales for the past eight years.

Bekki shared that the most frustrating thing about a job can sometimes be the processes and systems. Instead of letting those feelings take over and control her, Bekki thought of ways to improve them and make for better workflow, efficiency, and productivity.

“A lot of times, people don’t leave because of their jobs.

They leave because of the people or because they’re tired of the office systems and processes that make the job hard to bear,” Bekki said.

When asked how she got to where she is now, Bekki said, “I used my fear to push myself. Chances are that if you are afraid of something, you should immerse yourself in it and breakthrough to bravery.

If you don’t try it, you will never know.”

Today, Bekki volunteers her time as Co-Chair for the Hmong Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce and participates in various councils and community committees. Most importantly, she is a mother of three and grandmother of one. One of her daughters is now in college studying marketing and often comes to her for advice. Bekki continues to be a strong, influential woman in her children’s lives.

Bekki’s words of advice to Hmong sisters across the world is, “Don’t be afraid to take action. If you feel 100% about a decision, then go for it.” She hopes her story can inspire Hmong women to take action and to remember that sometimes, the feelings of frustrations and hopelessness are not about the position or job itself, but about the people and circumstances around a you—do what you can do and make a positive change.

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Create a Bold and Joyful Life Through Entrepreneurship Written by K.M. Lee

“I think you need to stop trying things,” a friend said to Mykou Thao one night in her living room. “It’s a little embarrassing that you’ve started all these businesses and they didn’t work.

You look like a failure.”

Without hesitation, Mykou boldly responded, “Nope, my life will be different from here on out. Just watch and see.”

Sure enough, Mykou persisted in new business ventures and sharpened her entrepreneurship skills. Mykou is co-founder of HmongBaby.com, an online store that offers Hmong language and literacy materials for children. Hmong Baby is a startup that is revolutionizing and re-imagining the passage of the Hmong language to young generations. Mykou has created a fun educational resource that adds great value for families and the greater Hmong community for many years to come.

Mykou is one of eight children, raised in the Midwest into a Christian, semi-traditional household. Her father is a pastor and the family attends church regularly. Her strong Christian values have greatly influenced her identity. She remembers singing hymns in Hmong and following along with the lyrics. This was how she learned how to read Hmong. There are eight tones in the Hmong language which makes it particularly difficult for new learners. A simple inflection mistake at the end of a word changes its definition completely. “Music was a great way to learn because you didn’t have to focus much on the tones,” she says. “I now introduce my friends to read Hmong by first singing along to music and following the lyrics.”

From an early age Mykou watched her mother create do-ityourself crafts. This creativeness became a lasting theme in Mykou’s life. Her parents encouraged her to choose a career that allowed her to “Love God and love people,” she recalls.

Her relationship with God and creativity has greatly shaped how she understands herself and her Hmong identity.

Mykou attended University of Northwestern in St. Paul, MN

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where she majored in music. Her focus was piano and voice.

Mykou’s colleagues had been practicing from a young age so she had to work very hard to prove her skills. After graduation and marriage, she moved to North Carolina where her husband studied at Duke University. Mykou also found herself at Duke’s Law School, working with prestigious national and international lawyers. Although the position was respectable, Mykou was unhappy. One of her closest coworkers was fired and it dawned on Mykou that each employee is expendable. She found herself asking, “Is this the only option I have?”

Desiring an alternative lifestyle, Mykou began exploring online entrepreneurship. She read blogs and listened to podcasts. After months of understanding blogging and how to create websites, she attempted it for herself. Although Mykou’s first attempts were unsuccessful, with each failure she made meaningful connections and learned valuable lessons.

During this time, a deep appreciation for her Hmong identity awakened. Having been raised in predominantly white American neighborhoods and schools, Mykou’s Hmong ethnicity created internal conflict. While in North Carolina, her perspective began to change. Mykou and her husband spent a transformational year hosting lots of different people in their home for dinner and conversation. Her guests were diverse, well-traveled, and intellectual. It was a struggle for Mykou at first. “I was comfortable with making small talk,” she recalls, “but after that I didn’t know what to talk about. It was a little awkward.”

But after a while, Mykou became increasingly comfortable with her guests. She and her husband especially became well-versed in describing and discussing the Hmong culture and history to their guests. By and by, Mykou’s appreciation for her Hmong identity grew. One day, she was sharing nqaij qaib hau (boiled chicken) with her white American friends. She could sense that her friends had, “a little bit of jealousy. For they too, wished for a culture and history that was so rich like the Hmong.”

found very few resources. She went to sleep one night thinking that perhaps she wouldn’t get the chance to properly teach the Hmong language to her daughter. The next morning, she woke up and thought, “Wait a minute, I can still find a way to teach her Hmong. I can do it.”

At that time, her daughter’s favorite learning tool was animal flashcards with its matching English word on the reverse side.

So, she designed and printed her own animal flashcards with its matching Hmong word instead. Mykou posted a video of her daughter using the flashcards and suddenly people started sending Mykou money to buy her product. It was here that Hmong Baby was founded and managed by both Mykou and her husband. Once demand came pouring in, the couple researched heavily on creating quality and professional materials. Her product line has now branched into four additional sets of flashcards (food, numbers, objects, and phrases), two books, graphic tees, and other accessories.

Printing and publishing material for widespread distribution is a large task. The couple originally started with local printing shops but then switched to cheaper and higher quality alternatives through a vendor in China. Mykou advises to do extensive research when choosing materials and vendors. Also, to protect the business and its owners, it’s important to go through proper legal matters with the help of a lawyer.

Mykou and her family then moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where they started a multi-ethnic church. Additionally, Mykou started a photography business on the side. During this time, they had a one-year old daughter and Mykou was pregnant with their second child. After four years of building up the church, the couple decided to step down from their jobs to focus on their family.

The couple has a strong belief that life consists of seasons and as each season fades, reflection and goal-setting is important to evaluate their position in life. Mykou recalls the precious weekend getaway where they discussed what they loved about the past season and what they hoped for in the next. Mykou’s response was this, “I want to be fully alive. I want to live authentically. I want to be with family whenever I want, and travel wherever. I want to be financially free and not live in struggle anymore. I want to live out of a place of love instead of fear. I want to live for the people I love.”

From this beautiful conversation, the couple embarked on a journey to discover a lifestyle that offered great joy and meaning. They were criticized and called crazy to take such a risk, but they defined it as a leap of faith. “It was not a reckless decision,” she says. “It was very well-thought through and we had enough savings to take the time to explore. We found that in the past, when we took a risk, amazing things happened.”

A quick tour of Mykou’s blog will showcase a common theme of female empowerment. A customer explained why she had bought Mykou’s latest children’s book featuring a strong female lead: “I didn’t buy this book for my boys. I bought it for myself because we didn’t have these kinds of characters when I was growing up.” As another special nod to Hmong women, Mykou created an interview series titled, “Hmong Women History Makers” on her HmongBaby Youtube Channel. In this intimate series, Mykou interviews several successful Hmong women across different industries. It’s quite apparent that Mykou has worked hard to publicly acknowledge the limitless potential for girls and women.

Although Mykou makes it look easy, it’s a gradual process to construct the entrepreneur mindset. In a recent effort to enhance her mental strength, she begins every morning with important self-affirmations, “I am not what people say or think I am. I am beautiful and enough. I am not my worst mistake. I am who God says I am.”

Mykou’s charming personality shines through her work. Her publications are refreshing, thoughtful, and well-crafted. She has eloquently combined education and whimsy towards a grand mission. Aspects of Hmong and American culture teach that it’s acceptable for women to acquiesce, or give in, to others.

Mykou wants women to realize that there is power in creativity and it’s a choice to design a joyful, loving life. It is entirely possible to boldly and intentionally create a life well-lived.

It took four months to discover the idea that would change their lives. Mykou had desperately searched online for materials to teach her young daughter how to speak Hmong. She

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Intersecting Identities Written by Mai Pa Lee

Doua Kha grew up as the black sheep in her family. She is the fourth born out of seven and the last child born in Southeast Asia. She has always identified as being the “rebellious” one and remembers multiple times when she upset her parents because of her nonconforming manners as a Hmong woman. Other parts of Doua’s identity gives layers to the multitude of things she experiences on the daily. Her view of power and privilege is enhanced because of her queer, gender non-conforming, and survivor identities. Reflecting on her lived experiences, she is reminded of our history as Hmong people and yet she is struggling with her own histories regarding her intersecting social identities.

As a child, Doua often talked back to her parents, dated nonHmong and non-Asian partners, and challenged traditional gender roles. She recalls the words her parents used to say to her, “hais lus mos mos,” or speak softly, as was expected of her because she is a Hmong woman. She has felt the need for resistance in this aspect, mostly to survive and love all of the identities she holds.

She wanted to live as Doua, the person who is a Hmong woman and also queer.

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Doua describes herself as an androgynous woman, she goes by she/her or they/them pronouns and identifies as queer. She likes using the term queer to describe her identity because of its fluidity. Another word she uses is pansexual, which she describes as attraction to someone regardless of their gender. As a gender non-conforming person, she has noticed the overwhelmingly lack of education within the Hmong community surrounding this topic.

Reflecting on her intersecting identities, Doua tells me she feels like a minority within a minority. She states, “In the Hmong community, queer folks are often excluded. In research, in the queer discourse, they exclude us, too.” She doesn’t feel like she can fit nicely anywhere.

In the Hmong community, Doua sees queer-phobia playing out in many parts of the culture. The roles are split specifically by gender, women are expected to do one thing and men to do another. She talks specifically about the patriarchal aspects of the culture, including only having men at the table. “What if two women want to get married?” She asked. “Who is going to be

the person to pe? To phij cuam?” The Hmong community is still heavily patriarchal and she wants to challenge the way we think about some of our practices. We can keep our culture, our practices, but we have to change the gender roles that are assigned to certain things.

Surviving Doua tells me about the sexual abuse she faced as a child from a family member. She did not know what was happening but knew that she was uncomfortable. When her parents found out about this, they were furious, gearing most of their emotions towards her. She remembers questions like, “What were you wearing? What did you do?” Doua reflects back on this and holds resentment. As she processes this, she wonders why her perpetrator was held to little to no accountability.

It took a long time for Doua to heal, and she has done so on her own timing. In reflecting back on how it all happened, she wished her parents would have had a conversation with her about the sexual abuse. They knew what happened, they blamed her, and when it ended, they never talked about it again. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was reputation or embarrassment. Whatever the case, the silence won out.

Rape culture, especially in the Hmong Community is an infuriating subject to reflect on for Doua. Regarding her identities, she is angered that many Hmong people share their homophobia, queer-phobia so openly, but want to stay silent on topics like sexual abuse. She gives me a great reminder about the importance of justice for everyone, regardless of their social identities. It reminds me of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Coming Out Doua came out to her siblings in 2013, when she was 22 years old. They were all very supportive even though many of them did not understand the nuances and complexities of her lived experiences. A few years later in 2016, she came out to her parents and it did not go quite as well. Her parents were bewildered and angry. For the first time in a long time, Doua was hit by her dad. Physically she was okay, but what hurt her most, was the emotions that came with the impact on her skin. More than anything, it was an impact to her heart. She was kicked out of the house for about a week. Following this, she went through name-calling from her parents for a couple years which made her relationship with them deteriorate.

Doua did not want to give up one identity for another. She wanted to live as Doua, the person who is a Hmong woman and also queer. She read a lot of coming out stories where people could leave their family if they weren’t being accepted.

But since Hmong people come from a collectivist community, where family and community are more important than the self, simply leaving her family was not an option. The experience of Hmong LGBTQ youth is especially nuanced. In the article titled, “A Glimpse of Family Acceptance for Hmong Queer

Youth,” authors Ngo and Kwon state, “Identity negotiations are perhaps less about an outward journey of self-realization and more about an interpersonal journey where ‘going home’ is possible.” (p. 212). Doua’s parents thought of her queerness as confusion. She notes the difficulty in trying to describe her identity to them. In the Hmong language, words like queer or pansexual do not exist. She remembers describing it to her mom saying, “Kuv nyiam poj niam thiab txiv neej thiab cov nyob hauv nruab nrab,” which translates to I like women and men and the people in between.

Although Doua’s relationship with her parents is slightly better now, it is still very complicated. Because she is currently in a relationship with a Hmong, cisgender, and heterosexual man, her parents view her sexual orientation as being “cured”. Doua says to me, “I am still queer.” It certainly has not been easy, but regardless of what others say, she and her partner have an understanding of this.

Education Doua is pursuing a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. She was drawn to education as a profession after an early traumatic experience in ESL class. She remembers instances where her teacher would limit her. Tell her she was not capable of reading a higher level book. Not only was this prevalent in her school-life, this happened within her family as well. She received multiple messages from her family about getting married early in life and to start having kids. Frustrated with these messages that oftentimes came from women, Doua used this to fuel her focus on schoolwork. She went to college on a full-ride scholarship, received her bachelor’s degree, and is the first in her family to pursue a graduate degree. At the end of this year, Doua will complete her first year of graduate school. Curriculum and instruction is important to Doua because of the lack of diversity within a lot of curriculum that are being taught. So much of what teachers are teaching are non-inclusive and focus on “dead white men”. In this conversation, she wants to have more robust curriculum to include women, people of color, and queer folks.

Next year, Doua will be writing her thesis and her topic will focus specifically on queer Asian American students in high school. She felt queer and Asian American stories were being left out in so many places, she wanted to have it centered somewhere. Not as much research exists for queer people of color and women. In Doua’s graduate program research, she found a couple of articles that focus on queer Hmong folks, both of which exclusively focused on gay Hmong men. The quest to pursue her degree in something that represents parts of her experiences has been lonesome.

To our Hmong sisters worldwide, Doua shares her story to show the diversity amongst us. We may all share the commonality of being Hmong women but our realities reflect all walks of life.

We must look inward to our own identities and reflect on our power, our prejudices and create a way to bring inclusion, love, and support to us all.

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S TORY T E L L E R

Entrepreneurship for Hmong Women: Combining Business Expertise and Mental Grit Written by K.M. Lee

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lways the young professional and independent thinker, Crystal Lee has challenged social norms from an early age. “In middle school, I wondered why Hmong men would immediately shake my brothers’ hands,” she recalls, “but hesitated when I reached my hand out, too.” Crystal’s genuine curiosity for shaking up traditional beliefs has continuously defined her business and personal outlooks.

Crystal is the charismatic founder and CEO of Aurora Sky Property Investments LLC, and she has recently journeyed into life coaching. Born and raised in Sacramento, California, she is the eldest of five siblings. Like most Hmong women, she was expected to cook, clean, babysit, get straight A’s, and maintain a certain physical appearance. The family placed pressure on Crystal to take care of everyone else, so it forced her to become a great problem solver.

Crystal has a no-nonsense, straightforward personality as shown in a Facebook post titled “Draw a Line In the Sand”. She wrote: “Some people are not worth your time and effort, even as a client or customer. Rejecting them is often necessary.” Her assertiveness and ability to strip away the unnecessary has been sharpened through hundreds of business negotiations and sales transactions.

Her parents belong to the refugee generation fortunate enough to attend and graduate high school in the United States. Her father was accepted to University of California, Berkeley, but transferred to Sacramento State to be closer to home. Her mother wished for college, too, but became pregnant and wasn’t able to attend. Despite their different academic backgrounds, both mom and dad began their own businesses, a mortgage lending firm and a brokerage firm. They managed two very successful firms, with a combined five offices and 150 agents under their employment. Remarkably, Crystal’s mother was nominated to attend a banquet in Washington for women owners thriving in small businesses.

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Starting from childhood, Crystal was highly involved in her parents’ businesses as an unofficial administrative assistant. It wasn’t long before she had the opportunity to test out her own business skills. In eighth grade, she was president of a Hmong club and they were brainstorming ideas for their next annual event and fundraiser. B-boying, or break dancing, was the hottest trend and Crystal knew she could capitalize on it, so she proposed the idea of a b-boy competition. “To attract b-boy crews, we set a $500 prize for first place. We advertised on MySpace but a lot of the publicity was through word of mouth,” she recalls. “It was a sold-out event, even attracting adults. And we charged entrance fees to fundraise for the club. To look professional, I remember wearing my little blazer that night.”

Sure enough, in a Facebook album titled “Life’s Lessons!” is a picture of Crystal in her silky cream blazer, throwing up the peace-sign with the 1st place winners, which included the Lor Brothers from the world-famous Kinjaz dance crew.

Young Crystal used her skills to combine rewards, fundraising, marketing, and business attire into this one event. It was her first taste of running her own business.

Crystal was fortunate that her parents not only introduced her to the business world but were also thoughtfully invested in her success. Her parents made specific decisions to involve their children in personal development opportunities such as bringing them along to business and life coaching seminars. One such seminar was hosted by Tony Robbins, who is known for his giant personality and ability to motivate millions of people.

At this seminar, one activity included a fire walk. The fire walk exercise demonstrates mind over matter; the ability of a powerful mind to overcome seemingly impossible results. A hot batch of coals was laid in front of Crystal’s naked feet and, of course, she was scared. But she gathered the courage and stepped out.

She could only handle a few steps and had to jump off. Immediately she heard encouraging cheers to get back on. Within the cheering crowd, she heard the voices of her own parents, who were waiting at the end of the fire walk on the finisher’s side.

She decided to get back on and this time she completed it.

The professionalism and mental strength Crystal developed at an early age is remarkable, thanks to her parents. But as such, it also meant that Crystal made decisions differently than her peers. The biggest example has always been Crystal’s views on formal education. Crystal never found much interest in school.

She knew she could be successful, but she didn’t believe that formal education was necessary to reach her goals. Senior year of high school, Crystal could not focus on studying and had no interest in attending college. In a heart-throbbing conversation, she remembers sitting her parents down to inform them that she wasn’t going to graduate high school. Worse than yelling or screaming, her parents remained silent. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, her father spoke without looking her in the eyes, “Every day, I took you to school. I believed in you.”

Crystal was crushed. She felt like a failure. But the most difficult part was that she couldn’t articulate to her parents what she wanted from life, a life that didn’t include formal education.

To honor her parents, Crystal did finish high school and went on to graduate college with a business management degree.

However, she finished with minimum passing requirements and doesn’t believe that her degree adds much value to her career. A truth began to settle within her: she didn’t need to follow anyone’s prescribed route to success. Crystal could not be satisfied living under other people’s standards, so she discovered happiness living in tune to her own beliefs. “Stand and live in your truth,” she advises. “When you know what you want in your life you need to go for it. When you stop living for other people you become free of the chains they lock you in.”

tremely hard, build a strong mindset because self-doubt never really goes away. During a home renovation project, Crystal took her contractor, an older, white, male to a supply store. The store employee immediately ignored Crystal and went straight to her contractor to ask if he needed help. Her contractor pointed to Crystal and said, “Ask her! She is the boss!” Crystal asked herself, “Do I not look like a boss? What is a boss supposed to look like?” It took a moment for her to regain composure, but she remembered her worth, her abilities, and her truths. She quickly recovered and delegated orders to complete the supply trip.

As Crystal discovered, the life of an entrepreneur is difficult and not always accepted by others. Often, it’s a choice between sacrificing work versus everything else. Crystal doesn’t believe in work-life balance. “When you divide your time and energy 50/50, you can never give your all. Some say it’s selfish, but I’d say it’s self-love. It depends on your perception.”

That’s why it is important to choose work that is driven by passion because it will keep motivation high during tough times.

“When you know what’s best for you,” Crystal says, “trust your gut and go for it. Otherwise you live in a cycle of not growing.

If I had known that I’d be fine, I’d say who cares. Just continue what you’re working on.”

Crystal provides a beautiful sentiment about discovering truths.

She says, “When you know something, you’ll feel an intense fire in your chest. When I talk about real estate, I stand straighter, my voice changes, and I get excited.”

If it’s difficult to find a personal truth, Crystal recommends journaling exercises to search for important answers.

Another truth she discovered is that no one succeeds alone.

After college, she knew that her real estate knowledge far exceeded that of her colleagues, so she stopped asking for help.

And yet, her business wasn’t succeeding, and her bank account was drained. She realized that something had to change. Crystal found a new mentor who pinpointed her problem. “Lower your ego,” he said. “Your ego is not your amigo.”

Mentors serve a vital purpose for Crystal. “I will always search for a different mentor for every different chapter in my life,” she states. Seek out the people who have already mastered their skills. Keep in mind that these people are often busy, and it is time-consuming to provide mentorship. Crystal encourages offering a trade-off, which doesn’t necessarily mean paying a fee for advice. For example, in return for better sales techniques from an amazing salesperson, offer to help with their social media platforms.

It still requires a lot of work to be knowledgeable and competent in business. Study, learn, and apply. And after working ex-

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DIAMOND | SPONSOR

Building Hope Through Surrogacy Written by Pa N. Vue

In the heart of Central California, Chelsee Heu is making dreams come true. Her agency, Kindred Surrogacy, matches potential parents with potential surrogates so they can start building their families. Surrogacy in its most traditional form dates back to the Bible in the story of Sarah and Abraham. Unable to bear children, Sarah “gave” her servant Hagar to Abraham, and from that union came Ishmael. In the Hmong community, husbands have traditionally been encouraged to take another wife if his first wife is infertile. Today, in vitro fertilization (IVF) provides an option called “gestational surrogacy”, where the mother’s egg is fertilized with the father’s sperm outside of the body. The embryo is then placed in the uterus of a surrogate to carry to term. Chelsee recently experienced gestational surrogacy herself, providing a family who had little hope with a child, and she wants to bring this message of hope to the Hmong community.

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Born in Laos, Chelsee came to the U.S. when she was three years old and grew up in Fresno, where the Hmong population is currently estimated at 32,000-the second largest in the United States following Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. She grew up in a fairly progressive environment, with the men in her family modeling how they expected their children to go into the world. In the Hmong culture, men traditionally followed their clan, but Chelsee’s dad chose to follow her mother’s family to the refugee camps in Thailand and then to America. “He was courageous to leave his family behind so that his children could have a better life. He gave up a lot of himself to mus raws niam tais thiab yuam txiv.”

To go follow his in-laws. Chelsee credits this kind of trailblazing, forward-thinking mindset as part of what made her surrogacy journey possible.

When Chelsee saw an ad for potential surrogates on Facebook, she was living a fulfilling life with her three sons and her husband. She loved being a mom, was involved in her community, and enjoyed her job as a trainer at the 911 center. At the same time, she felt like something was missing in her life, and this ad left a lasting curiosity. Having always loved learning, Chelsee joined several Facebook surrogacy groups and spent time on Reddit, absorbing as much knowledge as she could about the possibility of being a surrogate.

“It involves a lot of responsibility,” she explained.

“It requires someone who is completely committed to the process.” As a surrogate, she would have to go through a psychological screening, a medical exam, tests and hormone injections. She would have to sign a legal contract to ensure that she understood her responsibilities as a surrogate. And, perhaps most challenging of all, she would have to be prepared to deal with the Hmong community’s response to her decision. Would this all be worth it?

“How would my mother-in-law feel?” Chelsee thought. “How would my relatives feel? What would they say about me? And, specifically, I wanted to protect my husband. I didn’t want to make a decision that would negatively impact him. Tsam ib pliag nws cov kwv tij hais tias ua li cas nws cia kuv ua li ntawd.” What if his relatives ask him why he allowed me to do that? Although this initial concern for her husband made her pause, in the end, Chelsee listened to her instinct and her heart. “I was really touched by this whole idea of surrogacy,” she said. “I never realized there was a way for me to help a family who couldn’t have children.”

When she first shared the decision to be a surrogate with her husband, he didn’t take her seriously, but once he was sure that it was what she really wanted to do, he was on board. Chelsee submitted her application to be a surrogate, was matched with a potential parent in China, and they began the process of preparing for IVF. A year later, she was ready for an embryo transfer.

Most of Chelsee’s immediate family was supportive of her decision, with the exception of her mom. “I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my mom,” Chelsea explained.

Before she flew out to Portland, Oregon for the embryo transfer, her mom called. “She was really upset and started to say really hurtful things. Nws hais rau kuv hais tias ua cas kuv yuav ua li no. Cas kuv tsis paub xav li. Yog kuv ua li no ces kuv yuav rhuav kuv niam thiab kuv txiv lub npe. ‘Koj xav txog koj txiv thiab. Yog tias koj hlub koj txiv ces koj txhob ua li nov rau qhov tias lawv yuav hais koj txiv.’” She asked why I’m doing this. Why am I so thoughtless? I’m going to ruin my parents’ name. “Think about your dad. If you love your dad, don’t do this to him because people will talk about him.”

Chelsee remembered hanging up the phone because she was so hurt by what her mom said.

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The embryo transfer was successful, and she became pregnant. At first, she and her husband planned to keep the knowledge of the surrogacy to just the immediate family. She was going to decline invitations to parties and just stay home until she gave birth. Then, three months from her due date, her uncle passed away. “There was no way we weren’t going to the funeral,” Chelsee said. “And I wanted to be there for my cousin.”

Attendance at Hmong funerals could reach the hundreds, so unsure of how the community would respond to her pregnancy, Chelsee dressed carefully.

“I purposely wore something that was ambiguous so that maybe I was fat or maybe I was pregnant,” she said with a laugh. When she showed up to the funeral, no one asked her because no one was certain whether she was pregnant. Someone did ask Chelsee’s sister, however, and her response?

“Yeah, she’s pregnant and it’s a surrogate baby.” And just like that the secret was out. “Just tell them,” her sister said. “There’s no need to hide it. You can’t hide it anymore.”

Chelsee’s mom came around, too. She asked to see the baby and said, “Qhov koj ua nov nws yog ib yam zoo. Kuv paub hais tias tus menyuam nws yauv foom koob hmoov rau koj.” What you’re doing is a good thing. I know that this baby is going to bless you. In fact, Chelsee’s overall relationship with her mom has improved. “We’ve both come a long way. I feel more forgiving and try to understand where she’s coming from because she tried to understand me.”

Not long after Chelsee’s surrogacy journey came to an end, another journey began. She continued to have contact with the family of her surrogate baby, and they often discussed their enjoyment and fulfillment in the surrogacy process. They began to talk about starting an agency in order to give other families hope. Soon enough an investor came on board. With funding and a partner in the baby’s mother, Chelsee began to take small business classes and acquire mentors to help her lay the foundations.

“I’ve seen it first hand,” she said about surrogacy. “I know the impact it has on a family. It’s so humbling to see lawv txoj kev zoo siab.” Their happiness.

“What you’re doing is a good thing. I know that this baby is going to bless you.”

“We could have just not showed up to his funeral,” Chelsee said, “but I really feel like that was a gift that my uncle gave me--the ability to be authentic and to not hide myself. Because of his death I had no choice but to tell people, and I was really surprised at the response.” Whether it was understanding of what surrogacy was or empathy for the potential parents’ struggle with infertility, the general response was positive. “I think I underestimated people’s ability to feel compassion,” Chelsee said thoughtfully.

After the baby was born, Chelsee remembers being in the car on Highway 99 with her husband and asking him whether he had any regrets about her decision to be a surrogate. He didn’t hesitate. He had no regrets.

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“You’re a dream giver,” he said, echoing the words of the baby’s biological grandfather. Most surrogates receive compensation for carrying the baby to term, and through this compensation Chelsee was able to give her husband an opportunity to go back to school to achieve his dreams.

Hmong Women Take On The World

Surrogates who are matched through Kindred Surrogacy have access to the agency throughout the whole process. Support groups, dinners and potlucks allow the staff to socialize and connect with the surrogates. The agency also provides access to mental health professionals as needed. On the legal side, the agency refers the surrogate and intended parents to legal professionals to draft a gestational surrogacy agreement (GSA) which will outline the

roles and responsibilities of both parties during the process. This includes responsibility for the child and bills as well as other expenses.

Surrogacy can cost upwards of $100,000 depending on individual agreements, but it isn’t just for the Kim Kardashians of the world. Although it might be out of reach for some families, Chelsee recommends that anyone who is interested in becoming parents through surrogacy talk to her. She’s happy to offer a consultation with research-backed information, whether you choose to use an agency or not. “Kuv yeej txaus siab pab peb cov Hmoob,” she said. I’m happy to help our Hmong people.

Chelsee believes in the power of connecting to others through storytelling, and that was why she chose to support HWTOTW. She also loves her identity as a Hmong woman, but hadn’t quite found the right group to get involved with, and with Elizabeth (Yang), “Nws tsis yog lam hais xwb.” She’s not just talking the talk. “One thing that sets her apart is her ability to execute and get things done. She showed up and started energizing our community and has done a great deal in a short amount of time.” She’s ready to be brave, she said, and Elizabeth has built HWTOTW as a consistent, authentic brand and a platform where Chelsee can share her message of hope through surrogacy.

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Six Misconceptions of Surrogacy Written by Chelsee Heu and Pa Vue Parenthood. It’s a stage of life that many work towards. Some have tight plans on when, where, and how they will arrive at parenthood. Some arrive upon it by chance. Having a child and starting one’s family is an incomparable experience, but for some, it can be elusive. About 15% of couples who try to conceive experience infertility--the inability to have children. As the months pass, and there is no pregnancy, the dream of starting a family gets further and further away, and hope dwindles.

Chelsee Heu’s agency, Kindred Surrogacy, offers a beautiful option for individuals who want to start their families but can’t due to age, biology, health or many other reasons. A surrogate is a woman who carries a couple’s fertilized egg--implanted through in vitro fertilization (IVF)--to term for them. Before you or anyone you know rule out surrogacy, check out these 6 misconceptions based on Chelsee’s own experience as a surrogate.

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Myth: Intended parents just don’t want to be pregnant.

Fact: The intended parents that we work with have struggled for many years battling infertility or cannot physically be pregnant.

They want nothing more than to carry their own child but cannot.

Myth: Only the wealthy can afford surrogacy.

Fact: Surrogacy and IVF is expensive but we work with families who come from many backgrounds.

Myth: Intended parents see surrogates as a “hired uterus.”

Fact: We carefully screen our intended parents and do not work with those who share this worldview. Our intended parents are grateful for their surrogates. They value the sacrifice and commitment required by a surrogate.

Myth: The surrogate is the biological mother of the child she is carrying.

Fact: With gestational surrogacy, the surrogate is only the carrier and shares no genetic material with the child she is pregnant with.

IVF allows a woman to become pregnant with an embryo not genetically related to her.

Myth: Surrogates have a hard time giving up the baby.

Fact: Women who agree to become a surrogate understand that the baby does not belong to them. The surrogate is, in essence, just the babysitter during the pregnancy.

Myth: Women become surrogates for the money.

Fact: Surrogates are required to be financially stable and should not use their compensation from surrogacy as income replacement. Surrogates are generously compensated for their time and commitment to the process but when you break down their compensation on an hourly basis, they are compensated less than minimum wage.

There is hope. Parenthood is possible. Surrogacy isn’t just for the privileged, it’s for anyone who has desired to hold their own child in their arms. It’s for anyone who has been ready to start a family but haven’t been able to.

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DIAMOND | SPONSOR

The Journey to Winning in Life Written by Pa N. Vue

China Chang holds many titles--coach, real estate broker, investor, leader, uplifter, strategist, church leader, wife, mom and many more. Within moments of meeting China, you feel the energy has shifted in your life, and that’s because China is all about creating and intentionally dispersing energy. She’s been doing that her whole life. “I always knew ever since I was little that I was meant for a great purpose, greater beyond myself,” she said, but before she found this purpose, God had a journey for her.

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At the age of seventeen, China got married and decided to leave Michigan and her family and move to Minnesota with her husband. She found herself living in a house with fourteen other people in a very negative atmosphere. “Someone said to me that because I had chosen to get married, I was going to be nothing. I was going to do nothing with myself. I was going to get pregnant. I wasn’t going to get help with college. I wasn’t going to get help with getting a car. I was on my own.” Those words really hurt China, but instead of being angry at them, she felt their pain. This empathic trait would frame China’s journey for the next twenty years.

Because they had nothing, China and her husband decided to put off having children right away.

Instead, they focused on school and building the foundation of their life together. “We went to work,” China remembered. “The two of us shared one car.

We both had two to three jobs, and together we saved up $10,000 to purchase our first home a few months after we got married.” China was eighteen years old, and the ability to own her own home, to move away from the negative environment she found herself in, gave her the energy and power to skyrocket herself to business school and real estate investment. By the time she was twenty years old, she was coaching people based on her own experience.

In 2002, on the way to meet her parents for a funeral, China’s car was hit by another driver, causing it to flip four times. She remembers seeing only the sky and the ground over and over again, and then hearing God’s voice ask her whether or not she wanted to live. Her life flashed before her eyes, and she knew that she couldn’t die yet because she still had so much to do. “I remember my car stopping,” she said, “and I opened my eyes and saw blood covering my whole windshield, and my instant thought was, ‘Okay, I’m alive, but my face is probably all messed up.’ So I lifted myself up to look in the rearview mirror and that’s when I collapsed.”

what to charge for personal coaching yet, and in 30 minutes of her sharing what she was going through, I was able to break it down and give her a game plan right then and there. It was all very magical to me.”

Afterwards, the chiropractor wrote China a $150 check. “It blew my mind,” China said and credits this as the moment she really understood the value and power of coaching.

When you think of life coaching, you might envision Tony Robbins on stage, speaking words that are as powerful as the man looks. Life coaching isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, some may argue that a form of life coaching has been around as long as humans have been around. They would argue that there’s been coaching since there was someone to coach.

We could also argue, however, that life coaching is a fairly new experience for the Hmong community.

When asked why people should invest in a life coach and, most importantly, why they should invest in her, China’s response was straightforward. She explains that getting a life coach is exactly like getting a personal trainer.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” she explained, referencing the popular quote attributed to Albert Einstein. “You gotta want it. In order to change the game, you gotta change the rules.

If you’re not winning, you gotta seek help, and I’m hoping that by sharing my story of success, people can see that there’s help out there.”

The accident caused China to lose control of the whole right side of her body. She also shattered the bones on her right wrist, which needed extensive surgery. After one year of therapy, in which she relearned how to use the right side of her body, and a lot prayer, China began doing research on coaching.

And God sent her her first client--a chiropractor.

“At that time,” China explained, “I didn’t even know Hmong Women Take On The World

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In her time coaching, China has seen many success stories, but she’s most proud of those moments when her clients really want to change for the better and she gets to pour every skill set she has into them. No matter how angry, sad or mad her they get with her, as long as they apply her strategies, they will have a breakthrough. “That’s what gets me fired up,” China said.

Although China enjoys coaching people from all walks of life, including business owners and individuals who want to find an ideal partner, she really loves working with families. “This is what The Lord has put into my heart,” she said. Whether she is working with power couples, parents, men who are talking to women in Laos, or divorced women who are ready to start dating again, China wants to strengthen the family core.

In the end, for China, “It’s never about the job. It’s about giving back, whether it’s money, my time or mentoring. It’s about teaching and equipping other people to win.” Investing in the Hmong Women Take on the World summit is just one way China is helping people win. The summit--in fact, the whole movement--has not only given her a chance to give back, but it has also given her a chance to look back.

HWTOTW brought her to the core of who she is: a Hmong girl.

“I’ve been judged highly,” she remembered. “As a Hmong woman, you’ll experience people who don’t understand what you’re doing, and that makes you different from them. Difference makes them feel uncomfortable.” According to China, this discomfort often leads to misunderstanding and lost opportunities to connect. But that empathic trait which she built at a young age always frames her decisions in the end.

She is prepared to love on people, even through their misunderstanding. “I’m so happy to give back, and no matter how people judge me, through my actions I can continue to lead. And if I could find someone like myself to be a role model for my daughter, I would do it, hands down.”

Seeing the value of sharing her story, China plans to run for the Mrs. Minnesota America pageant in 2018.

“Being in this beauty pageant wasn’t even on my bucket list,” she laughed. But then in August 2017, when she was succeeding in all her other ventures, she found herself in deep depression. After having 34

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After having a

dream that she was standing on a

beauty pageant stage, she prayed and

confirmed with God that is was the right path.

a dream that she was standing on a beauty pageant stage, she prayed and confirmed with God that it was the right path.

By participating in the Mrs. Minnesota America pageant, China is breaking barriers. Married Hmong women often find themselves navigating the perilous waters of a traditional Hmong community, where they are expected to behave in a docile manner and not do anything to bring shame to their husband or their clan.

“This is definitely nerve-wracking because I have to rock a swimsuit,” she said half-jokingly. But it is without a doubt that winning the pageant will give China a platform where she can address women empowerment. She wants to tell women, “You’re not alone and no one has the right to judge you.” And she hopes to launch the Mrs. Hmong pageant afterward to give Hmong women the opportunity to share their beauty, both inside and out.

China is hungry to love on people. God helped her win in her own life, and now she wants to pour her energy into helping other people win. She believes that everyone can have the life they want. You just have to be brave enough to step towards it.

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Creating Space for the Forgotten Written by Pa N. Vue

Tia Yang knows poverty and isolation. Born in Laos, she came to the U.S. with her mother and four siblings in 1980 and grew up in Saginaw, a small town in Michigan. Unlike Minnesota, where Tia eventually moved to after marrying her husband, there was only a tiny Hmong community in Michigan and little assistance with the adjustment process. When their mother went to night school, Tia and her sisters stayed home by themselves and would jump at every little sound until she came back. At school, there were no other Hmong kids, so they struggled with understanding their American peers and the teachers.

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“Peb txom txom nyem heev,” Tia said, her voice breaking. We were very poor. “Peb kuj tsis muaj tsheb. Mus yuav no yuav haus ces peb tos lwm tus xwb. Peb kuj tau kev pab los ntawd welfare me ntsis, tabsis peb kuj tsis paub mus thov nyiaj los them nqe vaj nqe tsev.” We didn’t have a car, so whenever we needed to go buy food, we relied on others. We had help from welfare, but we didn’t know how to apply for other assistance to pay for rent. After bills, there was only a little money left for food. Sometimes, their paycheck would run out before the month would be over, so when out of school Tia and her siblings worked in the fields for extra cash, and they did their best to help one another. This experience was part of what motivated Tia to create a space for those in the Hmong community who have been forgotten: elders.

There are 47.8 million people age 65 or older in the United States, and about 12 million live alone according to the Pew Research Center. Studies show that social isolation, along with language barriers, lack of financial resources and education, and little to no access to transportation have made it difficult for Hmong elders to adjust to American life. Hmong elders also suffer from depression and chronic illness.

Aware of these challenges and the threat of suicide (according to a recent article in the Star Tribune, the suicide rate in Minnesota has been growing steadily

in the last 20 years), Tia and her husband Paochoua started Pebmoob Senior Center in 2006.

“Ua ntej thaum peb tsis tau muaj cov daycare no ces peb cov laus lawv muaj muaj kev nyuaj siab,” Tia explained. “Lawv kuj xav tua lawv tus kheej.

Lawv kuj no tshuaj lo haus tshuaj lo ua tej yam es tis zoo rau lawv.” Before we started this “daycare” our elderly had a lot of worries. They wanted to kill themselves. They would take medication that was not good for them.

According to Tia, some elderly Hmong have children who take care of them, but some have no children or don’t live with them. In addition, some children know how to love their elderly parents, but others don’t, which causes their parents to “txom txom nyem siab ntsws”. To be poor of heart and soul. After some discussion, Tia and Paochoua decided to open a senior center that would provide social support and other much needed services to help seniors with their everyday life needs. In fact, Tia’s own mother was one of her first clients. Before Pebmoob opened, her mother’s case worker encouraged visitation to other senior centers, but her mother had no interest in going. Tia chuckled as she recalled that when Pebmoob opened, her mother had some hesitation, but upon visiting she realized that the center gave her peace of mind and happiness. Since then she hasn’t stopped visiting.

Pebmoob Senior Center has many unique qualities.

It’s owned and run by Hmong people, so special attention is paid to the cultural programming. It serves other Southeast Asian groups, including Vietnamese, Khmu, and Laotian elders, and it specializes in Asian food so that elders can eat the food they’re used to eating. Tia and Paochoua also pay special attention to making the center more than just a “babysitting” service. In their preparation to open Pebmoob, Tia and Paochoua visited other centers and found that the elderly were often static, sitting in one spot, waiting for the day to be over. They decided then to add cultural celebrations to Pebmoob’s agenda, including the Water Festival, which is celebrated in multiple Eastern and Southeast Asian cultures, including Laotian culture.

“Lawv nyob tom vaj tom tsev ces lawv hais tias ‘laus laus lawm, muaj muaj mob li, tsis xav ua zam, tsis xav noj mov,” Tia explained. When they are are home they say, “We’re old and have a lot of illness, we don’t want to dress up, we don’t want to eat.”

“We try to do different things to make the day fun,” Tia said. “Peb ua peb caug Hmoob, peb caug Nplog, thiab peb caug Nyab Laj.” We celebrate Hmong New Year, Laotian New Year and Vietnamese New year.

And according to Tia, it’s more than just dressing up, eating and then going home. The center tries to get to the heart of each culture’s unique practices and to incorporate them into the celebration. They play music and even encourage participants to dress up for a fashion show so that “law txawj hlub lawv tus kheej thiab lawv muaj kev zoo siab”. They know how to love themselves and are happy.

Tia manages Pebmoob and is at the center everyday running operations. Since starting to serve the elderly, she has learned a lot, including patience and how to have fun. She’s most proud of being able to create a space for elders, but she wishes she could do more.

“My mom can be kind of modest,” Tia’s daughter Julie says, “but one thing that is spectacular about her as a leader is that she can jump in to cover any of the positions at the center if she’s ever needed.”

When Pebmoob Senior Center had first opened, it was a small rented room, about 2,000 square feet. Much of the funding came from Tia and Paochoua’s own pockets. In 2013, they moved to a bigger building that they eventually bought. The center now serves up to 100 participants per day. Some families bring their parents to the center every day. For those who don’t have anyone to drop them off at the center (which is about 80-90% of them), Tia’s staff picks them up.

At the center, the elderly can participate in crafts, gardening, field trips, and other activities. They get warm food from the kitchen. They also have access to assistance for paperwork, but most of all, the seniors come for the kindness and the socialization.

They appreciate the love they receive from Tia and Paochoua. “Lawv yog leej niam leej txiv tabsis mas they consider us like ib leej niam leej txiv rau lawv,” Tia explained with laughter. “ They are parents, but they consider us like a mother and father to them.

At the heart of Pebmoob Senior Center is Tia and Paochoua’s compassion for the Hmong community.

Having seen and experienced poverty and isolation herself, whenever Tia sees people in the same circumstances, she can’t help but feel love for them.

Compassion has fueled her and her husband’s desire to help those who have been forgotten by society, and it’s this same compassion that led Tia to support the Hmong Women Take on the World movement.

“As a Hmong woman, I am so happy and proud that our sisters and daughters have big hearts, and are using their skills and talents to help other Hmong women succeed.”

Married at a young age, Tia didn’t have the chance to pursue higher education, so she is happy to support any woman with a good idea who wants to help improve the Hmong community and the lives of Hmong women. She only wishes she could do more.

The elderly population in the U.S. is predicted to reach 98.2 million by 2060. Pebmoob is one of nearly 26,000 business establishments currently providing non-residential services to the elderly, but it’s different from all of them. It’s Hmong-owned, it incorporates cultural activities, and it’s built with love.

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PLATINUM | SPONSOR

Art with Exceptional Fusion Taste Written by Pa N. Vue Hue Vang is a palate artist. His creations mix layers, textures, vibrant colors and, most importantly, tastes inspired by his mom’s cooking and his travels to Thailand and Japan. As owner and head chef of Bagu Sushi and Thai Restaurant, City Page’s winner of best sushi in Minneapolis in 2014, Hue enjoys the challenge of visualizing a dish, bringing it to life, displaying it on a plate, and seeing his customers’ appreciation when they experience his effort through the dish. The restaurant is not only a fusion of Hmong, Thai and Japanese cuisine, it’s also a fusion of Hmong and American hospitality.

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Esquire magazine calls Minneapolis “the food world’s best kept secret,” and Hue’s passion for creating fresh, multi-layered fusion dishes helps explain why. The food scene in Minneapolis was originally shaped by the people who first lived there: Native Americans and Europeans, subsequently. However, it changed quite a bit in the last few decades due to recent immigrants to the city, including Somali, Tibetan, Filipino, East Indian and Hmong immigrants. Hue’s family came in 1980, one of the first waves of Hmong refugees. He began building his culinary interest at the age of fifteen when he worked at Cinnabons.

He didn’t think too much of it at that time, but the skills he learned at Cinnabons came in handy when his cousin opened a sushi restaurant, and Hue started as a busboy, eventually making his way to chef.

“You have to learn every day,” he said, explaining his craft.

“If you feel like you’ve perfected something, then you’re going to stop learning.”

he wasn’t always the owner. Before becoming owner, he was head chef, and in this position, his creativity was limited. He had to ask permission to try new ingredients and to add new dishes to the menu. As the owner, he now has more creative freedom. “There’s no limit, no boundaries to where you can go,” he explained. “When you think about it, that’s what life should be.”

Looking to take his craft to the next level, Hue often finds inspiration in fresh and unique ingredients, whether he’s getting them from his vendors in the U.S. or straight from Japan. “I want to give my customers a chance to try different things,” he said. “Even if I don’t gain any profit at all.” For example, he started using Japanese fresh wasabi, which is actually a root, and has a more subtle taste than the wasabi commonly served at restaurants. Although grown in multiple countries now, fresh wasabi originated in Japan, and this is where Hue gets his supply from. Because the mountainous region where it is grown has a specific type of temperature and geographic characteristic, fresh wasabi adds a unique taste to dishes.

“There’s no limit, no boundaries to where you can go.”

Like Picasso or Monet, when in the middle of creating a dish, Hue can’t quite come up with the words to describe how he’s feeling--only that it’s almost like he’s “in the zone”. Many artists, athletes and entrepreneurs talk about “the zone” like it’s a magical place where time stops and the world disappears. Some people call it “flow”, most people can’t explain it, but everyone wants to get there because “the zone” is where achievers find clarity and productivity.

“I don’t think too much of it,” Hue said when asked to clarify being “in the zone”. “It’s just what I feel. I guess I’m just very focused. I just black out everything else.”

Hue has been working at Bagu for 11 years, but

Although Hue uses many delectable and luxurious ingredients, much of his cooking stems from his home life and more common ingredients. “A lot of it is what I love eating,” he said, referring to Bagu Sushi and Thai’s menu. “If you see something on the menu, it’s because it’s something I’m eating at home.” In fact, he often uses the same ingredients his mom uses and credits her and his dad for giving him much of his culinary knowledge. Hue learned how to cook squirrel from his dad, and to this day, he still loves the simple foods waiting for him on the stove top when he gets home from

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work. His favorite is chicken with lemongrass, lime leaves and garlic.

Hue also credits his parents for helping him transition from head chef to owner of Bagu. Originally, his parents wanted him to go back to school, but after he brought them into the restaurant once and served them the dishes he had created, they realized that this wasn’t just any job. It was something he was passionate about, and they became his most ardent cheerleaders and support team. “Words can’t express my gratitude toward them,” he added.

“Satisfying” and “divine” are just some of the words customers have used to describe the food at Bagu.

The atmosphere is friendly and “chill” with a dining room and a back patio. “I really want to make this a place where you can come, relax and unwind,” Hue

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said. In fact, if you really want to get the most out of your experience, it seems many agree that you need to sit at the bar and have a chat with Hue himself.

And if you become one of his regulars, he might even share some of his new creations with you, including squirrel.

Hue is a humble, curious artist who pushes himself everyday to take his culinary skills to the next level.

He’s also a down-to-earth family guy who’s highly involved in his community. When asked why he decided to invest in Hmong Women Take on the World, he said, “I grew up with no sisters. Throughout my life, the women figures--my mom, my aunties-they were so strong and independent. They were really the backbone of the family. Without them, I don’t know how we could’ve made it. If I’m able to give back, I’m always down for it.”

PLATINUM | SPONSOR

Setting Financial Goals: Transforming Excuses into Reasons Written by K.M. Lee “The minute a Hmong woman is born in Laos,” Dr. Mai Lee’s grandma said, “she is handed dab hlau thiab lub kawm (a gardening hoe and a woven back-basket). In America, girls get tus xaum thiab daim ntawv (a pencil and paper).” Both analogies were shared with Dr. Mai at a very young age. They are a constant reminder about the privilege of living in a country where girls get to attend school and are free to pursue any career of their choosing.

Dr. Mai’s birth name is Maiv Hlau Yaj, a name that she carries within her heart since she is the only living descendant from her immediate family. Amidst fleeing war-torn Laos, her father was shot crossing the Mekong River. Then, her mother passed away shortly after giving birth to Dr. Mai’s little sister. Grandma tried her best to raise the two young girls, but she didn’t have enough money to buy milk. In face of starvation, grandma was forced to give Dr. Mai’s little sister to a pair of childless relatives. Shortly after the adoption, the six month old passed away due to illness.

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At three years old, Dr. Mai was accompanied with grandma and an uncle to make the long journey to the United States. Thanks to the assistance of an aunt, who was already living in the U.S., they emigrated safely in 1980. Although grandma was strict and traditional, she showed great compassion towards her orphaned granddaughter. As early as kindergarten, Dr. Mai’s grandma stressed the importance of excelling academically. It’s been five years since grandma passed and Dr. Mai distinctly remembers her intelligence, wisdom, and the deep bond they shared; a type of bond that can only develop through surviving tragedy together.

At the age of thirteen, Dr. Mai married a man who was ten years older than her. They had one daughter together. She was fortunate that her husband’s family encouraged and supported higher education. Her husband became the mentor she needed to navigate high school and college since he had experienced it himself. He was also the eldest child in his family, so he offered guidance in areas that were absent in Dr. Mai’s life.

At university, Dr. Mai was inspired to major in education, an interest that traced back to powerful influence from her fifth-grade teacher. In return for the valuable lessons she received from this teacher, Dr. Mai vowed to impart a similar influence on new generations. While in school, she tried her best to maintain a balanced work and family life. However, after completing the master’s program, she was suddenly facing divorce. Dr. Mai had transformed from a vulnerable young teen into an independent woman and it proved incompatible with her husband’s personality.

Being an orphan and now a divorcee, Dr. Mai realized she had to work ten times harder to prove that she could succeed. Relatives told Dr. Mai, “Yus lub neej puas tag (Your life is completely over),” but she didn’t take their opinions to heart. She knew it was going to be a hard fight, and more so, she had to do it alone.

“Yus muaj kev tu siab mentsis (It is a sad life at times), but it passes quickly,” Dr. Mai says, “I don’t have any resentment or bitterness. It was very empowering to be up against so many odds.

Life goes on.” Admirably, she used each challenge as leverage to propel her forward. When she faced 42

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tough moments, Dr. Mai remained forward-thinking and dedicated to her goals. Dr. Mai could have used her tragic life story as a crutch that held her back. But she asked herself, “Should I use this as an excuse or a reason to move forward and be stronger?”

Despite her divorce, Dr. Mai also completed her administrative credentials and then began her doctorate in multicultural organization and leadership.

During this time, Dr. Mai supported her little family by working full time as a bilingual resource specialist and then transitioned to teach kindergarten. After she received her Ed.D in 2011, she became worried about financial savings for her daughter. Previously, Dr. Mai left all financial decisions to her ex-husband.

She recalls a moment in her past marriage when she had signed up for an employer-sponsored retirement plan. She knew a retirement plan was a good way to build security for the future. When her ex-husband found out, he was infuriated. He claimed that he could get a fee-free retirement plan through his friend. He demanded that she cancel the employersponsored plan right away. Dr. Mai says, “I cancelled the plan. After the divorce, I found out that he had never even set anything up. Besides my pension plan as a teacher, I had $0.00 saved for retirement.”

With a desire to learn finance, Dr. Mai coincidentally met a friend (now her husband), who introduced her to a financial service company called World Financial Group. She was drawn to the company because they offered a financial education platform. After attending a few classes, she grew passionate about spreading what she’d learned. Currently, Dr. Mai works for World Financial Group as an independent financial professional in Sacramento. She is still very much an educator but has narrowed her scope to financial education. Dr. Mai promotes a three-tiered financial found: Protect yourself and your family, take care of debt, and invest.

Protect yourself. “Often, the purchased life insurance policies are barely enough to cover the Hmong funeral expenses, as well as resolving any other remaining debts,” Dr. Mai says. She advises the Hmong community to consider sufficient policies to cover the loss of someone’s entire income. Life insurance should also be viewed as a transfer of wealth to the remaining family members, as legacy to build upon.

Health insurance, short-term disability, and longterm care offer protection in the event of unexpected health issues. Insurance can help protect against greater losses during unfortunate situations. Dr. Mai particularly cautions families to consider long-term care as an increasingly common event across Hmong families. An unquestionable Hmong tradition is to personally tend to the elderly, but Dr. Mai knows that tradition must adapt quickly in modern communities, and Hmong families are at the forefront of change.

As large numbers of elderly reach incapacitation, it’s becoming unreasonable to convert large amounts of time, energy, and money to nurse them, when instead, there are professional services available for hire. She says, “I would not want to be a burden to my kids when I am unable to care for myself. I want to release them from the obligation of taking care of me when I can no longer carry out daily activities.”

And lastly, Dr. Mai advises further protection by “always remembering to pay yourself first. Money and time go hand in hand. It will be impossible to take care of all debt, so pay yourself too.” Automatically save a certain percentage of income or a small dollar amount per paycheck towards building an emergency fund.

Take care of debt. In America, it’s quite difficult to escape debt. Chipping away at this burden is extremely important because of accumulated fees, high compounding rates (which charges interest upon interest), and negative effects on credit scores. If debt isn’t properly managed, the amount owed will become much larger than the amount originally borrowed. As a result, a poor credit score will affect many major financial decisions in the future, including buying a car, taking out a mortgage, and borrowing student loans.

Invest. A more sophisticated aspect of personal finance is investing. Mutual index funds, buying shares of stock, annuities, and property investments can generate extra avenues of income and start to build wealth. Many of these investments don’t rely on employer-sponsorship so it can offer security despite a change of career or termination of employment. Dr. Mai adds that “it is important to diversify and put money into the tax-free withdrawal category, such as Roth IRA’s or 7702A plans.” If someone isn’t quite ready to invest, at least monitoring cash flow is a great step that anyone can take. And Dr. Mai strongly

recommends living within one’s financial means.

Dr. Mai believes that discussing finances is one of the largest taboos within the Hmong community. “Hmong people like to say they have just enough money, nothing more, nothing less,” she says. It’s difficult when she tries to financially plan with elders because they refuse to give specific dollar amounts. Dr. Mai wants to challenge Hmong families to be honest about their finances. “Cov laus (the elders), believe that putting $10,000 under the mattress is a good way to save,” Dr. Mai says, “but they don’t realize 10 years from now, due to inflation, that money won’t have the same value. The elders are really good savers, but they’re not knowledgeable enough to plan properly.”

Like the magic of investing and watching money grow, Dr. Mai understands that putting in work now will create large returns later. Her friends ask why she constantly works so hard. She responds by saying, “Think bigger. Compress time by working hard now, so that there is more for family to enjoy later.”

Hmong women should do research and be confident in their financial knowledge. She says, “Make good financial decisions that add value to the family. Even if the man disagrees, they will begin to follow once they see the benefits. If a woman makes decisions with half enthusiasm and knowledge, that’s when the man will begin to doubt.”

Finance can be intimidating and difficult to understand. Women are often great protectors of the family, but a well-protected family requires money at its core. Money buys food, clothes, and shelter. It’s hard to protect the kids without also remembering to protect the money. When one partner handles all finances, if there is a divorce, separation, or death, this could leave the other scrambling to financially recover. Don’t start from zero, start building today.

Dr. Mai redeems every struggle by transforming her excuses into reasons. She has the wisdom and experience to offer advice on many subjects, but she has chosen finance as her message. Despite any of life’s setbacks, it’s clear that she sees financial education as a path to liberation.

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Why Everyone Needs a Financial Checkup Written by Pa N. Vue

I

n the last few years, I’ve gone to several retirement parties. Although these events were celebratory--transitions from labor to relaxation--I couldn’t help but notice the exhaustion on the retirees’ faces. Like after giving half their life to work, they’re finally now taking time for themselves to do the things they want. I began to ask myself, “Is this what’s in store for me? Is this my future?

Do I have to wait until I’m exhausted to do what I love?” According to Dr. Mai Lee, a financial advisor at World Financial Group in Sacramento, California, the answer to those questions is no.

years spent in retirement. Someone retiring at age 65 could live to be 100--that’s 35 years in retirement.

According to a U.S. News & World Report article titled “How Living Longer Will Impact Your Retirement”, there’s an upside and a downside to having a long retirement. The upside is having more time to do the things you want and be with the people who matter to you. The downside, however, is cost. The author of this article makes it clear that we can’t rely on government programs like Medicaid and Social Security. We have to take our retirement into our own hands.

When Dr. Mai suggested I go in for a financial checkup, I have to admit my defenses went up. “Why?” I wanted to ask. “Why do you think I need a financial checkup? Can you see through my I-have-it-all-together facade?” Fifteen minutes in, what I thought was going to be an hour of her chastising my horrible financial decisions as a 30-something-year-old woman turned into a reminder that I don’t have to wait until I’m 65 to do the things I love. That if I just change my life a little right now, I can be financially independent soon, and I can prepare to retire the way I want to retire.

“We have to think like the rich,” Dr. Mai said. “You can’t wait until you finish paying your debt to start making your money work for you.”

When Dr. Mai was a teacher, she saw many of her colleagues continue to work long after their retirement dates because they didn’t have the financial strength to retire. “They were so resentful by that time,” she said with a laugh, “I felt bad for the kids.”

Having money is an important element of financial planning, but so is having time. If you start working full time at age 21, and you put a small amount of money from your paycheck into a retirement fund, that principle is going to grow immensely in 20 to 30 years. “...The more time investments have to grow, the less money an individual needs to put away in order to achieve the same returns as someone who gave their money less time to grow,” writes Laura Shin in a Forbes article titled, “10 Reasons Why Financial Plans Aren’t Just for the 1%”. On the other hand, if you wait until you’re 50 to plan for retirement, then you’ll have to put away more from your paycheck because you won’t be able to take advantage of time.

People in general are living longer because of technology, medication, long-term healthcare and many other reasons. As life expectancy increases so will

I’ve been avoiding a financial checkup because I was scared of being judged and I was scared of facing the truth. But there was another reason why a financial

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checkup just wasn’t the most important thing in my life: I was young and I was healthy. Retirement was way off my radar. At least until the last few years.

“When do you want to retire?” Dr. Mai asked me.

“Um...I don’t know,” I answered, squirming in my seat. “Sixty-five?”

It sounded like a good number. That’s when everyone else who worked in my organization seemed to be retiring.

She laughed--not in a wicked way--but in a you’re-

is not what it used to be. People are retiring younger or working longer--whether it’s a part-time gig or starting a small business. Retirees may also have to provide for “blended families, single-parent-households, multigenerational households” and long-term care for themselves or their loved ones. So planning for retirement has to be more personalized and more recursive, and it has to start earlier.

Dr. Mai and I spent a large chunk of my one-hour checkup going over my life goals, income and expenses, and how I can align all of those items. In order to know where I was going, I needed to take a look at what I have. Dr. Mai also calculated my monthly expenses, including rent, car payment, utilities, bills and personal spending. As it turned out, the area where I’m least transparent about--where I probably have the most unaccounted-for spending-is personal expenses.

“That’s part of your homework,” Dr. Mai said with a smile. “Track your spending.”

“We don’t just sell insurance.

We also educate.”

What I thought was going to be a lecture on my horrible lack of financial planning turned out to be an hour of much-needed education. “A lot of people misunderstand what we do,” Dr. Mai explained. “We don’t just sell insurance. We also educate.”

Dr. Mai’s initial appointments with clients always start with education. She makes sure you understand that the foundation to building strong finances is to first protect your family’s loss of income. To do that, she recommends having the proper life, health, long term care and disability insurance. After that, any extra income can be invested into higher risk investments such as mutual funds, stocks and real estate.

going-to-learn-so-much-today kind of way. Then she asked more questions. What income did I expect to have when I retire? What did I want to do with my days when I retire? What about my husband? Will he be retiring at the same time?

So whether you just graduated from college, have been working for a decade, or are close to retirement, don’t let fear of judgment or of the truth stop you from getting a financial checkup. “It’s just like a physical checkup,” Dr. Mai said. “You need to go every two to three years.”

Retirement, according to a U.S. News & World Report article titled “How Financial Planning Has Evolved”,

And just like a physical checkup, it’s best to go in early, but it’s better late than never.

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PLATINUM | SPONSOR

Personalized Filmmaking with Hollywood Results Written by Pa N. Vue

For Seng Yang, owner of Airtrax Motion Pix, a production company in Atlanta, Georgia, each film is personal. Although a film director by trade, Seng is proud that his company is small enough he’s able to put a personal touch on every stage of the filmmaking process, including writing, conceptualizing and special effects. “The number on my website is actually my number,” he said with chuckle. “If anyone likes my work, they can call me directly. I do a lot of music videos. Atlanta is the music mecca of the nation, so I work with a lot of artists here locally.”

Atlanta is the birthplace of award-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brokovich and Ocean’s Eleven) and popular musicians, including Kanye West, Kelly Rowland and India.Arie. Although the city doesn’t have the glitz of New York City or Los Angeles, it does have a strong industry foundation. There isn’t anyone born in the 90’s who doesn’t remember the idyllic, “I don’t want no scrubs” verse from the girl group TLC who was founded in Atlanta. LaForce Records, L.A. Reid and Babyface Edmonds’s record label, also discovered musician Usher in Atlanta.

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Seng has always been a filmmaker, but he didn’t start out in Atlanta. He moved to Georgia in 1993.

When his family first came to the U.S. as part of the Vietnam War refugee resettlement effort, Seng lived in the same house with two other uncles’ families in Central California. There were three bedrooms, and Seng remembers sharing that house with 11 other kids. Having no toys to play with, they played theater, and he was the director. “We even had stage direction,” he laughs.

Since then, Seng has been on a trajectory to be a filmmaker. While serving his country in the Marine Corps in Iraq, Seng wrote a script and often talked about making his passion for filmmaking a living, breathing production company. “It took a lot of courage,” Seng said about his leap into building Airtrax Motion Pix. “It didn’t happen overnight.”

In fact, he received a lot of criticism from friends and family. Few people believed he would make the leap. This dream, though, became a reality when he started collaborating with Gideon Xiong, filmmaker and star of Seng’s hit On Love Online. Their first

project was a short film about a love triangle between a man, woman and car. Seng remembers this project as the event that “legitimized” his business as a filmmaker.

Seng and Gideon are behind the creation of Hmong superstar Yasmi’s music videos, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube. Besides short films and music videos, Seng spends a majority of his time writing proposals for funding. He also works for a cable television network and covers sporting events, but if he could have it his way, he would do narrative films for a living. He stays away

from comedy and horror, though, he emphasized.

The exception was On Love Online, a romantic comedy about a woman who has to choose between the man of her dreams and her best friend.

“Gideon and Yasmi are very funny,” he explained.

“When we’re together, there’s never a dull moment.

We’re always laughing or joking. The chemistry was there, and we wanted to have a production on a micro-budget level and something we can film on a short period of time.”

Quality storytelling is at the heart of Airtrax Motion Pix, but Seng also wants to generate high return on investment for his clients. “A movie is essentially a long commercial,” he said, displaying his deep understanding of storytelling and film business. To take Hmong films to the heights of Hollywood films, Seng adopts and implements Hollywood strategies, including bringing in investors and casting Hmong superstars. Advertisement also needs to be sold and a marketing strategy in place before shooting starts. In a nutshell, Seng wants to make sure the film not only tells a story but also generates money. “I want to

create a ‘win-win’ situation for everyone,” he added.

Next month, his team is set to travel to Minneapolis to start filming a pilot for an online HGTV-inspired reality TV series. But no matter what project Seng is working on, he is an ardent supporter of the Hmong community. He frequently travels to the Twin Cities to support events happening locally there. When asked why he decided to invest in Hmong Women Take on the World, he said, “I like the idea that Hmong Women Take on the World is international and your reach surpasses the national boundary. It’s something new, something different, and I want to be apart of something big and different.”

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S TORY T E L L E R

Fitness, Nutrition, and the Pursuit of Self-Love Trish Yang Written by K.M. Lee

Trish Yang is a strong woman.

Seriously. Literally speaking, she is very strong. She can squat 225 pounds and deadlift 275 pounds.

Trish is a 26-year-old fitness and nutrition coach and blooming social media celebrity in the Hmong community. Her bombshell physique and jaw-dropping pictures attract thousands of followers on social media. Her professional bodybuilding competitions include: 1st place NPC Charlotte Cup Bikini Novice and Overall Winner 2014, 1st place NPC Upstate Classic Bikini Class A Winner 2014, and 2nd place WNBF Iron Eagle Bikini Short 2016. She has retired from competing and now uses her expertise to help others. Trish has a big personality and a lot of confidence, but it took sweat, tears, and thousands of hours to transform her body and mindset. On her blog trishyang.com, she writes, “I help ordinary people, just like me, become extraordinary: to push past their limits and fears, reach their health and fitness goals, while giving them the opportunity to help others.”

Trish wasn’t always extremely fit, and it was a long journey to reach her fitness level. Like most of us, Trish came from a traditional way of thinking about body image and food. But she stepped up to the challenge, put in work, and built the body she imagined for herself. She has grown passionate about health and self-care and takes every chance to share it with others. She says, “Whatever you love to do, go for it. Do what makes you happy.”

Trish grew up in a very traditional household in South Carolina.

She is the fifth out of eight children and she stood out as the rebel child. She was always very active and outgoing, but she was not allowed to participate in school sports or go out with friends. Her duty as a Hmong daughter was to remain at home, a prison sentence for an energetic spirit. Like most Hmong women, Trish was criticized from a young age to maintain a certain size. She was never overweight but there was strong social pressure to be skinny. The elders liked to give Trish daily reminders about her weight in a direct and hurtful way. This negative feedback developed into body image issues.

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When she was 20 years old, she picked up a workout video with a mission to complete the entire program. Trish suffered from asthma, so she frequently had to pause the program and rest. With focus on activities that challenged her breathing, she slowly reached the point where she didn’t need breaks anymore.

Her asthma is now dormant and no longer interferes with exercising.

With her first fitness goal completed, Trish was hooked. She started to look and feel different, and she realized this was an amazing way to care for herself. She kept getting stronger because she made goals bigger and harder each time. And she’s been unstoppable ever since.

Making the decision to exercise every day is strengthened through repetition. A good work ethic includes consistency.

Trish is extremely fit because she made the decision to exercise every morning, and no excuse was big enough to stop her.

When she first started her fitness lifestyle, she said, “I would wake up every single day and look at myself. If I didn’t like the way I looked then that was the motivation to put in work.”

Now, exercise has become an automatic part of her day. It’s just as necessary to her routine as eating and sleeping.

It’s easy to get discouraged when results don’t come quickly.

Comparisons to other women can cause self-doubt. Trish says it’s not fair to compare fitness journeys. She emphasizes, “A woman who is one week into her fitness lifestyle is not going to look like a woman who is two years into it. You never know where someone is on their timeline. And everyone has a different version of health and fitness, not everyone wants the same exact goals.”

As if self-doubt wasn’t enough, some women may not get support from their partner or family. Trish was once with a partner who believed that her lifestyle interfered with their relationship.

He wanted her to quit. “When you’re dating, and they don’t like what you’re doing, you start to question yourself and doubt why you’re doing it,” Trish says. “But fitness became such a part of me that I didn’t want to give it up. Exercising is a way of taking care of myself and loving myself. He was telling me that

I shouldn’t love myself in this kind of way. But I couldn’t give exercise up.” She made the wise decision to end that relationship because she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t respect her self-expression of love. Trish is now happily married to a man who fully appreciates and participates in her lifestyle.

A few years ago, Trish’s father passed away from a heart attack, the combination of a poor diet and lack of exercise. This was a turning point and she realized many diseases are preventable by conscious daily choices and habits. It wasn’t enough to exercise, she needed to combine it with the right fuel for her body. Growing up, she never cooked but she started to notice the food at home was not very nutritious.

So, she began to research healthy foods and started preparing her own meals.

“We tend to put meat in almost everything,” Trish explains about the Hmong diet. “Especially the fatty cuts of meat.” She recalls a time when an older relative asked how to lose weight and she advised to start with the elimination of certain cuts of meat.

The relative replied, “But if it’s not the fatty part, it doesn’t taste good.” Unfortunately, this short-term satisfaction can cause harmful results in the long run.

Now, Trish eats a largely vegan diet, meaning she doesn’t consume any animal products. She plans to release a full Asian vegan cookbook by the end of 2018. In the meantime, she produces lots of easy cooking tutorials and tips on her self-titled Youtube channel.

But what about the social pressure to eat at Hmong parties?

Food is a strong cultural characteristic for the Hmong that is tied to respect, love, and tradition. Choosing to eat healthy doesn’t have to make someone a social outcast. Trish contends that food can still be enjoyed at home or events, but “pick out the healthier choices, like boiled chicken instead of pork stir fried in a lot of oil.” We can almost always find creative ways to use our power of choice.

Trish addresses three big excuses that stop people from exercising.

Time. A 25-30 minute workout in the morning is very doable.

It’s never truly an issue of time, it’s an issue of managing priorities. Trish prefers working out in the morning because it’s an early accomplishment that she doesn’t have to think about for the rest of the day. Exercises can be tailored to personal goals, but the most important exercises are strength training and cardio.

Money. If there’s no budget for a gym membership or equipment, Trish recommends bodyweight exercises in which no equipment is needed, like push-ups or jumping jacks. Explore any exercise that involves the body’s entire weight.

And there are also plenty of free exercise tutorials and tips online.

Gym intimidation.

“I started off that way, too,” Trish remembers. She started home workouts for this very reason of being intimidated by gym-goers. She suggests starting off at home or otherwise finding a friend or mentor who can provide guidance on using gym equipment and machines.

For those who are interested in competitive bodybuilding, Trish gives a detailed outline of her experience which can be found on her blog listed above. She wants everyone to understand that an important part of competition is mental preparedness. She says, “mental preparedness allows you to stick to the meal plan, stick through your workouts, and be mentally strong for whatever place you get.” Although placing first in competitions was important, she judged herself based on her own standards. “If I didn’t get the place I wanted, at least I knew that I tried my best and I looked my best. I was a winner no matter what. Just because the other girls supposedly looked better than you, it shouldn’t change your own self-image.”

Above all, Trish desires that Hmong women stay active and eat whole, unprocessed food as often as possible. It’s okay to have an off moment, but it’s all about balance. Once a fitness journey has started, it’s important to start sharing healthy tips with others, especially Hmong elders since they have limited access to educational resources. Trish believes that if we can work to change our health and our family’s health, we’ll have lived a truly strong and loving life.

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S T ORY T E L L E R

Going Against the Grain: A Hmong Woman’s Path Back to College An Anonymous Story Written by Pa N. Vue

What would you do if you weren’t afraid? This simple question and its answer are what Tria Xiong (alias), a financial planner from Australia, wants her daughter to remember. “[I want] to show her that it doesn’t matter what people say. You can go against the grain if that is what makes you happy.”

Tria was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. In 1989, fourteen years after the fall of Saigon, her family relocated to Australia where they started over. Tria was five years old and remembers arriving to a small “cozy” Hmong community. According to a 2004 article by Gary Lee, PhD, titled “Culture and Settlement: The Present Situation of the Hmong in Australia”, in the 1980s, many families arrived in Australia under the Family Reunion program, which required already settled relatives to submit sponsorship applications for their relatives still living in the Thai refugee camps. Lee estimated 1,800 Hmong people lived in Australia in 2004. This number is estimated to be above 3,000 currently.

Tria grew up in a “very traditional” family and found assimilation and being a minority “difficult”. Like many of the 1.5 generation born in Thailand and Laos but raised in Australia, France, the U.S. or any other first world country, she had to learn a new language and grapple with a diverse array of expectations.

“I felt I was living two lives. One life, I was a kid who could be a kid, and then I’d come home and I have to switch and be

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“You can go against the

grain if that

is what makes you happy.”

a sensible daughter looking after the children and cooking and helping Mum and Dad out.”

Tria got married at the age of 15, an acceptable age in the traditional Hmong community, and had her first baby by 17. By the age of 23, she had four children. “Someone said to me it was like a baby having a baby,” Tria said thoughtfully. Afterward, she tried to go back to school, but her children were just too young and needed her. Her responsibilities to them, to her husband, and to her in-laws pretty much decided her fate.

Once, during a conversation with a relative about going back to school, her relative said to her, “Your uni is now the baby uni.” (“Uni” is a shortened form of the word “university” and is used commonly in the United Kingdom and Australia.) No one in Tria’s family had gone to college, so at the time, she went with the grain and accepted the life she had.

with so many things on her plate, Tria explains that “if I have the courage and the will to [go back to school], then I will find a way.”

“I would not be able to do the work that I do, undertake the degree I’m doing, and be the person I am without my husband,” Tria said with a smile. “My husband is extremely, extremely supportive.”

And although Tria’s parents were initially a bit shocked about her decision to go back to school, they also became supportive. “I could see that they were starting to believe that I could actually do it,” Tria said.

Since 1975, when the first wave of Hmong refugees started resettling in Australia and other first world countries, the number of Hmong people with bachelor’s degrees and higher have increased. Before then, with the exception of boys—and usually just children of the military—most Hmong were subsistence farmers and had no need for formal education.

“Just because

you’re older doesn’t

Then she began working with people who were older and who were going back to school, and she remembers the change in environment playing a large role in changing her mindset about education. She talked with her colleagues about the possibility of going back to school, discussed how they did it, and watched them make it happen.

Three years ago, at the age of 32, Tria decided to go back to school to pursue a degree in social work. She enjoys giving people hope in her currently position as a financial planner and looks forward to being able to continue supporting people in need as a social worker.

mean you can’t

Today, in the U.S. alone, about 14% of the Hmong population 25 years and over hold a bachelor’s degree or higher (compared to 33.4 % of the general population). At this point in time, Australia’s Hmong population may be too small to disaggregate. According to Gary Lee’s article mentioned above, “Since [the Hmong’s] settlement [in Australia], less than ten young Hmong have graduated from universities…Currently, about half a dozen young men and women are enrolled in bachelor’s degree university courses in Cairns, Sydney and Melbourne.”

go back to uni.”

“Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you can’t go back to uni,” she said. And with distance learning programs, online classes, and evening classes, it is a possible option.

As a Hmong woman, she has to juggle multiple identities and responsibilities. Aside from school, she has to “be on top of work”, take care of her family, and attend community events like funerals, which last a few days, and hu plig or ua neeb spiritual ceremonies, which typically last a whole day. Even

Number of Hmong students in higher education may have increased since Gary’s article, but there’s no doubt that Tria’s educational attainment will not only be a personal success and an example to her daughter. It will also be a community success. She will be a trailblazer for the whole Hmong community in Australia. “It doesn’t matter if you’re married or not,” Tria said. “You have the right to education.”

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S TO RY T E L L E R | Q& A

Holistic Health with Licensed Psychologist, Ia Xiong, Ph.D. Written by Mai Pa Lee

For licensed psychologist Ia Xiong, holistic health and wellness incorporates both mind and body. She received her Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Counseling Psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and is currently a practicing physician in the state of Minnesota. Ia is also a certified professional life coach. Below, HWTOTW Tribal Leader, Nischa Xiong, interviews Ia about her profession.

What does holistic health and wellness actually mean?

Holistic health to me is about embracing your physical health, your spiritual health and your mental health. If we’re only looking at one component we can completely miss another component that might be affecting our wellness. Psychology, for the most part, is viewed from a western perspective, more of an individual approach.

I went into psychology with a different perspective: I became more invested in understanding mental health and wellness from a holistic perspective. The main reason was my tapping into my Hmong roots and confirming that we don’t have words to describe or explain what psychology and mental health are.

Yet, when we talk about health in the Hmong culture, we view it from a holistic way: it’s really about our spirituality as well as our physical health, and how all of that intertwine and relate to one another.

As far as mental health goes, if we’re experiencing a lot of stress in our life, such as work stress or family stress, it can actually lead to physical health problems. We could have headaches, stomach aches, or problems that show up in a physical way. Vice versa, if we are not feeling well physically, that could lead to feelings of anxiety or depression. Once we connect to our deeper meaning and purpose in life, it can help uplift us.

How did you decide the direction you wanted to go in, and to focus on holistic health?

A lot of it was from my own experiences and upbringing. Being the first person in my family born in the United States, growing up I felt a little bit disconnected as far as what my parents went

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through. I was trying to survive growing up in America and in a different culture. I never really understood where my parents were coming from. That caused a lot of conflict between me and my parents [especially regarding] what they wanted versus what I wanted. During my teenage years I experienced my own anxiety and depression. Through learning about my parents’ stories I became interested in understanding trauma, how trauma works, how trauma affects people, how trauma can be passed down from generation to generation.

Were your parents supportive about what you wanted to do?

They were very supportive. Although they didn’t understand what I was doing, they saw how committed I was. They saw how important it was that I was pursuing this and that it was from a place of wanting to understand and help the Hmong community.

How many Hmong clients do you have, if any?

I am currently not seeing Hmong clients in outpatient clinics. That is what my goal is getting started here in Minnesota.

I want to offer more services and reduce barriers to care for Hmong-American populations. I’ve done a lot of community work, offering more of a systemic approach versus the individual one on one. Getting groups of Hmong women together or getting groups of Hmong youth together for everyone to start sharing their story as a way of healing. It’s that collectivist approach, the sense of community and connection that allows for the initial step towards building your identity. In the future I would like to offer more services specifically for Hmong-American populations.

Do you think that the lack of Hmong clients is primarily due to awareness? We’re not the type of people to talk about our emotions or what happened in the past.

There a lot of different factors that contribute to the low numbers of Hmong clients seeking mental health services. This idea of mental health is very new to the Hmong community and, in general, seeking mental health services is stigmatized. People think that you only seek help if you’re crazy. That keeps them from wanting to seek services.

Mental health is just like our physical health, we need to checkin with the doctors, go to the gym, and eat healthy just as it is important for us to consider how we are feeling. If we’re feeling anxious or depressed or if we are experiencing other mental health concerns, it’s okay to work on those. De-stigmatizing mental health and bringing awareness to the Hmong community can be a huge contributor to allowing people to feel more comfortable with seeking mental health services. Historically, mental health services have not been culturally sensitive.

When you take more of a culturally sensitive approach, usually it is other stressors that are impacting how someone is feeling. It’s not always about you needing to change, but what in the environment is contributing to how you are feeling.

What about gender? Do you generally see more men or women as patients?

I see both. I spent a lot of time working at the veterans affairs, working with veterans from the Korean War and Vietnam War to more recent ones. I helped them cope with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I do more outpatient work right now. I see a lot of women who come in, who are experiencing anxiety or depression. In the past when I was doing group work with the Hmong community, it was youth and college students, both men and women.

Do you think doing the group sessions with the Hmong community helps people feel more comfortable?

It depends on the individual. I think, in general, with groups who are traditionally marginalized, including Hmong people, it is vital to do it in a group setting. It normalizes their experiences. Oftentimes we experience similar things but we do it in isolation. There’s so much shame in talking about what we’re going through. By doing it in a group setting and hearing similar experiences, suddenly it feels more freeing.

How do we identify that we may need to seek help?

There are major differences in what kind of help you seek.

When we’re talking about significant mental health concerns,

it’s paying attention to changes that affect your daily life. For example, such as if you are sleeping all the time or not sleeping at all, your eating patterns change, you are feeling bad about your circumstances. This is not a temporary situation, it’s not just a day or two, it’s happening for weeks or months at a time where you feel very bad. Those are times where it could be very beneficial to seek out mental health services. [If] it’s not necessarily affecting your life significantly [but] you’re feeling stuck, life coaching can be beneficial to meet your goals and overcome those barriers.

When people decide they want to seek help, where should they go?

Seeking mental health services can be just like looking for a doctor. You can look into your insurance to see if it covers certain providers. It can also be helpful to ask through referrals from your primary care or medical doctor.

What’s hard is that there are few Hmong psychologists, but there are a lot of great community mental health services out there who have Hmong mental health providers if you ask around.

When people do seek help, how often can they expect to see the psychologist?

It depends on the circumstances. If you are experiencing a lot of symptoms that have a lot of impact on your life, but you’re still able to manage, it might be once a week, or once every other week.

There is also couples therapy or family therapy, it’s also about once a week for anywhere from a few months to a couple years. If it’s significantly impacting your life, then you can go into in-patient or residential care. You are there 24/7 for several weeks or months.

Sometimes this may involve other factors like substance or alcohol abuse, or suicidal thoughts.

What’s the one takeaway that you want this audience to have?

Being open to the process of working on our wellness, including mental, physical, and spiritual health. Look into how we can work on those things, so we can move our life and community forward in purposeful ways that promote healing.

As Ia continues her work in holistic health, she hopes to collaborate and work more closely with existing Hmong community organizations. Holistic health should not simply be a reactive practice but a proactive practice, where foresight and discipline are needed to heal. She hopes to inform the Hmong community about the importance of practicing well-being. From there, instead of surviving, we can move to a place where we are thriving.

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S TO RY T E L L E R | Q& A

It’s Never Too Late to Follow Your Passion Written by Pa Dao Vang

Nkauj Vang of NV Artistry is a professional freelance makeup artist based in Oakdale, Minnesota. She received her esthetics certification from Saint Paul College. After leaving her corporate job, she turned her passion for beauty into a business, proving that if you just take a leap of faith, it’s never too late to do what you love. Nkauj was interviewed by Elizabeth Yang, founder of Hmong Women Take on the World.

Tell us who you are.

I was born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I am a mom of four. I married at a young age, so this is my second marriage.

I have three teenage daughters and a five-year-old son. I work part-time so I’m mainly home, so I can be with my kids.

You wanted to share about beauty and skincare and how that boosts our sisters’ confidence. Let’s first start with your story.

I’ve worked in the corporate world for ten years. Beauty and wellness have always been a hobby for me. I never thought that I would be able to do this as a career. About two years ago, my position became marked for layoff, so I decided to quit. I told my husband that maybe this is a great way for me to pursue beauty and wellness. I come from a Christian background, so I really prayed about it and really hoped that this is the right thing for me to do. I went back to school, became a stay-at-home mom and full-time student. It was hard at first, but if you’re focused and determined, whatever you put your mind to, you can accomplish. I completed the esthetics program. A lady reached out to me to audition for a makeup artist position. I auditioned and was given the job on the spot. I had the opportunity to make people not just look good, but to feel good about themselves.

I’ve had the opportunity to interact with women of all colors,

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listen to their problems, and help them feel better by giving them that little bit of confidence.

Why do sisters come to you? Why do they want to work with you?

I think it’s my knowledge. Maybe it’s because I’m down to earth and easy to work with. I’ve [also] been told I just have a natural flow to it.

What support system did you have to help you pursue this dream?

I want to say some of my close sisters in Christ whom I’ve bonded very well with, my husband and children. My family lives out of state so it’s hard to have them for support. My husband and children have been patient through the process. It was a big adjustment to go from two people working full-time to one.

What advice would you give to sisters wanting to pursue beauty?

Go for it. Do some research so you know what you’re comfortable with. There are so many beauty schools that offer cosmetology and esthetics programs. The beauty industry is so broad, so you can do anything from skincare to hair to makeup. Just be focused. There will be tough times but as long as you stay focused, nothing is impossible.

If you could go back and do something different in your career or job, what would you do differently?

Maybe start earlier. But then again, nothing is ever too late to start.

How did you know this was your passion?

It’s always been a hobby. I could do it every single day. I enjoy connecting with other women by listening to their stories.

Every woman has a story of why they’re looking for makeup advice. They seek me for professional advice because they trust me to help them find confidence inside by not just making them look good but to feel good also. Apart from giving clients makeup and skincare advice, I like to remind clients that true beauty starts from within.

Tell me about some of those stories.

I have clients that never wear makeup but have concerns about dark under-eye circles, and they want to know how to get rid of those or how to deal with them. Some come in because they have an upcoming wedding and they’re not sure what to do.

A client came in when her husband passed away and she was in the grieving process. She just wanted to look good and feel good. I get to know them on a personal level and deliver what they want.

Is there anything you would want people to take away from your story?

For anyone wanting to pursue beauty or anything else…once you have your mind set to it, take that leap of faith and do it because life is short. Find a support group to help you if you don’t have one, and I will [also] help support you.

What does it mean to be a Hmoob woman taking on the world?

Women are the future. We are the generation to make change happen. If you have children, especially daughters, they are watching you. They may take in what you teach them, but you lead by example. Be a role model to others. Be loving, caring, compassionate, and willing to help others.

Nkauj is open to hearing from her sisters and answering any questions they may have. She can be contacted on Facebook under NV Artistry or by email at nkaujv@yahoo.com.

Walk us through the process of working with a beauty expert.

When a client comes in for beauty advice or service, I start with a consultation. A lot of the time when clients come in, they know what they’re looking for. They’ll say, I’m new to this, new to wearing makeup. I can’t do eyes or eyebrows. So, I start with the basics, [and that’s] with a consistent skincare routine that includes a cleanser and moisturizer with SPF (Sun Protection Factor]. After that, we look for a foundation that will best suit them. Then we would add on. I see if the client wants to add eyebrows, eyes, lips, or just cheeks.

Where do you want to go with this? What are your dreams?

I’ve been doing makeup on and off for six years. I’ve just started doing it full-time two years ago. I eventually want to have my own makeup studio. I want to help sisters in the same industry grow. I believe that if we collaborate, then we can make it bigger than if I were to do it on my own. To help carry out my dream, I want to work with the Hmoob women community.

What advice do you have for those just starting out with makeup and skincare?

I noticed that a lot of people are self-taught, and they don’t receive a certification. I suggest getting certified through school to learn the ins and outs of the beauty industry. Practice because practice does make perfect.

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S T ORY T E L L E R

The Ballad of Npauj Nyag Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay Kao Nhia Kue was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1981.

She was the first of her siblings to be born in the United States.

Her parents were fresh from the refugee camps and still learning English when the hospital asked her father how to spell her name. His transliteration of her name with a “K” instead of a “B” for “Bao” or Npauj led to many confusions both at home and at school. However, through storytelling and poetry, she would learn to reconcile Bao and Kao. “At home I was Bao, but at school they would just butcher it.

My parents even forgot that [Kao] was my name. ‘Kao’s teachers’ would call, but who is that [they would ask]? And I’d say ‘Dad! That’s me!’ [So] I had a real name, but I couldn’t say it.

No one [at school] could understand it...And Kao Nhia, that’s not a Hmong name.”

and then fled to the United States as refugees. While they struggled with memories of war and trauma, she struggled to make sense of her dual identities as Bao/Kao and Hmong/American in a neighborhood where alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, and poverty were rampant.

Bao’s parents now live outside the city and her siblings live throughout various parts of the Midwest. She is an elementary school literacy and social studies teacher in a very mixed, racially and ethnically diverse community populated by immigrants from South and Central America as well as Southeast Asia. She credits her early mentors with teaching her how to recognize the beauty of her wholeness. “We are all born whole.”

The fractures we feel are a result of outside pressures, “systemic things” like racism, sexism, and injustice which “we should

Her first grade teacher even went so far as to rename her “Mary”.

Her classmates used the name for the entire year.

I inhale memories marred with blood trying to make sense of the stillness “We shall call you Miriam.” hos tsi hog kuv lub npe “K-A-O-N-H-I-A. Too undecipherable! Mary it is then.”

Bao shared this poem with me, a poem she wrote to reclaim “the many fractured pieces of herself” after a childhood spent wanting to fit in, to be more American. Speaking perfect and unaccented English was an important first step. Hmong was an embarrassment, a liability growing up in the inner city. Pennsylvania’s Hmong population is still very small and the community is highly dispersed. Additionally, as a first generation Hmong American, Bao’s struggles were different from that of her parents and older siblings who had been born in Laos and Thailand

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“...I have discovered that I have inherited the language of my ancestors— the flower cloth language.

A language that has grown back after the long winter.”

Foot-note of Hill-Tribe Girl

by Kao Nhia Kue (Bao Nhia Kue) blame or shame ourselves for.” From her mentors she learned that “It is more important to be whole and to service community than to be fractured and to run away from ourselves.”

i inhale memories marred with blood trying to make sense of the stillness

The key to each of our puzzles is education. As an educator, storyteller, and poet, Bao believes we are able to find ourselves, thus providing for a future generation, rooted in the people from our past.

hos tsi hog kuv lub npe

“I lost a lot of my Hmong [then], but now...I try to incorporate as much as I can into my poetry...I have discovered that I have inherited the language of my ancestors—the flower cloth language. A language that has grown back after the long winter.”

Poetry led Bao back to Hmong folktales, Hmong folktales led Bao further to the legend of paj ntaub which was purported to be a secret language Hmong women wove into everyday clothes as a way of thwarting the Han Chinese ban on ethnic identification.

However, in the migration to Southeast Asia, with the death of the many elders who knew the language, the key to paj ntaub was lost, but the art remains. For Bao, the story of paj ntaub is the story of what it means to be Hmong. “Our history, culture, [and] language can be reshaped or reformed, but it cannot be destroyed.”

For Bao, her poetry is a natural extension of the Hmong arts— particularly kwv txhiaj (a ballad style vocal art) and paj ntaub.

Growing up she listened to her puj (grandmother) and her parents sing kwv txhiaj. She is now learning to compose kwv txhiaj for herself. After college, she applied to the Low-Residency and Individualized Degree Program at Goddard College in Vermont and began collecting oral narratives from her elders. In attempting to transcribe these interviews, she gained a greater appreciation for the Hmong language as well as its cosmology.

For example, Bao is an animist even though her parents are Christian (as was the family that helped sponsor them in Philadelphia), and while she and her parents greatly disagree about this religious identification because she can’t do any of the rituals, she says “I know this is who I am. In my blood, in my stories, I channel the spirits. I dream about my deceased grandparents and it is natural. Knowing my history means knowing this and it’s not weird.”

What was weird for Bao growing up was not knowing if she was Bao Nhia or Kao Nhia, Hmong or American. While she more often identifies as “Asian American” rather than just Hmong, “The language of my poetry is Hmong. How I express myself in English—it’s Hmong. My thought processes are not totally American. The communal feeling is always there, the connection to other people, to earth and spirit is always there. [And although] I use the English language, how I speak is Hmong.”

And in reclaiming her Hmong identity, she has found greater strength as well as wholeness.

“We shall call you Miriam.”

“K-A-O-N-H-I-A. Too undecipherable!

Mary it is then.” muffled sounds emerge as delicate as my name koj yog hmoob but the butterfly words flutter away even before my ears have caught them hastily my hands grab syllables coaxing them down my throat naahhh puuuuuu taiiiiii my tongue trips on escaping consonants slurring, my body does not possess mother’s words “Copy these letters neatly. M-A-R-Y. That shouldn’t be hard now.” fingers curl into fists unmovable i reject your initiation “Fine, you will not be named. You cannot be taught.” in exile i regain flower cloth stories on that quiet night my parents sat by the fire sharing a bowl of rice they waited for my arrival and their laughter welcomed me into morning mother and father called me npauj nyag i will take no other name

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Koj Txoj Hmoo, Koj Yog Tus Tswj

Your Fate Is In Your Control Written and translated by Ka Thao

“Cov ntxhais yog ntse ces yuav zoo rau sab nraum xwb” is a very common phrase that is used in the Hmong community to set the ntxhais or daughters at a disadvantage. The English translation is the smart daughter will only benefit the outside, the “outside” referring to her husband’s side of the family.

When a girl marries, she leaves her family to go live with her husband’s family, so she takes her education with her. Because of that, her education only “benefits the outside”. This belief is passed down from multiple generations and continues to be the perpetuation of Hmong women being oppressed in the Hmong patriarchal culture, where men dominate in authority and social privileges. In America, this gender division is less exclusive; there are many opportunities and an even playing field for Hmong males and females to achieve higher education. However, in Thailand and Laos, the Hmong homelands, this ideology holds to be very true ‘til this day and creates many challenges for Hmong women.

Maiv Ntxawm Xyooj is a college professor, researcher and translator at National University of Laos, who provides mentorship to many students in higher education. Raised by a single mother, Maiv Ntxawm learned at a very young age to have strength and determination to withstand challenges. The notion of “niam nkauj mos ab” or token baby wife is a common method for Hmong American men to have marital affairs with young Hmong girls abroad. At a young age, Maiv Ntxawm met a Hmong American man who promised, “If I marry you, you won’t have to work. I only need you to bear my children and be my housewife.” Although this may be tempting to some women, Maiv Ntxawm responded, “I am not that kind of woman.

Maybe there are women who dream of that, but my purpose extends beyond that.” The man recoiled to her words. Maiv Ntxawm urges young Hmong female, especially those who are “niam nkauj mos ab”, to realign their focus and energy towards respect and love in themselves. “Yus saib yus tus kheej kom muaj nqis. Yus hlub yus tus kheej.” See value in yourself. Love yourself.

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When Maiv Ntxawm asked Hmong parents in Laos and Thailand about letting their daughters go school, she was told, “Me nyuam coob coob, es yuav tseg cov ntxhais ua teb. Mam cia cov tub mus kawm ntawv.” There are a lot of kids, keep the daughters to help in the gardens, and let the sons go to school.

Parents use poverty to justify keeping their daughters at home.

Maiv Ntxawm explains that elementary school is very affordable with the tuition equivalent to the price of two chickens. As the child progresses to higher education, the cost increases, but there are scholarships and government funding available. She expresses the main variable of not achieving higher education comes down to the Hmong parents. Maiv Ntxawm makes the point, “Thaum koj txom nyem, tsis hais tus tub los tus ntxhais, koj yeej toob kas kev pab tib yam nkaus.” When you are in a tough spot, regardless if son or daughter, you will want help from both. Maiv Ntxawm believes that parents should encourage and invest in their children’s education. “Yog koj yuav nqis peev rau dab tsi, kuv xav kom koj nqis peev rau koj tus me nyuam txoj kev kawm.” If you want to invest in anything, I hope you invest in your child’s education.

Consequently, Maiv Ntxawm was one of the few who received higher education in Laos, because her mom was supportive and invested in her education. She had a cousin who pulled her aside at a young age to teach her the foundations of Lao language structure and encouraged her to pursue higher education. Maiv Ntxawm took his advice to heart and channeled her energy into excelling and becoming the top student in her classes. Maiv Ntxawm believes her socioeconomic status is not constricted to “ua neej raws txoj hmoov. Yog yug los txom nyem ces yuav txom nyem.” Your life is predestined. If you are born poor, you will remain poor. Maiv Ntxawm also learned French when she entered National University of Laos. In her second year, she received a scholarship to study abroad in France. This was her first time leaving Vientiane, Laos. Thanks to this opportunity, Maiv Ntxawm’s French highly progressed and she was awarded another scholarship to continue her master’s degree in France.

Maiv Ntxawm got the opportunity to see how big the world really was and to experience cultures outside of her own. She noticed that the Hmong community in France negatively perceived her as a “niam nkauj mos ab” looking for a husband so she could stay in France. Sadly, due to the frequent broken marriages in Hmong communities in first-world countries by “niam nkauj mos ab”, many people viewed international Hmong women inferiorly. When Maiv Ntxawm shared that she was a student studying abroad, the Hmong community then warmly accepted and welcomed her to stay in France. Maiv Ntxawm responded with a sense of purposeful mission, “Kuv lub teb chaws yog nplog, kuv yuav rov qab mus txhim kho kuv lub teb chaws. Tseem tshuav kuv lub luag hauj lwm es kuv yuav rov qab mus.” My country is Laos. I will return to work there and fix my country. Through her experience of studying abroad and education, Maiv Ntxawm exemplifies the ability to move up in socioeconomic status. She expresses, “Txoj kev kawm yog ib txoj hauv kev uas yuav daws lub neej tawm ntawm txoj kev txom nyem.” Education is the pathway to get out of poverty.

“Education is the

pathway to get out of poverty.”

While Maiv Ntxawm overcame many challenges in her education and career, her personal love life was yet another struggle. Maiv Ntxawm’s first marriage did not work out after she finished her bachelor’s degree. She was shamed in the Hmong community for being a Hmong woman divorcee, but she ignored the gossip and stayed true to herself, knowing that she would be better off without staying in a broken relationship.

She used the hostility as her motivation to continue her education and obtain a master’s degree in agriculture. Many years later, Maiv Ntxawm made herself available to potential suitors who came to court her, but they all were intimidated by her educational status. Eventually, Maiv Ntxawm’s husband found her contact information in a Hmong online video and initiated a friendship. He persisted in courting her and was not deterred by her educational status, as she was not opposed to his career as a chef. They were very compatible in many ways and got married within months of their relationship. Maiv Ntxawm’s story demonstrates that when you meet your “tav” (soulmate), love will unfold beautifully without fear.

Regardless of where you are in life, whether you’re a young woman living in the U.S., Australia, Thailand or any other country, whether you’re an educated woman or a divorcee, there is much to learn from Maiv Ntxawm’s story. Maiv Ntxawm makes herself available to help any sisters and brothers needing mentorship and advice with the following contact links: xmaiyer@yahoo.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/maiyerx1

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Life in Vietnam: Where Education and Farming Intersect Written by Mina Her

estimated one million Hmong people live in Vietnam, and about 40% of them are reportedly Christians. Gao believes Hmong women from the Christian community live decent lives. They learn to love their families and take care of their households, and therefore their husbands respect and support them. According to an article called “Vietnam Wrestles With Christianity”, “Since the 1980s, where Protestant Christianity was virtually unheard of in Vietnam’s northern highlands, an estimated 300,000 out of the 1 million ethnic Hmong in Vietnam are now Christians.

Since domestic violence is strongly associated with intoxication, Hmong women see Christianity as a path to empowerment and usually convert first, persuading their husbands to follow them. Although pastors are overwhelmingly men, women comprise the majority of congregations and lead in various activities of the church life.”

G

ao Houa Mee Vang was born and raised in Hanoi, Vietnam. She recalls her life as happy and educated. She was the youngest child of six and now she is married with a daughter. Growing up in Vietnam was a challenge for her as it is for most Hmong women, because a lot of people don’t believe in educating Hmong women. Most of the Hmong people in Vietnam believe that women should only farm and take care of their families; therefore, a lot of Hmong women have no education.

Gao was one of the lucky few who had supportive parents who wanted her to get an education. She graduated from a university and worked three to four years before she got married. She remembers that there weren’t too many Hmong girls who attended the university she went to.

Gao believes that the biggest concern for Hmong women in Vietnam is health. There just aren’t enough support for health-related concerns. Her dream is to go into the healthcare field in order to one day go back to help her sisters in Vietnam.

Since a lot of Hmong women in Vietnam have no education and only do farming, Gao believes that Hmong women from around the world could support her sisters in Vietnam by giving them more education on farming. A lot of Hmong women in Vietnam have no education on what they can grow on their farms in order to make a profit. It would be good to know what is available to them and how they can access different kinds of seeds for farming. She was happy to have been interviewed for HWTOTW because she believes that it is important for Hmong women all around the world to voice their stories and opinions and to stand strong together.

Gao is a Christian and believes that her faith helps guide her in life to be a better person for herself and for her family. An

Gao Houa Mee Vang currently lives in Rochester, Minnesota.

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STORYT ELLER

Taking On the World and Finding the Love You Deserve (Again) An Anonymous Story Written by Pa N. Vue

B

y the time Sandy Moua (alias) was 24, she was a widow, a “poj ntsuam”. She had lost her husband to cancer and had three children under the age of five.

“I didn’t have the confidence to take on the world,” Sandy said. Her community—the Hmong community—shamed her. They said, “Koj yog ib tug poj niam tsis muaj npe.” You are a woman without a name.

When a Hmong woman marries, she keeps her clan name—her surname—but she takes her husband’s formal name. She becomes “niam” + her husband’s name. “Niam” is a title equivalent to Mrs. or “mistress”. When her husband passed away, Sandy also lost his name and the identity associated with that name.

In old Hmong traditions that were most likely practiced up until the 1990s, when a woman becomes a widow, she may be encouraged to participate in a “levirate” which Gary Lee and Nicholas Tapp describe in their book Cultures and Customs of the Hmong as “a younger relative marries the widow of a deceased older brother or male cousin”. This practice was put in place to support the widow and children at a time when they needed a male who knew how to hunt and build homes. “This tradition also ensures that the widow’s young children, especially sons, will be kept within the clan…” If she were to marry again, she might take her children with her, hence the loss of kinmen.

Sandy did not participate in levirate. According to Ya Po Cha in his book An Introduction to the Hmong Culture, “A Hmong widow is obligated to stay with her deceased husband’s family”, but Sandy did not stay with her husband’s family either. After her husband’s death, she moved back to her parents’ hometown to separate herself from the toxic environment she was in then, and to start healing and rebuilding her life.

The life of a poj ntsuam was not easy. “[The Hmong community] thinks we’re used goods,” she explained. “A lot of men who date you don’t give you the respect you deserve.”

Sandy reached a point where enough was enough. She stopped caring about what people thought and started just focusing on herself. “I’m going to work hard and take care of my goals, my life, my kids, and I’m going to find a man who’s going to treat me well.”

“I made sure I was there for my girls, from the morning until they went to bed,” she said. “I had to be a mother and a father.”

She also worked and went back to school. “It was my husband’s dying wish for me to get an education—go to college, get my degree. He wanted that for me and the girls.”

Seven years later, Sandy met the kind of man who made her want to remarry. “He is the best father in the world to my three girls,” she said. They’ve been married for ten years and in total have seven children, “I am proof that happiness does happen and you can turn your life around. Even though it’s hard, it does get better.”

When Sandy heard about Hmong Women Take on the World, she was excited. She had seen oppression in the Hmong community and lived through it, and she wanted to be involved with a movement that empowered women. “I want to be a part of [HWTOTW] because I have six girls and I want to be an example to them.”

HWTOTW gives her confidence that Hmong women could uplift one another so that everyone could have a better future. “We are the backbone to our family.... We need to help propel each other forward.”

To those who feel alone in their journey, whether they’ve just lost their partner or whether they feel out of place in the Hmong community, Sandy said, “Say what you think. Try new things.

Stay positive. Never give up. Work as hard as you can towards your dreams and your goals.” And most importantly, “Don’t be afraid to take on the world.”

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Living with ADHD at 30 Written by MyDer Ly

A

s a child, Julie Heu was considered loud and hot tempered. She was known as the one who spoke her mind, never holding back. She found herself uncontrollably touching or sitting on every seat (specifically at the airport) or making apologies for those actions over and over. She could sit for hours, focused on reading books and never feel the need to use the bathroom.

She would always do her homework but never remember to turn them in. All the while, nothing seemed unusual to her parents or her teachers. Mainly because she maintained really good grades and everyone around her just assumed she was fully taking advantage of being a normal but mischievous kid. Everyone thought she just had a whole lot of energy to burn as a candid child.

Everything about life seemed hard for Julie, no matter what she tried to do. In college, she eventually turned to alcohol as a hack to deal with her internal and external struggles. One symptom of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is hyperfocus, where she would be fully captivated in reading for hours.

On the other hand, she would notice it was extremely difficult just to get her day started. Not being able to get organized also raised her anxiety level. Trying to find a safe haven, she turned to alcohol to soothe and make everything that felt bad go away.

She soon found herself faced with an alcohol problem.

Julie also struggled with her social skills in life and feared the thought of never being able to fit in anywhere. She had trouble holding on to any kind of a relationship whether it be an associate or family member. As an adult, Julie jumped from job to job on contract work. It became the best way to keep her stimulated and engaged. It wasn’t until she found the perfect boss and co-workers that she decided she wanted to stay with the company for good. Getting diagnosed with ADHD surprisingly was the biggest factor in helping her keep her job.

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ADHD is the brain’s inability to process information. There is a need for more stimulation in order to function somewhat normally. Julie can easily be bored because the brain automatically is set to zone out when not stimulated. She would often feel overwhelmed with unexplained frustration and confusion for no apparent reason. She would find herself misbehaving or acting out. Not because she wanted to, but because she had a sporadic urge to react. “I would apologize for doing things even when I knew it was wrong but I would end up doing it anyways.” For so long, she knew she was different but did not think there was something medically wrong.

The most difficult thing on Julie’s journey with ADHD was her realizing she needed professional help. She worried getting help would be too expensive and then trying to find the time would be hard in her busy life. She initially convinced herself that “maybe everyone was going through what I was going through and there was no need to receive the help.”

With the combined treatment of seeing both a psychiatrist and a psychologist, Julie is able to make more sense of her life. She has a better understanding and control of her actions. She has also learned how to maintain close relationships. Her friends can often tell a huge difference when she isn’t on her medication. She knows that taking her medication and going through therapy is very important. It has, amazingly, improved her quality of life. The medication seems to work well to help control attention and focus.

Her psychologist helps her with counseling therapy and her psychiatrist prescribes her medication. Both function differently but work in conjunction with each other. The combination works extremely well to keep Julie moving forward and giving her a chance to a near normal life. On a really bad day, Julie can be found looking for her missing eyeglasses that has been

on her nose all along. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I am forgetting something or misplaced an item.”

Although Julie was relieved to be diagnosed with ADHD at 30, she regrets not going to get help sooner. She believes that receiving the proper diagnosis saved her life. She also believes that being diagnosed and getting the proper treatment helped her pay attention to the smallest of details and the intricate, complex parts of her job. Just knowing that she has ADHD now has definitely helped her zero in on her personal problems and knowing she needs a solution has become so much easier. Getting treated helped her hold the job she loved and even got her promoted to a Platform Specialist at Abbott, where she creates very detailed technical documents for developers and project managers.

After the diagnosis, Julie had a better understanding of her ADHD. Everything started to fall into place soon after getting treatment. She realized that she was just a kid who did not know how to control her reactions to the life happening around her.

It was just her brain’s inability to process things. Though she mostly definitely struggled with self-control and structure, she simply just saw herself as being “corky with no filter.”

ADHD is a behavioral illness that many do not see as a real threat. Even Julie’s parents overlooked her behaviors and dismissed them as just being curious and a bit adventurous. She believes that maybe if her teachers had been trained on teaching ADHD students, she could have been diagnosed earlier and could have lived a less stressful life.

With all that Julie has gone through, she was still able to earn a degree in communications and build a delightful career that she fully enjoys. Julie wants her audience to know that there are benefits to seeking professional help. Her message for all is to not be afraid to ask for help. When you are struggling with simple daily tasks or are unable to have self-control, it may be that you have a mental illness. It is too dangerous not to get help because it can destroy your career and important relationships.

Through early diagnosis, you can discover happiness sooner and eliminate unnecessary stress.

Julie knows that the healthier ways to cope with her daily tasks depends on her medication, exercises, counseling therapy, and the help of essential oils. All of these recommended treatments “help heal past the trauma”.

Being Hmong and having ADHD seemed to make her condition even more difficult to cope with. “The Hmong community is less compassionate of your mental stability,” she said. One of her therapy sessions covered the topic of being a Hmong daughter. It helped her overcome the stress of being the perfect daughter.

“When you are struggling with simple daily tasks or are unable to have self-control, it may be that you have a mental illness... Through early diagnosis, you can discover happiness sooner and eliminate unnecessary stress.”

“Life is better with knowing that I have ADHD,” she said. Having a husband who also has ADHD is like the icing on the cake.

They both come from a place where they can share a depth of understanding about what they have gone through emotionally and physically. Julie has found her place of peace and belonging. She emphasizes that being familiar with a daily routine is the key to living a healthier life. Keeping herself on task and taking her medication on time is part of life. In return, she and everyone around her can live healthier and happier together.

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Love Thyself, Love the World Written by Lilian Thaoxaochay

Jane Sayaxang was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, but soon after, her family migrated north to Innisfail, Queensland, approximately 2,300 km (or 1,400 miles) away.

Prior to 1975, there were only eight Hmong-Lao students living and studying in Australia. With the collapse of the Royal Lao Government, these young men sought asylum and permanent residence in Australia. In partnership with local agencies, they were able to sponsor their families and relatives to come live with them. Australia’s Hmong population has ballooned from fewer than 300 people in 1985 to more than 3,000 in 2015. In the 1980s, Jane’s family, like many other Hmong refugee families in Innisfail farmed for a living, growing bananas, planting sweet potatoes, and raising chickens. “Life was easy to an extent, but emotionally tough.”

Jane currently lives in Brisbane with her 13-year-old daughter.

She is a single-mother, a domestic violence survivor, and an advocate for world peace. In 2017, she converted to Islam. Previously, she had been an atheist.

“I went to Catholic school [as a young girl], but had no faith.”

She was also a Buddhist for about two years. At one point she considered running off to Tibet to become a monk. “I wanted to be surrounded by people who didn’t judge me and [who] lived and breathed love.” Growing up, Jane experienced a great deal of bullying. As a first-generation Hmong Australian, she

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struggled greatly in comparison to her classmates who so often and very readily pointed to their countries of origin as places where they belonged. Jane felt constantly outside and these feelings of otherness exacerbated her low-self-esteem.

This self-doubt propelled Jane into a series of toxic and abusive relationships as an adult. Jane and her ex-boyfriend fought so frequently, the neighbors routinely called the police on them.

But then one day Jane woke-up and realized, “I couldn’t rely on a guy to bring happiness into my life...Who knows how long an uncleansed wound that keeps collecting more cuts, to widen the existing wound, can last until the person hurting [finally] realizes that they are hurt?” At Jane’s lowest point—she had no phone, no money, and few friends—she asked a complete stranger for help...and they refused. Jane felt utterly alone, betrayed by love, and so worthless that she not only thought about death, but attempted suicide.

In her recovery, one of Jane’s friends who happened to be Muslim directed her to the Quran. For the first time in her life, Jane felt a resonance. “I started to find my answers when I found Islam. I was meant to find Islam.” In particular, Jane was moved by the opening chapter and daily prayer, the al-Fatihah wherein Allah (God) is asked to “Show us the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the (path) of those who earn

Thine anger nor of those who go astray.”

Islam has taught Jane to forgive those who have wronged her and to be more aware and mindful of others as well as herself. She has learned to be more accepting and understanding of “life, love, and the issues we face globally...Being amongst the Muslim community in Australia, I believe that it doesn’t matter where you go in the world. All Muslims are taught the same teachings from the Quran, our Holy Bible, the word of Allah/God. It’s just that different cultures are mixed in...but the way they do everything is pretty much the same”. Additionally, Islam’s global presence has pushed Jane to understand the way our actions at home affect communities in other places. While Jane is still new to Islam, she strives to set a good example for her family and non-Muslim friends about her new faith’s commitment to peace and harmony throughout the world.

“Everyone greets one another at first sight with ‘Peace be upon you’ and in response to the person you simply say ‘Peace be upon you, too.’ What a beautiful way to greet your family or friends and even strangers!” Jane’s Muslim family effectively adopted her in her lowest moment and helped her to find her voice as well as her purpose in life. “It’s so important to keep growing as a person. It’s crucial to find your purpose in life, why you want to live, what makes it worth living for, and not just exist because if you just exist, you feel empty [and] lifeless…

How can one be driven [or] excited in life if the destination holds no importance to oneself?” Jane’s study of the Quran has allowed her to find a deeper connection with her family, friends, and personal self “even those who don’t like me...yet. It’s also amazing to have those who believe deeply in the teachings and can help be a guide for you when you fall down in life because for me, seeing is believing...this has really helped me through my hard[est] times…To feel such welcome and protectiveness from complete strangers; to see an Aunty cry for me when she has just met me; to be shown kindness and [to] be taught and guided by the teachings of the Quran [has] helped to heal me…I hope to be able to bring understanding for you all, just as they helped me!”

contrary to popular stereotypes. Indonesia is currently home to the largest Muslim population in the world. Additionally, 5 out of the last 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners have been Muslim.

“My world has turned upside down and I am ever so grateful for everything in my life...When I first converted and became a Muslim...I was blessed with family and since that day my Muslim family keeps growing. They took me in and welcomed me and helped me out so much, I couldn’t have gotten through [my recovery] without all these beautiful individuals.”

Nowadays, Jane is a home care employee, but she continues to preach and pursue world peace. Her vision is to build a better future for her daughter and for all people, especially those without a voice. “There is so much pain in the world...My heart hurts for those who are hurting because I know what it feels like to feel absolutely worthless.” Jane has overcome tremendous obstacles: bullying, emotional and physical abuse from others as well as herself, drugs, poverty, and homelessness. Her resiliency and desire to do good in the world stands at odds with the struggles she has borne. Rather than maintaining her anger, she has chosen to build bridges. “Mind you—no one is perfect, but we [can] all strive to try better, to try and help where and when we can everyday.” Jane doesn’t believe you need to be Muslim to help bring about peace and change.

“Even if you are not ready to take on the faith of God now or ever—it’s alright. You can still bring change about and make world peace happen by working on yourself [and allowing] what is within you to be released out.” Jane would love to work with people in need, to help rescue animals, protect the environment, learn new technologies, and revisit ancient histories. All “knowledge is gold.” And Jane, the dreamer, wants us all to have faith and to want more from the world.

“For so long it only seemed like I was getting more and more lost and that there wasn’t much hope for me in my future.”

Nonetheless, Jane realized that if she wanted to do something different and accomplish more with her life, she had to first find help for herself. Now she wants to return the favor to help other women in the world. She consented to telling her story via Hmong Women Take on the World in part to return to the Hmong community which she has lost touch with over the years. The other reason she felt empowered to share her experience was the hope that we might all endeavor to achieve world peace together. “World peace is not just a word. World peace is an action…[and] Love is the answer.”

“Mind you—

no one is perfect, but we [can] all

strive to try better,

to try and help where and when we

can everyday.”

Jane’s biological family, however, still somewhat struggles with her conversion. Many assume Islam is like a cult—once you join, you can’t leave. Others worry she has joined a secret terrorist sect, but neither of these things are true. Islam is one of the world’s most popular religions, second in followers only to Christianity. Globally, 1 out of 4 people are Muslim and only 1 out of 5 Muslims actually live in the Middle East,

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Moving Beyond the Middle Lane Written by Myder Ly

Kaosong Yang was born in Laos but raised in the United States from the age of one. Growing up in the Hmong community, she carefully walked “the middle lane” of life. On one side of this lane, she knew she could be married at a very young age and would have a life full of uncertainties.

On the other side of the lane, she could have the opportunity to build a voice for herself, but she would be seen as defiant. From an early age, Kaosong knew she couldn’t stay in the middle lane for ever. She would need to explore other lanes and redefine what it meant to be Hmong and a girl.

ries. They encouraged her to ignore the pressure of getting married and strive to be independent. Her father, a pastor, was the first to tell her she could be anything she wanted to be, even an “engineer”. Her mom fully supported her endeavors by frequently planting words of encouragement and reminding her to focus on the path to college. Her grandmother, who never remarried after her husband passed away over 40 years ago, often would tell her not to marry young, and instead to go to school and be self-sufficient.

Traditionally, Hmong daughters are expected to marry young and spend their lives taking care of their families.

College was not an option. At a very young age, daughters are trained and prepped to fit the role of a daughter-in-law, known as a “nyab.” They are taught to be obedient and never speak above their husband or in-laws. Because, ultimately, the biggest fear—and disgrace—for a Hmong girl would be getting sent back to her family.

Kaosong chose a different lane in life than many of her peers who were married and started having children before they even graduated from high school. She grew up knowing that “college was always going to happen” and that “there was no other route in life” for her.

She went to the University of Minnesota and earned a bachelor’s and master’s in industrial engineering. She confidently walked through life without having to be burdened with the pressure of being a Hmong daughter. She often used the word lucky to describe the support she had. “...My parents protected me from all the negatives of Hmong life and taught me to chase my goals,” she said.

Fortunately, Kaosong was blessed with non-traditional parents who told her that being Hmong should be the least of her wor-

Kaosong eventually married an understanding man and have loving in-laws, but having a non-traditional upbringing was the

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key to her achievements. “If I did not have the parents I had, I would not be where I am today.” She is a strong believer that success is so much easier to achieve when it is instilled in the minds of children and taught alongside with the family’s values.

Over the years and working as an industrial engineer, Kaosong realized there is much more progress still needed to be done in the mindsets of our young Hmong girls. She thought, by now in the 21st century, there would be more Hmong women pursuing STEM careers, but there aren’t.

Kaosong wants all Hmong girls to know that if your interests or curiosity pinches at the thought of wanting more or becoming bigger and better, listen to your inner voice and explore what seems to be the impossible; especially, if it is going to rattle the norm. If that fire from within is burning to find out how an airplane stays above the clouds, go and discover it. If your passion of drawing a rose leads you to sketching a bed of flowers on a roof of a three dimensional skyscraper, take it to the next level and pursue that fuming interest.

Technological innovation is going to be the driving force into the future. “Motivating children to get excited about technical careers should be celebrated like sports,” expressed Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science Technology). Like Dean, Kaosong shares the same vision because “when you teach them young, they will go on believing their whole life that they can become it.”

There is a big misconception that engineering is only for boys.

“It is not just sitting in a laboratory and running simulations and

using boring tools to fix things,” Kaosong says. “Engineering requires working with people and consulting, doing presentations and sharing knowledge to improve systems in all areas of a business.” With the right guidance and mentorship programs, Kaosong knows more Hmong girls would take interest in STEM careers.

Respectfully, Hmong girls should not limit themselves and yield to think STEM careers are not for them. In fact, they should take advantage of all the opportunities to change the rules so that every Hmong girl after them can be stronger.

In an interview by Rebecca Jarvis on ABC’s News-Real Biz, she reports that there are only 60,000 engineering graduates available for hire per year in the entire United States while China produces 600,000 engineers. Not to mention, companies such as The Boeing Company, alone, looks to hire 70,000 engineers every year. There is a high demand for engineers in the United States and the diversity factor of being a female and a minority gives Hmong girls an even better opportunity to obtain employment in the high paying jobs of science and engineering.

Kaosong’s perseverance and resilience has earned her her success. She has worked in the healthcare industry for over 18 years and continues to work towards Chief Officer of Operations in the company. Her future endeavors include spreading awareness for more mentorship programs to expose more Hmong girls to STEM careers. She wants to help Hmong girls explore other lanes in life so they can proudly say what she had the opportunity to say, “I am Hmong, I am a girl, and I am an engineer!”

“I am Hmong, I am a girl, and I am an engineer!”

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S TO RY T E L L E R | Q& A

Navigating Traditional and Modern Worlds in Vietnam Written and Translated by Pa Dao Vang

Sinh Quan Kong is passionate about finding ways to better the Hmong community in Vietnam. She is looking for answers from her Hmong sisters to learn from them. She wants to encourage the younger generation to get an education before marriage.

She studied Pharmacy at Lao Cai Medical Secondary School.

Sinh was interviewed by Mai E. Moua, a HWTOTW Tribal Leader in Boston, Massachusetts.

Let’s start by getting to know you. Tell us about yourself.

I am 25 years old. I live in the village Tshav Nyuj. My parents live in Niam Dawm, a little far away from here. We live in the Lao Cai province. When my parents first moved to Niam Dawm, it was very poor with no drinking water. After the Vietnam War, the government placed my parents in Tshav Nyuj near China. It’s next to a river people called Dej Ntsuab.

I work on the farm planting fruits and vegetables. I also sell many items online, one being the paj ntaub (“flower cloth” with intricate designs sewn to make traditional Hmoob outfits or used in story cloth). I finished studying pharmacy in 2013.

I went to work with a brother in Hanoi as a customer service representative for a year.

I heard about HWTOTW from sister Mim Vaj, whom I’ve met in Hanoi when we worked together. After completing school, I went back home and she got married and moved to the United States. One day she told me about this organization, and how they want to hear the stories of Hmong sisters from around the world. I decided that I want to be a part of it, and that’s why I’m here with you all today.

I want to open a store to sell Hmong purses, skirts, shirts, and hats to earn some money to help other Hmong women in the

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villages. The most important thing in my life is having both my parents support my efforts. In our country, parents often say if you’re a daughter, after you’re done with school, you leave your parents to marry. In my family there are seven daughters and no sons, so my parents have always supported us in what we wanted to do. Even though my parents are old, they still work to earn money so we can get an education. This makes me very happy and I am proud of my parents.

As for kev nyuaj siab (struggles) in Vietnam, we stress about not being able to find a job after finishing school if you don’t have money. If you don’t have money or relatives in those positions, it’s hard to get employed. This applies to both genders.

I’m happy with my life. I married a Co (Mien) husband who supports me.

I want my Hmong sisters to come up with ideas to help us in Vietnam, because in our country, the wives go to China to work. They focus so much on earning that they forget about their households.

How did you meet your husband?

When I worked in Hanoi, my husband was learning to become a chef. That was where we met. We’ve gotten to know each other and became friends. We didn’t think we would end up together.

Since he’s Co, does he speak Hmong?

We converse in Vietnamese. Niam pog (mother-in-law) and kwv (younger brother) are Christians with the Hmong church so they know Hmong. He knows a little Hmoob Dawb (white Hmong). We mainly speak Hmoob Leeg (green Hmong) so he’s a little embarrassed to speak it.

When you two have children, what language(s) will you teach them?

We were just talking about this. When we lived in the city, he enjoyed speaking English. We want to teach our children Hmong, Mien, English, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Since we no longer have sons in our family, my second eldest sister and I brought our husbands to live with us.

Are your sisters done with school and what are they doing?

My sisters farm.

Many of us have seen on Facebook about girls getting kidnapped for marriage (bride-captured). Were there incidents like that in your village?

Not in our village. When I was young, there were bride-capture incidents in our province and there still are. It happens in the hauv toj (at the edge of the village). During the new year when everyone comes to celebrate, that’s usually when it takes place.

I can see that it’s not a good thing and we need to change that.

What can we do to teach our young Hmong men not to do that?

Some have been taught and encouraged to participate in bride-capture by their parents. I don’t know for sure but from what I know, an example is if you’re a son and you like a hluas nkauj (young lady), and you don’t do it first, then someone else might do that and take your lover. That’s why they have the practice.

Are the Hmong in Vietnam turning to education or would they rather farm? Are there those who don’t want to get an education or don’t have the finances to get one?

In my family, my parents always encouraged us to go to school.

That’s just my family though. The mindset of the Hmong com-

munity hasn’t changed. Some don’t have the money for their kids to get educated. While others that do would rather let the sons go so they can come back to help them. If the daughters go, they will leave when they get married. So they let the sons go instead. This is not a good way of thinking.

Parents also teach their children that if you go to school and become old, no one would marry you. Therefore, the kids end up marrying young and they fall into the same cycle of poverty.

This is a concern of mine. How do I help them when they’re 14, 15, or 16? They don’t know how to earn a living or take care of their young children. I want the elders to change their views and support their children towards getting an education.

Can you talk about the ones who married young? Are they from toj siab (mountain villages) or does that apply to everyone?

Part of it is because they live in toj siab. Another is the parents planting the wrong ideas in their head, like being too old and no one wanting to marry you. In the two surrounding towns next to mine, I was considered old at 23. Before I was married, a little child knew to ask me, “Why aren’t you married? We want to eat nqaij (meat or feast).” Others do want their daughters to wait until they get to my age. Others would say I should marry in case there might not be any young men left to marry, only orphans or old men.

What do you want to say to your sisters worldwide?

I want to know how the sisters earn a living in terms of supporting themselves to see if there are things we can learn to better ourselves.

Sinh sells Hmong items like the paj ntaub, xauv, and earrings on her Facebook page. For more information about the products and to support her, please visit her Facebook at this link (https://www.facebook.com/kute.susu.549).

“I want to open a store to sell Hmong purses, skirts, shirts, and hats to earn some money to help other Hmong women in the villages.”

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On Dreaming Bigger Than the Hmong Community An Anonymous Story Written by Pa N. Vue

W

hen Pahoua Vang (alias) was 17 years old, her mom decided to move to from Minnesota to California to start a tomato farm. It was the summer after Pahoua’s sophomore year of high school, and she went along to take care of her younger siblings. In California, Pahoua met her boyfriend, and like any 17-year-olds in love, they were together daily helping her mom work the tomato farm.

“My mom became worried about people talking [about us] and losing face.” Losing face or “poob ntsej muag” is a common Hmong expression. Dia Cha, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies at St. Cloud State University, defines it as “suffering humiliation, embarrassment, or loss of dignity before friends, family, or colleagues” in her book Hmong American Concepts of Health, Healing, and Conventional Medicine.

Pahoua’s mom gave her an ultimatum: marry her boyfriend or break up with him. “We were in love,” Pahoua explained. “We didn’t know what to do. We were just kids.” She had just finished high school, had already been accepted to college and was preparing to go, but under her mom’s pressure and the watchful

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eyes of the Hmong community, she and her boyfriend decided to get married. Pahoua was 18.

They would be married for five years. Pahoua remembers bills, school, work and lots of pressure to have kids. Her new husband was trying to hold down a job, and she was trying to go to school and also work. The two of them decided together that they wouldn’t have any children until they were ready. Still his relatives wondered, was the lack of children because of her?

“We were struggling financially and emotionally,” Pahoua said about her life then. “Every day you get up and you just try.”

She desperately wanted to tell her parents about what she was going through, but she also wanted to make the marriage work for her parents and for herself. After all, a divorce wasn’t an easy thing, and her family was very religious. “It was hard to get the words out,” she said, her voice breaking. “I was really scared and was sure that my parents were going to disown me.”

When she finally got up the courage and expressed her desire for a divorce to her parents, to her surprise, they were really

supportive. The conversation and then the divorce actually brought them closer together. Pahoua and her husband hadn’t completed any formal paperwork for their marriage, so there were no court procedures and no lawyers involved. Instead, their divorce went through the Hmong community. The elders from both sides of the families came together and tried desperately to talk them into reconciling. They made promises to help her manage him—even though the problem wasn’t him. People gossiped. They warned her that at her age no one would want to marry her if she moved forward with the divorce. Whether or not their intentions were good, they made her feel like “used goods”.

In the end, Pahoua stuck to her decision. “Even though going through the divorce process was hard and emotionally draining,” she said. “I’m glad I went through it.”

the many differences between their two cultures in an open manner. He was respectful of everything she had to share.

She couldn’t keep him a secret forever either. Her father discovered their relationship while making a call to Pahoua—her boyfriend picked up the phone—and soon after he met her family.

To her surprise again, everything went extremely well. “They just took him in and loved him immediately,” she said. “My dad was introducing him to everybody like he was already his son-in-law.”

As Pahoua reflected back on her decision to marry someone who wasn’t Hmong, she admitted that it wasn’t easy. However, she was 24 and she was in a better place to make a decision about the man she was going to marry. “If you see yourself growing old with this person and you love him, then that is the person for you. It doesn’t have to be a Hmong guy.

Don’t restrict yourself.”

Pahoua and her husband have two daughters together, and Pahoua couldn’t imagine either of them marrying as young as she did all those years ago.

“...Think about what you

She found herself in her 20s an “old maid,” she said with a chuckle, living alone in the city. Not dissimilar to Jane Austen’s time, by traditional Hmong standards, women should be settled with a husband and possibly children by their late teens and early twenties. Pahoua’s family lived in another state, and her parents and oldest brother continuously pressured her to return home. “That was the mentality,” Pahoua said.

“That I could not be alone as a single Hmong woman.” Another Austen-like perspective.

want your life to be like and dream big beause

“There are choices,” she said.

Just because a person grew up in the Hmong community doesn’t mean they are limited to what the community wants them to do. They shouldn’t let themselves be boxed in by traditional expectations and rules— no matter how much they respect the culture and their elders.

“If you’re going to be miserable, then [whatever it is they want you to do] shouldn’t be an option for you.”

anything is possible.”

Pahoua didn’t go home, and during this time on her own, she met the man she has been married to for the last 25 years— an American. A “meskas” as white people are often referred to in the Hmong community. It’s a term derived from the word “American” but with Hmong tones, a word that excludes membership to the Hmong community.

“I wasn’t looking for anyone different,” Pahoua said thoughtfully. “Maybe he found me.”

They started dating and eventually moved in together, but she admitted that at first it was difficult to picture him in the Hmong community and with her family. “Is he going to be respectful of my culture? Is he going to understand my background? Is he going to be willing to go to my family’s house and sleep on the floor? Eat the bland food that we eat that my mom’s going to make?” She was “afraid” to take him to meet the family.

“Take your time,” Pahoua continued. “Think about what you want your life to be like and dream big because anything is possible. I really don’t think I was dreaming that big when I was 18 and [I felt] I didn’t have any other choice, [but] I did.”

She also suggests that if you know other Hmong sisters who are going through a divorce, try not to judge them. Instead, “Listen and try to understand. Open your heart to them.”

“The world is so much bigger than just my little world,” Pahoua said, referencing her experience as a married teenager. “There’s more to life.”

So don’t let yourself get boxed in.

Pahoua quickly learned, however, that she was able to talk to this meskas about her culture, traditional Hmong practices, and

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Taking Action: One Woman’s Success in the Beauty Industry Written by Alee Fayngold

A

woman’s wedding day is a day in which she is the center of attention. She has probably been thinking of this day since she was a little girl, and this holds true no matter what culture or what ethnicity you associate with; thus, she must look her best from head to toe. Therefore, professional makeup artists are called to action to beautify brides by bringing out their best features for the cameras, the videos, and most importantly, their grooms. Michelle Nguyen of Sydney, Australia is a professional makeup artist and owner of a beauty salon. She lives to make brides happy and is often called to action for their special day.

Michelle was born in Thailand into a family of 10 and immigrated to Australia when she was only two years old. She is married and a mother of two boys and one beautiful daughter and just recently became the owner of her salon. She received her beauty therapy diploma 8 years ago and has been practicing ever since. She absolutely loves her career in makeup. She says that she joined Hmong Women Take on The World as a storyteller because she saw the importance in collaboration and connection with women all over the world. She wants to educate and teach others about makeup because makeup requires skills.

She says, “I believe that all Hmong women should come together and take on the world,” because she believes that Hmong women have not been as vocal as they could be.

The Knot, today’s online wedding planning site, reports that most couples are spending a national average of $33,391 for their weddings and this excludes the honeymoon. There’s no doubt that makeup is important to a bride’s overall look and, thus, an important part of this budget. According to Brides magazine, every bride should “test drive the full look” before the wedding day. Michelle does a lot of bride makeup consultations for the bride and her party days and weeks before the actual big day. A bride’s makeup must flow with the outfit she will be wearing. Many of Michelle’s brides wear their traditional clothing, which are very colorful at times, and Michelle must work the makeup into matching well with all the outfits.

Michelle’s typical day starts before anyone is up. For anyone who has been a bride, especially a Hmong bride, we know how early things start. In addition, because the bride’s day starts ear74

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ly, so does Michelle’s, for her job is to make the bride and the bridal party look magnificent on the wedding day. Even though Michelle has her work cut out for her, she said that she finds the most satisfaction in her clients’ approval of her finished work.

Michelle says, “I love my job, every weekend you head out to a job and you have a bridal party and the look that they give back to you after they’ve seen themselves in the mirror is really rewarding.” She talks about being “8 years strong” in the beauty industry which says a lot about how Michelle feels about her life as a beauty professional. According to Forbes magazine, the beauty industry is a huge “gold mine” for women entrepreneurs and I’m sure for men as well.

Michelle’s success wasn’t overnight. She says “it took a lot of practice, it took a lot of classes, and it took a lot of time, but at the end of the day, if you have a lot of passion, nothing can stop you.” And that’s exactly what Michelle would like every one of her Hmong sisters to realize—passion drives and is the key to success. For Michelle, applying makeup on others “is like freedom”. With the success of her salon, one day she would like to hold educational workshops for women who want to know more about makeup but lack the knowledge and skills. Michelle is a prime example that when there’s will, there’s strength. So if you are pursuing your dreams, do not let anything stop you. Go out there and seek what you desire.

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One Man’s Incredible Experience with Hmong Women Mentors Written by Pa N. Vue

A flurry of news-related and grainy photos of Chenue Her’s family life in the Twin Cities can be found on his official Facebook page for 13News Now (WVEC), an ABC affiliate in Norfolk, Virginia. It’s a glimpse of a family’s hope after coming to the United States. In a Father’s day picture from 2017, Chenue’s caption reads, “To the man who has always taught me to love people. Happy Father’s Day, pops. Thank you for giving me the world.” Chenue credits his parents for pushing and encouraging him and his siblings to pursue careers they were passionate

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about, even if these careers were still new to the Hmong community. It was this open-mindedness and love for people that taught Chenue to reach out for mentorship, especially when he wasn’t sure what he was doing.

Like many Hmong parents, Chenue’s parents had hopes that their son would initially become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer.

“I think I’ve always known that math and science really weren’t my strong suit,” Chenue said, referencing the two subjects that

many Hmong students report parents wanting them to pursue careers in. As a child, he was a creative thinker who enjoyed reading and writing. He gravitated toward storytelling, an oratory practice of the Hmong and something he witnessed his parents and grandparents do throughout his life. But even with all his parents’ support, when Chenue realized he wanted to be a reporter, he still felt daunted to break the news to them. Initially, his parents were hesitant. Could this be a “real career”? Would Chenue be able to get a job?

But he remembered what his parents often told him, “Find what you’re good at and play to your strengths.” So to help his parents understand a possible career in the journalism industry, Chenue referenced Hmong women who were already successful reporters: Bao Vang, former Sunrise 7 anchor in Wausau, Wisconsin, Boua Xiong of CARE TV in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and Gia Vang of Fox26 KMPH in Fresno, California. With assurance that a career in journalism was possible, Chenue’s parents eventually came around. “I think I was very lucky to have parents who didn’t push me to pursue [math and science].”

Chenue attended the University of Northwestern-St. Paul where he studied electronic media communication and started exploring the industry in depth. “It was intimidating at first,” he said.

There were no Hmong men in the business. Chenue emailed every news reporter in the Twin Cities and one of them was Bao Vang. “It was a Hmong woman who helped me out. She was in the business and she was doing well, and she guided me.” To this day, Chenue credits the Hmong women in the journalism industry as a critical part of what gave him the courage to pursue his own career.

After graduating, Chenue went on to report for KEZI 9 in Eugene, Oregon, an ABC affiliate, where he was nominated two years in a row as a best local news personality finalist by the “Eugene Weekly”. As a current reporter for 13News Now, Chenue covers topics ranging from breaking news to feature stories to the weather. “There are so many good stories that need to be told and need to be heard,” he said.

“Having Hmong women mentors was crucial,” he explained. “[They] provided me with a lot of insight and a lot of knowledge that I didn’t have. I can turn to them and ask for input or ask for advice on how to navigate certain things [in the industry].” Having women mentors gave him a “wider scope” and perspective.

“I think that sometimes we forget how important it is to uplift the women in our community,” Chenue continued. From what he’s witnessed, the Hmong community celebrates Hmong men’s accomplishments more frequently and more vocally than they do Hmong women’s accomplishments. There seems to be a misconception that lifting one group up means that you can’t lift another group up. “Just because you’re a Hmong man who is supporting Hmong women doesn’t mean that you’re not supportive of Hmong men,” he explained. “Just because [women] are a part of this cause doesn’t mean they don’t support us.”

“It was a Hmong woman who

helped me out...

She was in the business...and

she guided me.”

As matter of fact, Chenue recommends that when Hmong men see a Hmong woman do something awesome, they ought to be vocally uplifting about it. “For me, it is so much easier to say something nice to someone than to put someone down. A nice compliment can go a long way.”

“We shouldn’t be intimidated when we see a Hmong woman succeed,” he added. “[Their] success is our success. At the end of the day, we’re all part of the Hmong community. We should celebrate Hmong women success as we do our own.”

Chenue summarizes his success in one equation: family support + mentors = success. When he first made up his mind to pursue journalism, his family and friends had many questions.

“People just wanted to know if it was realistic because you don’t see Hmong people on mainstream media.” Although he had supporters, there were those who thought he was wasting his time. People doubted that media outlets would put him on TV because he’s Hmong and because he’s short.

But Chenue has some advice for anyone who is pursuing a nontraditional career: Don’t let fear stop you. Be curious. Explore. Then find mentors—even if they’re not the same gender.

“You’d be surprised at how willing people are to help if they can sense that you’re passionate.” And mostly important of all, stand up for what you believe in.

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Fashionably Different and What It Takes to Be Happy Among a Sea of Doctor-Siblings Written By Lilian Thaoxaochay

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n 2014, at the launch of the United Nations Women HeForShe campaign, actress and goodwill ambassador, Emma Watson famously declared, “If not me, then who? If not now, then when?” Stockton native Paku Her took these words to heart. She was working as an office manager at her brother’s medical clinic, and had begun working there to ostensibly gain “workplace experience”, but as she moved from receptionist to office manager, she realized a career in health and/or medicine wasn’t for her. Paku began to make plans to pursue her long lost, but still deeply rooted, dream of working in fashion.

Paku received a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from CSU, Stanislaus, a 45-minute drive south from her hometown in the California Central Valley where immigrants have long migrated to work in the fields with the hopes that one day their American born and raised children will pursue better jobs and lead easier lives. And initially, upon graduation, Paku had told her parents that her career plans had been to become a physical therapist.

However, her heart was always somewhere else.

“Ever since I was young...[especially] in my junior and senior years of high school, my parents and I didn’t see eye to eye about my future career, and they definitely didn’t see fashion designing as an option.”

Paku’s parents had wanted her to go into the medical field or to at least pursue a career in health. The Hers were refugees from the American Secret War in Laos and had had no real opportunities to go to school. Their “American Dream” was for their children to do well in school and either become doctors, lawyers, or teachers—with “doctor” of course, being at the top of the job pyramid. This is not an unfamiliar expectation...for many of us.

However, one- to two-thirds of undergraduate “premeds” drop out before their senior year and choose other majors, and less than 40% of medical school applicants are actually accepted.

Paku is the eighth of ten children. Three of her brothers and one of her sisters—that is 40% of her siblings—are doctors, and the others work in health-related fields. “Parents dreaming of

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their children becoming doctors is wishful thinking, having my parent’s dream come true four times becomes a family expectation.” Growing up, Paku’s siblings failed to understand her interests in fashion. Pursuing such a career was, ironically, considered very impractical and unfashionable in her household.

Unable to convince her parents to allow her to apply to fashion school, Paku urged her to parents let her go away to a fouryear-college. Initially they were concerned for her well-being as she was a girl and her older sisters had only attended colleges in town, but after presenting them with a detailed and well thought out plan of action—she was only going to be 45 minutes away—her parents agreed to let her “go away” for college.

Whereas Paku’s second oldest sister was an excellent student, graduating as class valedictorian and ranking 1st on the school badminton team, Paku struggled to live up to expectations. She was an average “C” student and performed poorly in both math and science classes. In college, Paku changed her major multiple times before settling on a degree program that was both sufficiently “practical” and related to the health field. She called her plan to become a physical therapist “my biggest lie”. “When you live in a world in which there were clear definitions of what is right and what was wrong career wise, you become the best actress there is in saying all the right things to provoke the right responses.” In college, Paku realized the real reason why she had failed to emulate her older sister was because they were so different. They both wanted different things in life and by trying to be someone or something that she was not, Paku had set herself up for failure.

Toward the end of her college years, Paku began to blog. She felt it was a necessary outlet to help showcase her personal style even as she hit the science books. Paku considers herself a fashionable as well as very modern type of woman. She is an avid social mediaist and is a self-described true millennial (vs. Gen X’er), but throughout the latter 90s and early 2000s, there weren’t very many Hmong pop icons or figures that she felt greatly energized by. Instead, Paku drew inspiration from women like Victoria Beckham, former Spice Girl turned fash-

ion designer. Now a mother, Paku hopes to set an example for her daughter and other young girls wanting to break the mold, challenging the status quo about what it means to be a Hmong woman in the world today.

by the complacency she was experiencing. Paku yearned for a new challenge. She had worked her way up from receptionist to office manager. It was time to do something new, something more meaningful.

“To be a Hmong woman,” she says, “is to be everything and anything. There’s so much the world has yet to learn about Hmong women. Let’s show them how incredibly diverse we are.”

“I really hated going to work everyday. I didn’t want to work for other people anymore. I wanted to be my own boss—a Girl Boss. After I had my daughter...my perspective and outlook on life changed and became more purposeful.”

Paku is a very organized woman. She excels at planning, which made her an excellent fit and office manager at her brother’s medical clinic. “Now that I think about it, maybe that’s what we [she and her brother] have in common. We both like to plan things,” she laughed.

Even her “abrupt departure” from his workplace was a well laid-out plan.

Paku further impressed me during our interview when she dropped the dates for her self-published books.

These publications had been written while in the “creative closet”, and when she emerged as fashion-Paku (as opposed to PT-Paku), she was able to give copies of her books to her family members as proof of her passion and commitment to fashion as well as writing.

Paku’s early life as a closet creative among highly successful and yet conventional siblings informs her new life’s purpose as a social entrepreneur: to inspire, to move, and to encourage young adults as well as older men and women to pursue their dreams.

While her family is still at times confused about what she does as an “influencer”, they have been incredibly supportive and invested in all of her projects.

While she may not have become a doctor, lawyer, or teacher, Paku hopes that her success will help pave the way for other young men and women interested in less conventional careers.

Ironically, as a small child, Paku hated reading and writing. She never thought she’d be a writer. In college, she failed her English placement test twice and was placed in remedial English courses. She credits these classes as teaching her to both appreciate reading more and to write better. After reading through The Twilight Saga and the Fifty Shades trilogy, she was inspired to write her own novels with the little bits of dialogue floating through her mind. The Reasoning of Luke (2014) and it’s sequel, The Understanding of Lyla (2016) are both available online for purchase. While Paku writes mainly young adult fiction, she sometimes stumbles upon inspiration from small interactions in her everyday life, including disagreements with her husband.

Paku describes her husband as both very supportive and practical. He helps to ground her when her ideas branch out too wildly, “like when I want to be a [head] chef but he reminds me that I’m a much better sous chef”. He greatly encouraged her to pursue her dreams when she realized that while she had a great job at a very successful medical clinic, she felt stifled

Regardless of her career choices, Paku still internalizes the hard work ethic her parents have instilled in all of their children. “My father always taught us to want more”, she says.

Growing up, the Her siblings were encouraged to fight harder for the things they wanted, to accomplish twice the amount of success as others. That grit and determination really shines in Paku and in all of her pursuits as a fashion and lifestyle blogger, as a writer, and as a wife and mother.

“If we constantly live in fear of being our true selves, then what are we living for?”

If you’ve felt inspired by Paku’s journey, you can join her tribe at ThePakuHer.com or follow her @thepakuher on both Facebook and Instagram. Her web series #GIRLTALK is about encouraging folks to live their most genuine selves and discusses everyday as well as more in-depth topics from this season’s hottest trends to your “greatest fears”.

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Parenting, Advocacy, and Awareness for Parents of Children With Special Needs Written by K.M. Lee

“After many failed attempts at suicide,” PaNyia Vang recalls, “I started to think that if I’m going to reach that degree of determination, I might as well push harder in a different direction.”

Being dealt an unlucky set of cards in life, PaNyia has proven to be a compassionate mother, a loving wife, and a strong advocate of special needs support within the Hmong community. She is an advocate because two of her children were diagnosed with rare, fatal medical conditions and she couldn’t find the proper support for most of her journey, but she did find strength, bursts of guidance, and inspiration from unlikely sources.

PaNyia was born in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. She was fortunate to have a best friend in middle school, and the relationship blossomed into marriage when she was seventeen years old. She moved to Kansas to live with him and his family. With friendship as their foundation, it served as their greatest strength in the trials to come.

A few years after their marriage, PaNyia became pregnant and the young couple was ecstatic. But six months into her pregnancy, their baby was diagnosed with Trisomy 13, Patau Syndrome, a rare condition that interferes with normal development, causing intellectual disabilities and physical abnormalities. Patau Syndrome largely leads to miscarriage or having a stillborn baby, which means dead at birth. If her baby survived birth, PaNyia says, “the statistics of this diagnosis gave her a 90% chance of passing away before the age of one.” If she made it to her first birthday, the child would be wheelchair-bound, suffer ongoing health conditions, and be 100% dependent on caretakers. The young couple visited the clinic every week to see if the baby was still alive in PaNyia’s womb. “It was heart wrenching each time they put the scope on my stomach,” she recalls, “are

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they still going to find a heartbeat this time?”

PaNyia and her husband were overwhelmingly reminded of the baby’s high chance of mortality by the team of medical professionals constantly handing them data and statistics. They would regularly hear advice like: You need to abort this pregnancy.

You’ll never carry to term. Even if you do carry to term, life will be hard. Termination is your best and preferred option. At home, the Hmong community inflicted as much pain. She’d constantly hear things like: “Kuv muaj kev npam yav tag los.

Tej zaum kuv ua txhaum rau kuv cov menyuam yav thaum ub lawm.” I’ve been cursed from a past life. Maybe I did something wrong to my children in another lifetime. Their scouring words began to affect the young couple.

Miraculously, Gao Hli, was born. She had extra fingers, a cleft lip (a split in her upper lip), and partial hearing and vision. Gao Hli spent one month in the hospital. When she was finally discharged, she was put straight onto hospice care, or end-of-life care. In other words, she was discharged with the immediate countdown to her death. PaNyia says, “they told us to prepare for her funeral.”

The young couple had an apartment but since her husband attended the frequent hospital appointments and emergencies, he couldn’t hold a steady job so the couple went to live with her in-laws. With Gao Hli, it was an endless cycle of caretaking.

“There were no nurses or personal care assistants. There were none of these services where we were living,” PaNyia says.

“My husband felt the pressure to make ends meet for his little family. It took a toll on him. I no longer had him as a support system,” she sadly recalls. Pa Nyia started spiraling into isolation and emptiness.

deteriorate like this. Living here, I can’t be the best mom. This state doesn’t have the capacity to support our daughter. I need to have people who know what they’re doing.” It was a tough decision for him but he wasn’t ready to lose his best friend, or his kids. With $3.00 in their bank account and a small line of credit, they moved to Minnesota where they lived in her mother’s basement and had their third child.

After some years, PaNyia became pregnant again with their fourth child. Six months into her pregnancy, the baby was diagnosed with anencephaly, a fatal defect where the skull bone or scalp never develops to fully enclose or protect the entire brain.

It’s also accompanied with other severe defects. With partially functioning brain stems, the baby would have no control of the most basic survival skills, such as breathing or eating. “Once again, we walked the same path as we did with our first child,” Pa Nyia sadly recalls, “but since it was a more terminal medical condition, we walked into a funeral home shopping for the perfect casket instead of walking into a baby store shopping for the perfect baby crib.” Her son lived two beautiful days.

“I started getting miserable,” PaNyia says, “it led me down a road of unawareness and depression. Slowly, thoughts of suicide crept in. I’m not proud of it but I felt so much hurt that I became a cutter. I started cutting myself a lot. It became easier to feel physical pain than the pain inside my heart. Instead of feeling what was going on around me, I took that pain away with another pain. It was like a drug.”

While suicidal thoughts boomeranged around PaNyia’s mind, she tried her very best to remain a good mom. At night, her daughter needed special equipment to breathe, so PaNyia would have to periodically check on her. While she sat beside her sleeping daughter, PaNyia would enjoy her favorite past time, playing video games. “A new game had recently come out. It was a life changer because it was a game where you could play in real time with people around the world. I started connecting to strangers and I’d play with them every night. We began to share personal stories. They came from all walks of life, all ages, and they had a lot of life experience. They started to give me new beliefs,” PaNyia says. Her online friends became her only source of support. “When I was having breakdowns, they’d call my cell phone. Or if I was at a hospital overnight, they’d call me on the hospital phone line. They helped me find support groups online that were specific to me. I call them my guardian angels and they are my lifelong friends.”

From there, PaNyia started her own research and found that the best medical support for Gao Hli was out-of-state, Texas or Minnesota. Minnesota was the obvious choice because it was familiar and Pa Nyia had family there. At that time, Pa Nyia was pregnant with their second child, and she remembers the conversation with her husband to push for the move. She says, “I told my husband that I can’t watch my daughter or myself

PaNyia woke up one morning and thought, “Kuv niaj hnub tos seb puas muaj ib hnub twg muaj ib lub suab los qhia rau kuv kom kuv lub neej pauv. Every day I wait, hoping that perhaps a voice will appear and bring clarity to my life, to change it.

“But I realized that if I keep waiting, what if that person never comes?” Her son’s death illuminated a new path for Pa Nyia.

“After my son’s passing I knew I had to do something about peer support and the stigma about special needs and disabilities, especially within my own Hmong community.” She was scared and she didn’t have any experience or resources. She thought to herself, I’m only a mother, what abilities do I have?

She started with a Facebook group called Hmong with Special Needs, and later created her own website. It’s a growing movement and there’s been increasing numbers of families who’ve come forward. Although she is too humble to admit it, she has become a guardian for many of the families and serves as a guide through unknown and unfamiliar territory.

Her advocacy journey has led her to work in non-profits, helping parents of special needs navigate medical, legal, and community networks. PaNyia hopes the community can come together as a team and “stop trying to tear each other down for personal agendas.” For more information on her advocacy work and story, she provides a narrative in her blog, diaryofahmongmom.com.

“Sometimes, you’re in a dark place but then you start to see candles lighting your path. You may have to keep walking until you find them,” PaNyia says. Every time she was thrust into despair, PaNyia was guided by moments of inspiration and love, which at times came in the form of her husband, online friends, children, or her son’s spirit. PaNyia is an unsung hero, and her story stands as a guide for those who feel alone in their struggle with special needs.

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Reconciling Sexuality and Duty: A Hmong Australian LGBTQIA+ Story Written by Lillian Thaoxaochay

In 2011, Dolly Vang wrote a letter to her parents, painstakingly composed in Hmong, detailing the secret life and love she had hidden from them since she was 16 years old. She left it on their bed for them to read. Although they have never discussed it with her, Dolly knows her parents must have read the letter.

Whereas they used to believe her partner of 12 years was just a “friend”, they now realize the more intimate space Dolly’s partner, a woman, occupies. Dolly and her partner currently live together and are engaged to be married. Dolly is a lesbian and part of the LGBTQIA+ community. LGBTQIA+ stands for: lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and/or questioning, intersex, and asexual or sometimes, allies. The “+” symbolizes other sexualities, sexes, and gender identifications not included in the first few letters. “If you had asked me [about my sexuality] 10 to 12 years ago, I would’ve denied it. Growing up, there were never any role models or resources...so I guess I just never really thought about it.”

And then Dolly met her partner. They were friends in high school. Her partner made the first move. While Dolly didn’t consider herself a lesbian, she accepted that she was attracted to her partner, and the two began to date. Only Dolly’s closest cousins and a few friends knew about the relationship. A few years in, Dolly opened up to her grandmother who was very supportive and actually somewhat curious about the woman-woman dynamic. Dolly’s partner’s family was also very welcoming. “My partner is half-Australian, half-Italian [and]

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so her family is a bit more open to the idea”, but Dolly worried that her parents, especially her father who is very traditional and cis-gendered (versus transgender) heterosexual, would not approve or understand.

“We had a few obvious problems…(1) I’m dating outside the race...I’m not dating a Hmong guy; (2) I’m not even dating a guy, I’m dating a girl; and (3) she’s Catholic and doesn’t understand Shamanism.” While Dolly’s relationship was somewhat of an “open secret” after she told her brothers and their wives, her parents still just assumed this woman with whom she spent all of her time and whom she also brought around the house was just a “friend”.

Additionally, early on in their relationship, Dolly refused to identify as LGBTQIA+. As such, she and her partner actively avoided the local gay scene. Ironically, Australia has long been considered one of the gay-friendliest nations in the world, and throughout the 2010s experienced a surfeit of gay activism resulting in the legalization of same-sex marriage in December 2017.

Dolly was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia. She is the second of five children. She has three brothers and a much younger sister. As a first-generation Hmong Australian, Dolly lived in a very small Hmong community. Her parents were also very traditional and adhered to many old shamanistic customs.

They didn’t speak much English, but were very supportive of all their children, pushing them to pursue higher education regardless of gender. Dolly grew up as a very “dutiful Hmong girl” albeit somewhat of a tomboy. When she realized she was a lesbian, she began to distance herself from the wider Hmong community. “It’s very hard to ‘come out Hmong’ because there are no specific words [in Hmong compared to English]”.

Dolly felt too Western, too queer to belong properly in her local Hmong community, and hid her “other” self from her extended family. However, as she began to come to terms with her sexuality, she also realized how unfair the designation of “friend” was to her partner. Eventually, the strain of keeping “the secret” began to take its toll on both of them and Dolly decided that it was time to tell her parents. Thus, she wrote them the letter, composed wholly in Hmong, and left it for them to read. Since then, Dolly describes life as “it’s been ups and downs, ups and downs...”, but the family seems to be coming around, finally recognizing Dolly’s “friend” as her “partner”.

In 2014, Dolly and her partner bought a house and moved in together. Both families helped them settle in. A year later they visited New York City and Dolly proposed in Grand Central Station. When they returned home, they had an engagement party which Dolly considers one of the happiest moments of her life because her mother came to help with the cooking. And although they have never openly or directly addressed the contents of Dolly’s letter, Dolly feels that such small gestures as well as an increased frequency in questions about whether or not her partner would attend family gatherings represents an olive branch from Dolly’s parents. At a recent hu plig (soul calling ceremony), her mother even blessed a string for both her and her partner. Dolly’s parents might not understand her sexual orientation, but they have chosen to accept her and her partner. Still, Dolly admits there are moments of struggle. “It [LGBTQIA+] is not a thing in Hmong culture,” and she has overheard other family members speculating what it might mean for a Hmong woman’s soul/spirit to marry another woman.

However, Dolly is glad to be rid of her “secret”. “Don’t keep secrets—secrets will eat you up alive.” She and her partner are now preparing for their wedding day, an event her nieces and nephews—growing up with a happy, hopeful representation of queer love—see as perfectly normal. “I am a normal Hmong woman who loves another woman...love is love.” And although she has been in a same-sex relationship for over 12 years, it wasn’t until she came out to her parents and community that Dolly felt she could fully embrace herself. She finds simple pleasures in being able to walk around and hold her partner’s hand in public. “Be true to yourself. True happiness comes from within.” Dolly has shared her story in the hopes that she can help other struggling LGBTQIA+ youth as well as perhaps serve as the role model she never had while discovering and accepting this identity.

“I am a normal

Hmong woman

who loves another

woman...love is love.”

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Reimagining Hmong Women as Heroes Written by Mai Pa Lee

O

ne of the most impressionable science fiction/ fantasy (sci-fi/fantasy) books Lori M. Lee ever picked up as a child was J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. From there, she fell in love with the scifi/fantasy genre. As Lori reflects on the impact that The Hobbit had on her, she states, “It cemented sweeping epic stories that I wanted to write myself.”

Another challenging aspect of being an author for Lori is the gap years between having published books. Her next project is an anthology she’s been working on, in collaboration with many other East and South Asian authors, A Thousand Beginning and Endings. You can expect the release of this book on June 26th, 2018; in the meantime, pre-order is available if you would like to get your hands on a copy.

Lori is the author of young adult sci-fi/fantasy books, Gates of Thread and Stone and its sequel, The Infinite. Sci-fi/fantasy, or what some may refer to as speculative fiction, is a genre encompassing many subcategories, even topics like romance or horror. It is what the mind can imagine, many times otherworldly or surreal. Gates of Thread and Stone was bought in 2012 by Skyscape publishing and was published in 2014, with The Infinite following in 2015.

Fostering a Passion

For those who are interested in publishing someday, I asked Lori to share her day-to-day as a mainstream fiction writer. She laughs a little and tells me, “My day is definitely not that glamorous.” Having a five-year-old makes it even more challenging for Lori. She describes being an author as a solitary job. “You lock yourself in a room and torture yourself for a few hours,” she said. Despite at times feeling torturous, she notes the importance of setting a few hours to focus on writing.

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Lori was born in Laos and, shortly thereafter, relocated to a Thailand Refugee camp. She was three when her family immigrated to the United States. They settled in Wisconsin where she has been most of her life. She is the youngest daughter and second youngest child of seven in her family.

Lori recalls spending her childhood going to the local library with her older sisters. It was in third grade when she realized she could write stories of her own. She mentions, “We had this after school program where the kids just got together and we made picture books. I think it was the first time that it clicked for me that I can do this.” Throughout childhood, she spent time reading novels and writing her stories, many of which included fan fiction.

Since she first picked up Tolkien, Lori wanted to emulate the sci-fi/fantasy stories that she’s read. During this time she wrote a lot of “weird fantasy” and then went into a phase of reading R.L. Stine books. Following those books, she would write a lot of horror stories. Although the horror phase eventually passed, she was and still is very passionate when it comes to writing young adult sci-fi/fantasy.

This passion for reading and writing would follow Lori to college. While she knew she loved writing, she wanted to choose a career path that was traditionally “practical”. Lori started with a major in education but soon realized how much she did not like public speaking. She then thought about a major in technical writing, still considering practical majors that would lead to a career; however, it was too boring for her. After dabbling in a couple majors and feeling apathetic toward them, Lori realized she had to follow her passion. Ultimately, she decided to major in creative writing. On the side of practicality, she minored in web design. Although Lori questioned her major at the beginning of her college journey, she eventually found her path.

Lori shares with me the commitment needed to pursue writing as more than a hobby, but as a passion. She always felt compelled to write, but also intentionally sets time for it. Lori states, “Make time for writing, for sure. The difference between a writer and someone who wants to write, is someone who’s made the time to do it. How much do you want to write?” She ponders on this and advises those who have a goal of writing a novel to engage in the process meaningfully.

Childhood, Identity, and Representation As a child reading fantasy books, Lori was aware of the differences between her and the characters she read about. She tells me about the challenges she faced as kid, “It stuck out that characters I was reading were all white. So as a kid, I internalized this false narrative that people like me couldn’t be heroes or heroines and love interests and that we didn’t belong in fantasy landscapes or any fictional landscapes.” She tells me of the tension between passionately loving the fantasy genre and, at the same time, feeling excluded from it.

Not only did Lori notice this discord within herself and the books she loved to read, she also became resentful. She talks about her resentment towards herself for not being the status quo, for not being white. In retrospect, she sees the misplaced resentment. “I thought what needed to change was me,” she said. “Which is, of course, wrong and extremely damaging to a kid’s identity. It took a really long time for me to first make

peace with my skin color and, second, to allow myself to write about characters who look like me.”

It was in college that Lori began to feel at peace with her identity. Although she did not understand that she could impact the status quo and push back to make change as a child, she learned to do so in college. This first started with learning about her Asian American identity. She was able to reflect on the toxic portrayal of many Asian characters in film and in books. College was also the place where she was introduced to more Asian literary authors. Through their works, Lori realized the power she had in her own writing to create a new narrative of herself.

Asian characters in her writings didn’t have to be the stereotypical sidekick or the comical relief, they could be the lead.

As a Hmong identifying author, Lori now defies the status quo with her incorporation of characters from diverse backgrounds.

Her books represent the many things she learned in college in regards to the importance of identity and representation. She centers the characters in her book to be reflective of her own identities. The heroes, the protagonists, the main cast, they look like her. She may not have liked the person she was, but she likes the person she is today. She reflects on her identity development journey with some regrets, but there’s nothing she would change.

The Power of Support, the Power to Uplift Lori had a supportive family who allowed her to pursue her passion and was not met with resistance when deciding on her major. Lori’s mom wanted her to follow her own career path and to be successful in those pursuits. With sharing her story, Lori wants to inspire others and to acknowledge the importance of having Hmong women uplifting each other.

When asked to share a few words of advice for Hmong Women Take On The World, Lori states, “Don’t let anyone else tell you what you should be or what you should do. Society and certain parts of our culture, especially the patriarchal part of our culture, systems of inequalities, family expectations, these are all things that are going to try to limit us.” Lori became the hero of her story. She learned that she does not need to change her Asian/Hmong identity, but that she can challenge the status quo. For Hmong women reading this, you too can challenge the status quo. You can argue against those who limit you, and you can be the hero in your story.

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See’s Story on Living Authentically Written by Mai Pa Lee

S

ee Cha’s life choices challenge the status quo of who a Hmong woman should be. The Hmong community’s heavy emphasis on family puts pressure on Hmong women. It is common for Hmong families to expect their daughters to get married and start a family before they become ib tug nkauj laug (an old woman).

As a Hmong woman in her late thirties, See has never been married, has no children, and although she will entertain the idea of marriage it has never been a top priority.

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During our interview, the words flowed easily between us. After all, we are family, first cousins to be exact. Through her experiences, See has recognized that although she loves and respects her family, she needed to take her own path and make decisions for herself. See knew this would be a push back against the traditional Hmong woman role. There was always the expectation from her family that she would one day settle down and build a future with a man because not having a man equates to not having a future.

Fortunately for See, she knew Hmong women who helped to influence and shape her views positively. See and I share an aunt many would describe as inspirational, educated, and independent. Growing up with a strong Hmong woman presence and role model significantly shaped the way See envisioned her path as her own. At the typical patriarchal table, she saw our aunt there, well-mannered and well-respected. This in turn paved a way for See to live up to anything she set herself to.

Creating a Path It was in high school when See started challenging the status quo, when she started breaking away from societal norm. She saw all of her friends getting married or having kids but her primary focus was on her education. After high school, there was no doubt that See would go to college since its importance was shown to her early on by great, strong role models such as her mother and aunts. On multiple occasions, See used her education as a way to defend herself from the backlash she received about not getting married but later realized that although her education helped with her independence, she did not need to use it as an excuse for her decisions.

Contrary to what some might believe, See does not object to the idea of marriage but wants to do it on her own time and when she knows it is right for her. This story is not about the institution of marriage, but rather, the ways in which expectations of Hmong women can be harmful. See said, “You’re either supposed to be your father’s daughter, or someone’s wife. What if I [just] want to be myself?”

For See, growing up hearing messages that Hmong women were invisible if they did not have a husband or bear children was irritating. She thought of herself as independent, it was hard trying to be true to herself while hearing messages that she needed someone else to do that for her. At times, this was harmful to her Hmong identity and she dealt with self-doubt a lot.

In Sickness and in Health See recalls the words she heard as a child, “When you die, no one will bury you. When you are sick, no one will take care of you.” Being an unmarried woman with no kids in the Hmong community holds a negative connotation. It can be interpreted as an unfulfilled life of loneliness. Many Hmong women are not strangers to these words. Whether they were uttered to us by a loved one or mentioned regarding someone else’s unmarried status.

When See became sick a few years ago, she told no one, not even her family, because she felt it would be burdensome. She was alone in the hospital and had no visitors. During that time, she pondered her relatives’ words and asked herself, “Is this what they meant?” As she continued pondering this and reflected on herself and the life she lived, there were moments she

questioned if the elders were right—that there would be no one to take care of her if she didn’t get married or have children. In the end, See realized that her situation wouldn’t have been any different with a husband or children because illness does not discriminate based on marital status.

After this medical scare, See had a conversation with her doctor and became accountable for her health and well-being. Not only did she make changes to care for herself, she began to own her life, the good and the bad. This was a hard realization on See’s part because she had to notice and critically think about who she really was. See notes that she does not pretend to know everything and does not have those expectations for others. In the years since being in the hospital, See has been kinder to herself. She does not view her life as lonely and unfulfilled, she appreciates it and sees it as a life she has shaped, one where she has self-agency.

Reflection Relatives used to say to See that she needed a husband in order to exist within the Hmong culture, to have a family, and to be valuable. Now they joke about going back in time, wishing they could choose her path. See laughs when thinking about their messages. Maybe it’s their discomfort in wanting to know what could have been. She questions the mixed messages she receives but is not offended by their words. Her intent is not ill, she wishes no hurt or harm unto others. My conversation with See showed me the capacity of compassion. The messages she heard about self-worth were painful and she does not wish that upon others.

Although a decade separate See and I in age and life experiences, the stories we shared with each other had many commonalities. I told her some of my stories growing up as a Hmong woman and many times the guilt and potential shame that comes with being a Hmong daughter; the guilt being the need to live up to unrealistic expectations and the shame being unable to take on those burdens. All of these expectations often revolved around being a woman. They are messages of being a good daughter, getting good grades, and setting ourselves up to be a wife or a nyab (daughter-in-law). We both acknowledge this in a sort of shock and silence, mostly in disappointment.

See is hopeful that things can and will change as a group of new Hmong women emerge from generation to generation. As Hmong sisters, we need to challenge ourselves and reflect on how we uplift or push down one another. To you all, she says, everyone is struggling in their journey. You cannot and probably will not know it all. If you find yourself at a crossroads, others may pressure and tell you how to live your life, but at the end of the day, you can own up to yourself and live authentically with the path you choose.

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Start by Listening: Being the Mother of a Gay Son Written by See Xiong

T

he LGBTQ community continues to fight for equality in societies all around the world, with the Hmong community being no exception. Individuals who identify as LGBTQ are ostracized, teased, and thought of as less than, something Mai Pha can empathize with as the mother of a gay son.

Mai Pha comes off as bold and outspoken, but says she was not always like this. Growing up she suffered a minor hearing loss, which she says resulted in a lot of bullying from her family. Indeed, she was ridiculed for wearing a hearing aid and deemed by some as worthless because of her disability. Her own grandfather said she’d never marry, a passage to womanhood in the Hmong culture.

On the contrary, Mai Pha did marry. She met and married the love of her life in high school. During her sophomore year, she had her second child. Her son Choua was born prematurely at 26 weeks. His tiny body weighed only 2 pounds and 10 ounces,

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just small enough to be held in one hand. Baby Choua was in the hospital for 4 long and devastating months. As a preemie he had open-heart and eye surgery. When he started to show signs of growth, he was finally taken out of the incubator and released to go home.

The trials of his health sealed his mother’s love for him. Mai Pha vowed to protect him with everything she had. As Choua grew into adolescence, Mai Pha described her son as very compassionate. “Tus tub no yo ib tug es mloog lus,” she describes. This son listens. He knows how to help around the house without asking. “If he saw an old lady cross the street he would make sure she crossed safely.”

Through the years, she noticed that her oldest son was becoming more and more interested in girls, whereas Choua was not. “He tried to date some girls but it never worked out,” Mai Pha recalls. “I think our family kind of knew he didn’t like girls.”

It wasn’t until Choua was 16 years old that he came out to their family as being gay. He was scared. “He was like, ‘Mom I don’t know how you feel, but I evaluated my situation and I’m gay.’”

“I told him my job as a mother is to protect my children. To teach them to have good character. I don’t care what your sexuality is. I will always love you. No matter where you are, how old you are, I will always love you.”

She remembered them sitting next to each other, wiping tears off their faces and Choua saying he didn’t know if she would accept him. Reflecting on those early days in the hospital, Mai Pha remembered Choua had a very hard start.

He had multiple surgeries as a baby. “At any given time I could’ve lost him,” she says.

She couldn’t bear the thought of almost losing Choua ever again.

She connected Choua with resources to find support groups and to this day supports Choua the best she can.

“We can only be great if we are ourselves. We have to accept who we are,” she says.

“In our lives there’s going to be people who like us and those who don’t like us, but we have to realize we’re part of something that is bigger than us.”

with her son separately from her husband.

“How could we treat him as second class citizen?” she asked.

She wasn’t going to allow it. She asked her husband to look at their son. To look at his character—the young man that he was becoming. Her husband eventually came around. He realized he just didn’t understand homosexuality, so he was responding with angst. One of his fears as a Hmong father is having no lineage. Like in many cultures, having a son to carry on the family name was very important to him.

“We can only be great if we are ourselves.

We have to accept who we are.”

She recalls a conversation she had with a young, gay man who came from a strict, traditional household. He was only a few years older than Choua. He told her coming out was a struggle for him. He had no one to just listen to him, that there were periods of time where he had suicidal thoughts. That dose of struggle broke Mai Pha’s heart. “I pray my son never has these thoughts [again]. That’s why I’m my son’s advocate.”

Mai Pha can foresee that it is going to be a very hard journey for Choua to be a gay Hmong man in a community that doesn’t openly accept the gay community. Choua’s coming out was especially hard for her husband. They’d had several emotional conversations about it. She told her husband that as a mother, she’s supposed to be the glue that holds the family together. It would break her heart if some day she’d have to spend holidays

“But in a world full of so many children, with the big heart my son has, he will be a great dad.

He can adopt.”

Now at 21 years old, Choua is an avid advocate for the LGBTQ community. “He empowers the gay community because of the love he gets from his family,” Mai Pha says. She believes in looking beyond the stigmas of sexual orientation.

“We need to teach [our children] to love, to be compassionate, to give back to the community. If we could look pass [sexual orientation], we are going to create a better community.”

Although Mai Pha has a very close bond with Choua, she wished he would have been more confident in telling her he was gay. She wished he hadn’t been so scared to come out to her.

“I don’t have all the solutions, but we can all start by listening.”

Mai Pha doesn’t believe it takes a whole village to make a difference, just one person. It can be that one teacher that shares kindness to her student or that mother who listens to her son in times of need. It’s when they feel alone that Mai Pha believes some will turn to drugs and alcohol to medicate the pain.

“Help them. Make an effort. Be intentional about it. Link them to resources. Let them know that they are not alone,” she says.

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Strides of Confidence: Skincare Routines and Makeup as Tools of Empowerment Written by K.M. Lee

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ao Lee is a 27 year old makeup artist from Wausau, Wisconsin who believes in the power of using beauty products to enhance features and build confidence.

She says, “I find makeup empowering because we live in a world where we, as women, often feel pressured to [follow] certain rules and standards. Therefore, at least with makeup, I’m taking small strides towards being in control of who I am. I get to dictate when and how I want to look, and that’s empowering.”

Bao was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and immigrated to the United States in 1995. Her biological mother passed away during childbirth in Thailand, so her father remarried. Bao was fortunate to experience a traditional upbringing during the family’s early years in the U.S., and then a more Americanized, lenient lifestyle as her family assimilated. Although her step-mother stressed the importance of traditional Hmong duties, her father was open-minded and emphasized the importance of finding a good career. Bao obtained her master’s degree from University of Wisconsin Madison Graduate School and is a full-time licensed professional counselor.

Bao is a self-taught makeup artist and skin care guru. She was introduced to makeup during her teenage years but started taking it seriously about six years ago. She began her self-education by watching YouTube makeup tutorials. She quickly ex-

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celled in her skills and creatively expanded on what she learned by testing out new ideas on her own. Her friends and family noticed her evolving techniques and asked that she start doing their makeup for special occasions. Although she maintains her full-time career, Bao is a freelance makeup artist and one day hopes to transition into full-time entrepreneurship in the makeup industry. Currently, her Instagram page, @baowow21, is the main platform that highlights a variety of her makeup looks.

The depth of Bao’s research is extensive. Judging by the scope of her knowledge and ability to quickly recall helpful techniques, Bao has researched intensely into makeup and skincare.

In 2012, Bao studied abroad in Seoul, South Korea for four months. She found herself pleasantly surprised by the healthy, glowing faces that surrounded her. “In Korea,” she says, “everyone has amazing skin, even the ajumas (older ladies).” Bao was intrigued by their skincare routine because she had noticed minor dark spots on her own face. The blemishes were perhaps genetically inherited, but the more likely cause was because Bao was an avid soccer player and didn’t protect herself with sunscreen. Bao has also noticed these dark spots, resembling large freckles, amongst other family members and Hmong women in general. She offers the top three skincare tips that she learned while in Korea to help lessen the appearance of blemishes and other superficial facial flaws.

Tip 1 Thoroughly wash makeup off. The double cleansing method consists firstly of removing makeup with a cleansing oil makeup remover. A common misconception is that oil will clog pores and result in breakouts. But Bao says the cleansing oil can create the opposite effect. Oil is not only highly effective at removing makeup easily, but it works to remove additional dirty buildup that accumulates throughout the day.

Tip 2 Follow up with a foaming cleanser. After rinsing off the cleansing oil, the second step of the double cleansing method is to wash with a foaming cleanser. There are foaming cleansers tailored to the four skin types: normal/combination, dry, oily, and sensitive. This gentle wash will remove the excess cleansing oil and any leftover buildup.

Tip 3 Always finish with toners and essences. After washing the face, important nutrients are stripped from the skin. By using toners, it restores pH levels (or acidity levels, important for fighting off bacteria) to a more natural level. Without toner, the skin is forced to work harder to reset the pH level. Imbalanced pH levels can lead to things like heightened sensitivity, wrinkles, or inflammation. Toners also help to brighten and even-out skin tone. Essences are lightweight, concentrated, hydrating boosts.

Essences help smooth and brighten skin, and aids in skin repair which contribute to a more youthful look.

Korean products are becoming more available in American mainstream stores but Bao orders many of her products online.

She states, “Although you have to pay more for the top-notch products, there are a lot of affordable Korean skincare products. I order mine from a popular Korean store and it tends to arrive in three to four days because they have locations in the U.S. too.” Bao recommends sites like sokoglam.com, glowrecipe.com and cupidrop.com.

Start with Foundation Skincare is necessary, but makeup is where the fun begins. The best makeup tip is finding the right shade of foundation. “To find foundation that matches your skin, place a small amount on your cheek and swipe it downwards from the side of your cheek towards your neck. If the color blends into your skin then that is the shade for you,” Bao says. She recommends using a beauty blender, an edgeless, non-disposable sponge, to offer smoother application and softer lines. To help the foundation last longer, begin with face primers. Use gel-based primers for oily skin, pore filling primers for large pores, and hydrating-water based primers for dry skin. Make sure to slowly build the foundation up to the desired coverage to avoid a caked-on look, meaning the base layers are too heavy and noticeable.

Then, use a good loose powder to set the foundation, this will make sure the foundation does not crease or smear. Lastly, top it off with a face setting mist.

Dealing with Dark Spots For dark spots, find a “concealer corrector”. These can be found in a variety of colors depending on the specific issue. To neutralize dark spots, Bao uses peach colors, which are good

for medium skin tones. Use orange-pink colors for dark skin tones. After the corrector is applied, foundation is next, and then concealer. Once completed, loose powder may be desired to add finishing touches, but make sure to avoid buffing in circular motions or applying a lot of pressure. Instead, using a fluffy powder brush, lightly apply the powder with a rolling motion. Bao advises, “buffing the loose powder over the foundation and concealer will erase the hard work that you’ve just done to conceal the dark spots and it’ll allow the dark spots to show through again. So be careful about applying certain types of powder on top of these layers. Also, applying too much shimmer on these areas may produce a gray effect.”

On Contouring When using the popular technique of contouring, which is the subtle highlights and shading to define facial features, pick two shades darker than the regular foundation shade. Using a contouring brush, “Draw a number 3 on your face,” Bao instructs, “starting at the temple, sweeping towards the hollows of the cheek, and under the sides of the chin. Then blend.”

What to Do with Eyebrows On eyebrows, Bao personally chooses to maintain thicker brows because they provide a youthful look. She recommends choosing dark brown colors instead of black, because it appears more natural. To create a larger eye effect, use transition colors, starting with the lightest first (taupe, mauve, light brown). Then choose a darker shade and apply with a fluffy brush in sweeping motions starting from the base of the eyelash to the crease, or hollow part, above the eye. Always start light and slowly build and blend to preference. A light color or shimmer in the inner corner of the eye creates a brightening effect.

Lips, Lips, Lips Lastly, lip liners guide the application of lipstick to stay within the lip lines. Bao says, “I learned this trick from beauty YouTuber, Michelle Phan, for longer lasting lipstick. Apply the lipstick first, then put a thin sheet of Kleenex over the applied lipstick and use a fluffy brush to pat loose face powder over the Kleenex. Remove the Kleenex, and gently pat another layer of lipstick.” Patting can be done with a finger or using patting motions with the lipstick itself. To make sure lipstick doesn’t get on the teeth, bend the index finger into a tight hook with the knuckle jutting out. Place the knuckle in the opening of the mouth, press slightly, and then pull out. Continue until the knuckle comes out clean.

The perfect makeup look will be unique to each person and it will take lots of trial and error, but it’s helpful to study the basic tips. With this quick guide on skincare and makeup, Bao graciously provides small treasures for anyone to incorporate into their routines. An advocate of uplifting the community, Bao wants everyone to succeed in looking their best and so she doesn’t hesitate to offer her years’ worth of research. Ultimately, Bao’s emphasis on makeup and skincare is to build confidence which transcends into different areas of a woman’s life.

The trick is to keep skin healthy and use makeup to enhance beauty. “There’s only one of you,” Bao says, “so love yourself.

Own your flaws and be confident.”

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The Challenges of Living in Vietnam Written and Translated by Ka Thao

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ype in the word “Hmong” in a Google search bar and you get 69,300,000 results. The results include university websites, non-profit websites, personal blogs and more. Although the origins of the Hmong are as mysterious today as they were several decades ago, since the Hmong first arrived in the United States, researchers have been doing a better job of tracking the Hmong popula-

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tion worldwide. According Txong Pao Lee and Mark E. Pfeifer PhD, in the Hmong Cultural Center’s 2012 presentation in Saint Paul, Minnesota, there is an estimated population of 5.5 million Hmong people living in Asia and nearly 600,000 of them reside in Vietnam. Viv ncaus (sister) Paj, lives in Vietnam and wishes to share her life with cov nus muag (brothers and sisters) around the world.

In Vietnam, Hmong people are called “Mèo”, which means cat.

Mèo is a derogatory term referring to the lowest form on the surface of the earth. Paj shares that Hmong people are disrespected and would be the first in Vietnam to be slaughtered by the government if there were ever a war. Phonetically, this word is similar to the term given to the Hmong by the Chinese, “Miāo” referring to “barbarian savages” or “rice plants, which are radical grasses in the fields that, when cut and removed, grow back all over again,” mentioned Thomas Vang in his book, A History of the Hmong: From Ancient Times to the Modern Diaspora.

Paj is the second oldest child from a family of seven. She lives 200 kilometers from the capital city of Hanoi with her husband.

Paj graduated with a degree to teach children to sing or qhia kev hu nkauj. She has devoted her life to God and to teach the Gospel, Vaj lus kub. She teaches the Gospel to disciples for one month at a time. Many of her students travel far distances, at least a full day of motorcycle riding, to get to her place. Her husband is also a man who preaches God’s words. It is challenging living in Vietnam as believers of God because Christianity is not an accepted religion in North Vietnam; however, Paj shares that Hmong Christians are less stressed and less poor than Hmong non-believers. Many Christians, like herself, move to South Vietnam in order to practice their faith. Hmong Christians are not influenced by opiates, alcohol, or drugs.

Christianity has allowed Paj to find happiness by singing, praying, and gathering with the Hmong community.

When it comes to finding government jobs, Christians have an especially difficult time, even after receiving a good education and earning a degree. College graduates would often get low-paying jobs like farming, seamstress, machine operator, or phone salesman. Paj says this is the reason many Hmong people choose not go to school and just work regular jobs. In fact, the majority of the Hmong community in Vietnam do not see the significance of obtaining an education and therefore prioritizes farming. Of the Hmong students who do continue to higher education, there is still a gender disparity; men dominate while women stay to work in the fields. Paj was the first girl to attend school from her village. People told her parents, “Cov me ntxhais nej tso mus ces tsis txim txiaj, menyuam ntxhais kawm tsis tau dabtsi.” The girls you allow to get a higher education misbehave. Daughters cannot learn anything. Even though the negativity was present, both of Paj’s parents were firm on sending all their seven children to school, regardless of gender, because they received higher education themselves. Paj

mentions, “The double standards make Hmong sisters fall behind in educational achievement and, there, unable to compete with the Vietnamese.”

The Hmong community has the lowest socioeconomic status in Vietnam. Paj describes life in Vietnam as “pom ntawm qhov muag, tsis pom mus deb.” Life’s possibilities are limited to what can be seen right in front of you instead of what is in the far distance. This description extends to the common ways of living for many Hmong people, surviving day by day and continuing traditional practices. For example, the old Hmong tradition of “zij poj niam,” the literal translation being steal a wife, is still a common practice in Vietnam. If a Hmong man sees a girl he likes, he would gather a group of strong and able men to help him forcibly pull his bride home. Even if the girl refuses, screams, and fights, her nearby father or brothers would not interfere because it is culturally accepted and practiced. The only person who would typically come to her rescue is her mother, hopelessly trying to aid the girl’s escape from the grasp of multiple men. The battle is always unsuccessful and any attempts of returning home would put the girl and her family’s reputation to shame; therefore, she is forced to marry her capturer.

Paj mentions this ancient practice is highly looked down upon by the Vietnamese and even publicly written about in Vietnamese news. Paj encourages the sisters and brothers in the United States, “Yog nej pom qhov twg tsis zoo ces pab hais.” Speak up when you see unfairness. This method of marrying a bride is no longer practiced in the United States.

Another prominent social challenge for Hmong women in Vietnam is human trafficking. Vietnam borders China to the south.

The countries’ close proximity results in high rates of Hmong girls and mothers getting kidnapped. Many girls are forcibly taken or drugged to be sold into prostitution in the black market. The victims are often never reunited with their families because they cannot escape. This is a big issue in the Hmong community in Vietnam and every Hmong woman and girl must remain attentive and careful of her surroundings.

Paj continues to teach the Gospel, teach hygienic ways of taking care of one’s health, and help encourage children to attend higher education. She is progressive, very involved in the Hmong community in Vietnam, and is fascinated in connecting with the Hmong community around the world. Her story reminds us that we need to continue to network with our sisters abroad to understand, help, and advocate for the success of all Hmong women globally.

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The Intersection of Self-Worth and Domestic Abuse: One Woman’s Story Written by Alee Fayngold

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any countries have neither regulations nor laws prohibiting domestic violence. According to The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, in the U.S. alone, 20,000 calls a day are placed to domestic violence hotlines. Additionally, 1 in 3 women are victims of physical abuse by their intimate partners. It is especially pervasive in the Middle East and in African countries. There is no escape when it comes to domestic violence, it happens in any country, any community, any relationship. According to Healthyplace.com, one of the largest mental health information websites on the internet, controlling behavior is much to blame for the cause of domestic violence. Abusers tend to have anger issues, self-esteem issues, and jealousy, and therefore they have a need to control their partners and instill fear in them. The victims often fall into depression, anxiety, and have suicidal thoughts, or if lucky, they escape with traumatic scars. In this article, Mai Moua of Brisbane, Australia, recounts her chilling experience as a survivor of domestic abuse in an island south of Australia’s coast called Tasmania.

Mai Moua was born in 1988 in Ban Vinai, Thailand, and raised in Tasmania Hobart, Australia. Her family immigrated there in 1989. She currently has two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, and runs a gym coupled with being an online health coach. Mai Moua grew up in a very traditional Hmong family surrounded by a traditional Hmong community. She often heard elders say that in order to be a good housewife and a good daughter-in-law, you had to be able to cook, clean, and be obedient.

“Thaum peb loj hlob….cov laus yeej qhia peb hais tias mus ua

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ib tug nyab zoo yuav tsum tsim txiaj…you hear it all around you.” When you go become a daughter in law you must be good.

Even though at school she embraced the Australian culture and learned to understand the ways of “white” people, when she got home, she also embraced her Hmong culture and all that came with being Hmong. Mai found herself struggling with her identity. She knew she was Hmong but she grew up in Australia where it was predominantly white. “For me it really felt like I was torn between two worlds.”

Mai grew up with the mentality that she had no other purpose in life than to be a daughter-in-law. So, embracing her Hmong roots, Mai found herself wedded to a Hmong man at the early age of 13 in Melbourne, Australia. In her generation, all the girls ages 13 to 15 were also married. “There is this saying, yog koj muaj kaum yim xyoo rov sau es koj tsis tau yuav txiv ces koj yog nkauj laug.” If you were 18 and not yet married, you were an old maid. And Mai didn’t want that.

She divorced her husband shortly after marriage because she realized that she was not able to have friends or socialize with people. Instead of open arms and support, she was greeted with ridicule and criticism for her action. Divorce is not well accepted in the Hmong community, especially when Mai was growing up. “You carry this ‘poj nrauj’ or ‘divorce woman’ name that make people fear you.” Mai started to question and doubt her own self-worth and, having no one to turn to, Mai did what she thought was best. She ran away from her family and from the Hmong community and would stay away for 10 years.

over [your] head, food in [your] mouth.” Mai remembers him saying, “[He said] I should just kaw kuv lub qhov ncauj es tsis txhob hais ub hais no rau nws.” Shut my mouth and stop saying this and that to him.

After that, Mai recalls sitting down. All of a sudden, her husband threw a small tea table at her that missed her by a couple inches. The table shattered an entire glass door. “Lub sib hawj ntawv...kuv lub plawv twb yuav luag nrhia tawm hauv kuv lub cev, kuv ntshai tshaj plaws li tab si qhov tseem ceeb tshaj, kuv ntshai rau kuv tus ntxhais. At that moment...my heart almost came out of my body, I was so scared, but most importantly, I was scared for my daughter.

During those 10 years, Mai met and culturally married a nonHmong man in Sydney, Australia. She compares the three years with this man to hell. On a daily basis, her husband would force her to take photos of the outfit she wore and, if she dared change after a shower, he’d accused her of being promiscuous and dirty. He told Mai that she was not even as good as the ground he walked on nor was she worth the cigarette in his hand. Mai began to question her self-worth and her value again. She had a lot of anxiety and fell into a deep depression with consistent thoughts of suicide. She shook at his presence and feared his anger. She never attempted to run away or hide because he threatened her that he would find her and kill her.

Mai knew at that moment that if she stayed with this abusive man, not only would she set a bad example for her daughter, but she risked her daughter growing up in an environment believing abuse is okay. That was her breaking point. She waited for her husband to go to work before she and her daughter escaped on foot to the train station, and then from there to a close friend whose location her husband did not know. Mai called her parents and informed them of her situation. Her parents told her to come back home, and she finally understood that regardless of their disappointment, her parents loved her unconditionally.

“Every one of us is strong and has so much purpose in life other than being

subject to a loveless and abusive relationship.”

Mai’s last call for help was to her older sister. She did not want to bother her parents being that she was the one who ran away and married outside of the Hmong culture. She feared she would disappoint them. She told her sister she was depressed and had thought of killing herself. Her sister said what any loving sister would say: she told Mai to make a run for it. Mai still feared the idea of running but hearing this from her sister gave her courage.

Mai returned home but eventually made contact with her ex-husband again in an effort to let her daughter know her father and to start a possible relationship. Within the first hour of meeting, he proved to be the same exact person she’d always feared, so Mai grabbed her daughter, called her cousin to pick them up and ran out of there.

One day, her husband came home from work and wanted to go hang out with his friends. Mai pleaded for him to be a good father and a good man to her and their one-year-old daughter. Angry, her husband shoved her and their daughter into the wall. Then he threw their daughter onto the couch and pinned Mai against the wall. “Who [are you]?” he shouted into her face. “[You’re] just a Hmong dog! [You’re] a rat! [I] put a roof

Mai learned a valuable lesson through this journey. She wants everyone to know that each and every one of us is strong and has so much purpose in life other than being subject to a loveless and abusive relationship. Thousands of women (and men) stay in abusive relationships. Whether or not we have support, we need to leave for ourselves and the people we love, for we are the only ones who can change and make that decision.

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The Power of Passion and Will Written by Alee Fayngold

You often hear, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and while that still holds a lot of truth, we cannot deny that cosmetics has been taking the beauty industry by a storm, specifically, makeup. For a while, Facebook was flooded with makeup challenges from all over the world showing before and after videos/photos with unrecognizable results. Makeup tutorials are also flooding YouTube and is consistently an ever-growing business with foundation alone bringing in millions of dollars in 2016, according to Statista.

up Miranda’s mind to options and possibilities.

After graduating from Park Center Senior High in 2005, she enrolled at Northwestern College the following fall and went on to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in intercultural studies. During that period, she came to discover herself, her passion for makeup, and her self-worth in pursuing that passion.

Miranda Xiong is a 31-year-old makeup artist and entrepreneur in St. Paul, Minnesota. She grew up in a small town in Northern California, called Willows, where Miranda says her “mind was very limited” [in that environment]. She says, “There’s nothing wrong with a small town, but in a small town, I was not exposed to a lot of things.” The population in Willows was 6,166 as of the 2010 census, and the town has one Super Walmart so Miranda was very limited in her makeup materials. In fact, she herself did not wear much makeup growing up.

Miranda has always loved getting dolled up with friends and family for events and outings. She played around with makeup for a while, off and on, but not taking it very seriously. Her family didn’t think that making a living with a hobby was even possible. Miranda herself didn’t believe it until America’s Next Top Model aired and she discovered herself in love with makeup. She realized makeup had the ability to create astronomical changes and to amplify one’s beauty. “I took time to learn more about the skills and techniques required to apply makeup. The more I learned about those, the more I wanted to improve.”

It wasn’t until Miranda was 15 years old that her family decided to make the move to Minnesota. There, Miranda started to immerse herself in the richness of diversity. The Twin Cities had so many different kinds of stores which gave Miranda bigger access to makeup. There were shops of different ethnicities, from food to clothing to performing arts. This diversity opened

Miranda’s personal struggles with self-worth, weight, and beauty also helped pave the way to her discovery of art in makeup. Miranda says, “True beauty is not what you look [like] on the outside, but what you offer from the heart.” She uses this concept to bring out her clients’ beauty from within: she builds rapport with her clients and really tries to understand what they

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want before she works her magic on them. By getting to know them on a personal level, Miranda amplifies the inner beauty that she comes to know through conversation.

Miranda’s makeup business didn’t take off running right away though. There were many obstacles that she faced, including criticism from her friends and family. They continued to tell her that there was no money to be made in that industry, that makeup was too fake, and didn’t see the art that Miranda saw in makeup. “My parents said makeup is just something you do on the side.” In the Hmong community, [working with makeup] just isn’t popular or accepted as a career.

After graduating in 2015, Miranda actually went on to pursue a career in the field she received her degree in, but the inevitable happened: she went into a mild depression and put in her two weeks’ notice with no prospective job in line. It was clear she wasn’t happy with this career choice. After this turn, Miranda took a chance and applied for a makeup artist position even though she had no experience on paper and only had her passion to show for.

Despite being very nervous and having a panel of interviewers, someone saw potential in Miranda. “One person, the voice that mattered, looked at me and said, ‘I would like you. I can tell you have a really good work ethic. Skills is something that I

can teach so I’m gonna patch you through to the next round.’

And the next round was the next day where I had to bring a model with me to showcase what I can do.” Miranda went on to impress her interviewers with her model and ended up getting the job. From there, as the expression goes, the rest is history, and Miranda was set on her own chartered course.

Today, despite doubts from her friends and families, Miranda is setting standards and tearing down those misperceptions by becoming a full-time entrepreneur in this industry. She’s currently partnered with a very good friend who is a hairstylist. She says, “I use my platform—makeup—to remind all my clients of the beauty that is from the inside out.”

While Miranda was discovering her insecurities, she realized that others had their own insecurities. She aims to help everyone discover inner beauty through makeup, to build their self-esteem to truly see how beautiful they are. Most importantly, she wants people to love themselves.

“I only desire to show them that they are already gorgeous and makeup is just there to remind them what they already have.”

Miranda wants to “encourage [people] to pursue what they love and not be afraid to take a leap of faith.” If you have enough passion and will, you can succeed in your field of choice.

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Teaching Grit to Inspire and Uplift Women Written by Pa Dao Vang

Defining Tru Mothers are our first teachers; everything we know we learn from them. Tru Yang, 31, is the fourth of eight children in a family of five girls and three boys. Born in Wisconsin and raised in Massachusetts, she grew up in a household where her mother wasn’t the typical Hmong wife that was to be seen and not heard. Instead, her mother spoke up in Hmong community meetings and implemented ideas for community events like the Hmong New Year in Massachusetts. If her mother wanted to do something, she did it without excuses.

Tru’s mother instilled in her the same values and more, such as learning to accept mistakes in order to move past them and to take credit where credit is due. These pieces of advice and words of wisdom would come to serve Tru in her career.

Tru started in finance as an Accounting Assistant at Ten Thousand Villages, a nonprofit organization.

Now she holds a position as a Tax Analyst at Chartwell Staffing Services, and has been working in the professional finance field for the past three years. Tru’s mother inspired her to be her own person and to be unafraid to pursue her dreams. She wants to do the same for her fellow Hmong sisters.

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In the Face of Challenge

A woman’s role in the Hmong community is generally defined as the housewife, caregiver, and mother. Married at 21, Tru moved to Stevens, Pennsylvania, where she currently resides with her husband and four children. After relocating, she worked at a B & E Notary where there was no room for growth within the company, and the pay didn’t help her financial situation.

Without an education, she didn’t have the degree and skills necessary for upward mobility. Soon after the birth of her first child, she made the decision to further her education to better provide for her family. She set a goal for herself to graduate with her bachelor’s in accounting before her son started kindergarten.

As a first-generation college student and a Hmong woman pursuing accounting, a profession considered “outside the norm,” Tru didn’t receive the emotional support she needed from her in-laws. As a “nyab” (daughter-in-law), she encountered a lot of disapproval on her path to pursuing higher education. Others in her community also disapproved of her decision to get an education and of her career choice because she was supposed to be a “good” nyab by staying home. This way of thinking reflects the traditional

views of a Hmong woman and the standards imposed on her to be nothing more than a housewife. Others have warned her husband that she may use school as an excuse to “tham hluas nraug” or to have an affair. Staying true to Tru, her husband turned a deaf ear to the whispers.

The lack of encouragement and support was because her in-laws didn’t understand her vision. However, that never discouraged True, nor did it make her feel as though she was making the wrong decision. She understood that her idea of success did not resonate with them. Even with the lack of support from her inlaws and others in the community, Tru proved that she had grit, the perseverance to keep going even when the going gets tough.

She went on to graduate from Alvernia University in 2014 with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, Business Management, and Human Resource Management. She never intended to be a triple major. She just kept taking class after class because she was interested in those particular subjects. Taking those classes reinforced her passion for business. She found enjoyment in connecting with others through campus involvement in business clubs and at her current position.

Finding Grit Grit is having the “passion and perseverance” to go after the goals you’ve envisioned for yourself. Tru stumbled upon the TED Talk “Grit: the power of passion and perseverance” by Angela Lee Duckworth and it resonated with her heart. That’s when it struck her that grit was the spark she had in her, she just didn’t know what it was called. Grit was what kept her going during the trying times in her life, through school and through all the negative energy from the Hmong community. In Tru’s words, “If you can envision it, then you can achieve it.” She wants to use her experience to teach grit to women, to help uplift and inspire them to see their potential and purpose.

Tru’s wants to encourage women to have goals and ambition.

She believes it’s the start of opening one’s mind to see the possibilities of their potential. For women in a patriarchal society, the biggest challenge is redefining their roles and changing the perception of what a woman “should” be. She hopes this new way of thinking will create a chain reaction to support empowerment of women. She emphasizes, “Sometimes a person from the outside can see your potential more than you can.”

One of her dreams is to create a non-profit organization to help Hmong girls and women in Laos become self-sufficient, so they don’t have to resort to marrying older men from America for the chance at a better life. While in school and in Tru’s line of work, she has crossed paths with young Hmong girls in that position and it hurt her deeply. She saw so much potential in them that they didn’t see in themselves. Tru saw their struggles in the United States, from being dependent on their husbands as their main source of income to not understanding English and being unable to help their young children with homework. As a mother herself, she felt nothing but compassion for them. She has been in low points in her life where she understood the fiery need for better opportunities. She wants these girls and women to see and understand that there are other options and opportunities to better themselves and to provide for their children.

Succeeding in Grit

There are different levels of success which are defined differently from person to person. In its simplest form, success is to set a goal and accomplish it, no matter how big or small. Tru emphasizes the importance of celebrating the small successes and using those as the stepping stones towards reaching bigger goals. Every small victory builds confidence and further ignites passion towards the ultimate goal. Tru’s other take on success is to “redefine and grow your goal”. She suggests that as we gain more experience we should use what we’ve learned to revisit and redefine our initial goals.

According to Tru, there are “three initiatives” towards succeeding with grit: 1. Surround yourself with “positive reinforcements” such as supportive family and friends. These people are your “immediate motivation boosters” because they know exactly what to say to give you encouragement. Join networking groups with similar goals and interests as a way to get extra support and inspiration. It’s also a great way to gain opportunities towards pursuing future goals.

2. There is power in sharing. Don’t keep your success and passion to yourself. Allow others to celebrate your successes with you. It will enable them to see and acknowledge that you are a force to be reckoned with, which can be a confidence-booster.

3. Seek mentors. Mentors can be those who possess the education and experience you are seeking, and those who might not be educated may possess wisdom and common sense. Be open to accepting both positive and negative advice and/or comments. Understand your mentors and the underlying reason for the constructive criticism. Most importantly, understand yourself and know when to filter negative comments that may discourage you.

Words of Wisdom

The lessons Tru has learned along the way has shaped who she is today. She’s become someone who is open-minded and understanding of others’ situations and their points of view, whether it’s from a traditional or Americanized Hmong viewpoint. Her children are part of her inspiration and motivation, because every day with them is a learning process. She wants to take the wisdom from her mother and her own life experiences and teach it to other women to better themselves.

When asked what advice Tru would give to someone in her shoes, she’d encourage them to “be the change and don’t be afraid to take the initiative”. Her advice to the Hmong sisters worldwide is to never be discouraged by where you are in life and don’t settle for less. For the sisters who have made it, be humble, reflect on your journey, and don’t forget to extend a helping hand to your fellow Hmong sisters who are where you once were. And lastly, “Smile, enjoy life, but most of all, have grit!”

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S T ORY T E L L E R next would catapult Vickie on a journey of loss, worthiness and, finally, self love.

Victorious: A Story of Trauma and Perseverance An Anonymous Story Written by Pa N. Vue

The Hmong believe that when someone is frightened, their spirit can detach from their bodies and wander. A spirit that has been detached by fright is said to wander in the area where the threatening event occurred. As the body returns home, the spirit is lost in the trauma. In a dream, the affected person might see through the eyes of their spirit and experience the threatening event repeatedly. She or he may be hypervigilant, depressed, or avoidant of cues that remind them of the event. To help connect the spirit to the body, a soul calling ceremony must be performed. The symptoms of trauma just described mirrors that of the DSM 5, a handbook of psychological diagnoses. PTSD is a disorder that can develop after a shocking, scary, or dangerous event. Symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive memories, going out of one’s way to avoid thoughts or places associated with the traumatic event, having difficulty sleeping, and negative thoughts about oneself or the world. Victorious (“Vickie” in the rest of this article) experienced trauma at the age of eighteen, but didn’t fully realize what it was until much later.

While home for winter vacation after her first semester of college, Vickie went to a club with her boyfriend and his friend.

They drank a little and soon after, a fight broke out between her boyfriend and his friend and another Hmong man and his friends. Soon enough, everyone was kicked out of the club for participating. Outside, the fight continued, and what happened

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It was late. Upset by the fighting at the club, Vickie’s boyfriend and friend “wanted to seek revenge”. The friend knew where to find the Hmong man, so they drove to his home. Vickie went with them, but she stayed in the car. Another fight ensued outside the man’s home, and as they left the scene, Vickie learned that her boyfriend and his friend had killed the man.

“I couldn’t wrap my mind around what had just happened,” she said.

Her life took a turn for the worse. Her boyfriend and his friend were arrested, and she was a witness in a homicide case. If she didn’t participate, she could go to prison for a minimum of five years. People in the Hmong community—most of them she didn’t even know—blamed her for the victim’s death. At the same time, Vickie was dealing with the loss of her boyfriend whom she had been together with for a year. “When you’re 18 years old, a year seems like a long time,” she reflected.

Except for her parents’ support, Vickie felt all alone. To make it worse, she didn’t know who the victim was and only learned of his name from reading the newspaper—this was before Facebook and Twitter. “I think that made it really difficult because when I would go to places with a lot of Hmong people, I would have no idea who knew [the victim and his family] and who knew me.”

She turned to alcohol to numb the pain. Her grades plummeted.

“School was the last thing on my mind, and I was pretty lost.”

Vickie didn’t know what she was going through, or that it had a name. She just knew that she drank and partied a lot, and she only wanted to be around people she trusted. She was suspicious of people she didn’t know. This went on for a year and a half.

During that time, Vickie also found grace in art and social justice work. “I made sure that any type of oppression was brought to light so that we could eradicate racism, sexism…”

Although Vickie had no idea at the time, the stages of her recovery aligned with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) “Phases of Traumatic Stress Reactions Following Disaster and Mass Violence”. In Phase 1, she experienced “a sense of threat, shock, fear helplessness or powerlessness, guilt, and anxiety.” In Phase 2, she tried to understand what happened and dealt with “the physical, emotional, and social impact” of the traumatic event. In Phase 3, she displayed altruism by giving of herself (in disaster and mass violence events, people feel gratitude towards altruism given to them from others). Lastly, in Phase 4, she started rebuilding her life.

After her first semester, Vickie had earned a 3.8 grade point average (GPA), but during her recovery, her GPA dropped as low as a 1.78. She found herself on probation and had to petition the school in order to stay and finish her degree.

With time and through her work for the community though, Vickie began to see her worth again. She also met the man who would become her husband and started the journey to self love.

“He offered confirmation to me at a time when I was lost and I was still trying to find my way.”

elders—flourish and be at peace was so strong that the work I did to honor my grandfather and my parents showed me how capable I am.” It gave her strength to overcome everything and anything. “I realized that I love who I am. I love being a Hmong woman.”

After five years of going to school year round and taking 18 or more units some semesters, Vickie graduated. She decided that she wanted to go to graduate school. “I wanted to do more and loved the social justice work I was doing. I wanted to have more power to influence more change in the system.”

Vickie was accepted into multiple programs. In graduate school, she became surrounded with professors who believed in her and her contributions and wanted to mentor her. She went on to earn her doctorate and graduated at the top of her class.

Vickie took the opportunity to email the advisor who had told her that she didn’t have what it took. “[I] let her know kindly that I graduated with my doctorate because I found people who believed in me. ...[She] serves as an advisor to other students, and I wanted her to know that her comment to me injured me...and I hoped that she would be more careful with whom she advises in the future.”

Her GPA was still too low at this time—below a 3.0—but she decided to apply anyway. To Vickie’s disappointment, when she asked her advisor for a letter of recommendation, her advisor didn’t provide one.

She didn’t think Vickie “had what it took” to go to graduate school.

“That really broke my heart,” Vickie said, her voice breaking. “Here I am at this university where there were 95% white people with a faculty that was 100% white, and I had been too ashamed to let the faculty know what I went through.” Nobody checked in on her, nobody was curious to see why her grades dropped so drastically. “These white professors just thought this Hmong girl from the Twin Cities just didn’t have what it took, and I started doubting myself.”

“I’m rooted in a long

history of social justice

fighters, and my desire to see my Hmong brothers

and sisters—my Hmong elders—flourish and be at peace was so strong

Vickie didn’t get accepted to graduate school, so after getting her bachelor’s degree, she married and started her life. With some encouragement from her parents and husband, she decided to apply to grad school again. “Whatever it was that I did, I [now] wanted to make a difference in the world. I wanted to change [it] for the better. I wanted to address injustices.”

that the work I did to

As Vickie described it, PTSD wasn’t even on “her radar”. “I was just doing my college thing, binge drinking and having fun. I didn’t realize [these things] were a defense mechanism.”

But she had had all the symptoms.

“Now I advocate for people wherever and whenever I see people with need.” Vickie calls this “post-traumatic growth”, which is a phenomenon where trauma should’ve pushed a person down, but instead inspires that person to use their experience to help others.

honor my grandfather

Today, Vickie wants to create a better world for her four children. She wants to “create courage and hope in their lives so they will have awareness of the situation and of their strength”. She also wants to let any Hmong sisters out there who feel alone know that they are not alone.

In fact, she hopes that her story will inspire them to look for “windows where they might be able to climb out”.

and my parents showed me how capable I am.”

This time around, Vickie approached the application process with more wisdom and clarity. Time had passed and she had changed. “I’ve been on a rollercoaster,” she said. At one point, she thought she might’ve had to go to prison. At another, she was so low, she didn’t love herself. But her restored faith in the Hmong community and the Hmong people allowed her to love herself again. She specifically remembered learning about the Cob Fab—Hmong guerrilla fighters who were still fighting the Laotian government. Coupled with her own family’s history, this helped her recognize that she came from somewhere special. “I’m rooted in a long history of social justice fighters, and my desire to see my Hmong brothers and sisters—my Hmong

Almost all college campuses have counseling services. Vickie also encourages anyone who is going through trauma to consider community clinics. These services will provide mental health support and advocacy.

“There is no straight path to where you want to go. Life is beautiful with all the pain and all the bumps. It may not be exactly the way you think it will be. Reach out. Talk to people. You are not alone. There is a way out and there is a way up.”

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What One Woman Did With a Few Years of Education Written and Translated by Myder Ly

D

er Vang is an entrepreneur who knows first-hand how hard life can be without the basic foundation of an education. She is the oldest of five children and lives in one of the poorest villages in Yunnan Province, China. She did not get the opportunity to go to school until the age of 14. Even then, she was determined not to be left behind due to the lack of a proper education.

It was very rare to have more than one family member attend school at the same time when Der was growing up. Land was scarce and ownership of property to grow food was always a battle.

Families who had more helping hands would be able to take more control and cover more ground. If more than one family member went off to school, the family would not have the manpower to maintain the resources needed to live on. Because Der was the oldest, she had the most important job: to watch after the family’s herd of cows. Therefore, she knew school was not going to be priority for the sake of her family’s survival.

The local school in the village only taught up to fifth grade. In order to continue with school, students would have to take a two-hour walk into the city. They would make the travel and go stay for five days and then return home on the weekends.

After her younger siblings went as far as they could go with school, Der was finally allowed to go to school at 14 years old.

She made the two-hour walk or sometimes took a moped to and from the city to attend school. Eventually, only after a few years, she was too old and could only continue her education by entering college.

Der felt that she was too far behind on her education to jump right into college. She knew with only a few years of school, she was not prepared. She made the decision not to go to college but, instead, to find a way to learn a skilled trade that would further her ability to live a better life.

Determined and not willing to quit, Der decided to learn how to sew clothes. She opened her own business, twenty minutes from her home, sewing authentic Hmong and Chinese clothing.

The demand for tailoring and seaming services was high so she was able to hire a few Hmong women to work for her. This allowed her to teach others the trade and to make a decent living beyond the fields. It also allowed her to provide for her daughter who has now graduated from college and works as a reporter.

“A rice grain can be planted for the moment, for today or for the week. But it cannot be planted for your future.” She knows and believes that every woman wants a life of happiness and prosperity for themselves and their children. “And a rice grain alone just cannot do that for you.”

“As parents,” Myder said, “we do not know any better than what we have been taught. Our children need to know that there are opportunities out there that can help make life better.

Without exposure and education, society will continue to stay the same…poor and uneducated.”

Der believes that one of the main struggles for Hmong women in China is access to education and finding a good job. When asked what some solutions might be, she replies, “China sends a few students to study abroad in the United States. This program has proven to be very successful. There should be more similar programs for more children to have the same opportunities.”

Der’s determination and resilience pushed her to do things she was taught would be impossible. Not being able to go to college did not stop her from dreaming big. Der reached her goals and also helped other women reach theirs. She knows that having an education is the key to making life better. She hopes to encourage more children to go to school. She also hopes to educate more parents to change the mindset that farming is the only way for the family to survive.

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YOLO: Gaining Self-Confidence as a Result of Cyberbullying Written by Pa Dao Vang

No Introduction Necessary The first time I met for Christina Xiong for her interview via video chat, she was friendly, confident, and bubbly. It’s the same attitude she used to “shake off” her “haters.” The life motto she lives by is “YOLO” or “You only live once.” This simple phrase led Christina to her first performance at the Hmong Cultural New Year Celebration that took place in December 2017.

In the first round of the singing competition, her performance of “Txav Los Ze Ze” by Maly Vue was recorded and uploaded onto YouTube and garnered a lot of attention, some positive but mostly negative. After the video recording went viral online, she quickly realized how cruel people can be behind a screen.

Learning how to deal with cyberbullies was no easy feat, but she has come out on the other side of it. In turn, she’s gained confidence being on the receiving end of cyberbullying.

Christina, 23, was born in Oroville, California and currently lives in Fresno, California. During her childhood, she moved back and forth between the two cities due to her parents’ divorce. Because of the constant moving, she was always the new kid at school and has attended ten different schools. Right now, Christina is a dance major at California State University, Fresno. To better her singing skills, she is taking vocal lessons at the university and plans on taking more lessons at a local studio.

In addition, she is looking to take acting classes. When asked about her biggest goal, it is to step out of her comfort zone, and she continues to do that every day. Every step towards improvement is a step closer to her dream of becoming a singer, dancer, actress, and teacher.

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Cyberbullying and Its Effects

Cyberbullying is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “the electronic posting of mean-spirited messages about a person often done anonymously.” Often described as a phenomenon that happens to teenagers, it is becoming more prevalent across all ages with increased use of social media. Users on popular social media sites like Facebook experience cyberbullying at 37% compared to 10% on YouTube according to Enough Is Enough.

In short, cyberbullying is when the bullying takes place on an online platform. Bullies could harm their victims anonymously, by DM (direct message), and/or commenting on their posts.

Cyberbullying can affect anyone, and the effects of bullying can last for a long time…if you let it. As for Christina, she makes a conscious effort to not let the naysayers drag her down. When in doubt, she reminds herself, “There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Following the Hmong Cultural New Year Celebration performance, nasty comments flooded her YouTube video. A Facebook video also surfaced that received a handful of negative attention from the Hmong community. Many commented on how horrible of a singer she was and said people only voted for her because they wanted to make fun of her. Some people went as far as sending messages to her Facebook inbox telling her to kill herself.

Christina’s initial reaction to the negativity was shock, anger, and sadness. These emotions felt unfamiliar to her, because

The best way she suggests dealing with cyberbullying is to simply ignore it..

she’s never had people treat her this way. The saying “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can’t hurt me” definitely didn’t apply in this case. Words hurt, and the words from those strangers hurt.

“It was unbelievable to me how mean people were being,” said Christina.

But amid the negative comments also came positive ones about her bravery and confidence. Some of the commenters applauded her for having the courage to perform on stage, despite missing several notes.

Dealing with Cyberbullies Support from family and friends is a great source for dealing with cyberbullying. Christina’s support system provided words of encouragement and a sympathetic ear. The best way she suggests dealing with cyberbullying is to simply ignore it. Or as they say, “Don’t feed the trolls.” As tempting as it may be, she tries her best not to read the comments section because it’ll only leave her feeling bad about herself. She is not one to stoop low and fight back with more negativity. Instead, she’s choosing to kill them with kindness.

Because of Christina’s experience with cyberbullying, she wants to serve as inspiration for others to show that, they too, can survive bullying of any kind. Her best advice to those experiencing cyberbullying is that it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. The opinions of strangers aren’t important if you

don’t think they are. The people you should pay attention to are the ones who have your best interest at heart.

For anyone experiencing cyberbullying, she wants to remind them that they are “amazing, beautiful in your own way, and nothing can change who you are. Be positive.” Her advice to others who wish to do what she’s doing is to “practice, practice, practice” to avoid the kind of criticisms she endured, but to also improve on your craft. She faced the haters by uploading a cover video of Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” on her YouTube channel to show them that she was not going to let their negative energy get to her.

Things may have been rough, but it has turned out better than Christina ever expected it to. Because of what happened, she is doing what she loves and is having fun doing it. In her younger years, she was a self-described “happy child” but was labeled as the shy one. It was due time that everyone got to see the real her, the Christina who isn’t afraid to live the life she wants. Because “YOLO”.

When Elizabeth Yang, founder of HWTOTW, called on the sisters to help her with a sisterhood song, Christina happily took on the challenge. She took inspiration from her mother’s life and her own experiences and wrote an original sisterhood song.

In the song there was a very powerful line that stood out, “Peb yuav tsis mloog cov suab hais tias peb ua tsis tau” which translates to “We won’t listen to the voices of those who say we can’t do it.” How fitting that a line from that song fits perfectly into this theme of not letting others tear us down.

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S TORY T E L L E R

Ouvre ta Gueule: Evolving the Hmong Woman Conversation in France Written by Kao Yongvang

C

laudia Delahaye is a 35 year-old Hmong French woman who lives near Paris. She works in the animation industry as an Illustration Animator for TV cartoons, in a field she’s worked in for 13 years after studying for it in school. However, she’s only been in her current position for a year now. Four years prior to taking on this job, Claudia was self-employed and used her talent to create cartoons for organizations and other agencies to help them communicate their messages to the public. Due to personal and political reasons, she returned to taking a company job and that has brought her to the region of Paris. Claudia’s own dream is to write and draw her stories. “I love creating stories, telling myself stories. I love living fully and I want to share stories that make people laugh, cry, think, and especially stories that give hope and courage to the readers.” She has started things in motion with a few comics and a graphic novel that she hopes to publish within the next six months.

Claudia was born in French Guiana, part of the first generation of Hmong to be born on French soil after the end of the Vietnam War. She grew up in the small town of Cacao. A lot of Hmong refugees had resettled there and had established a community with a strong hold in this region of France located in South

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America, just north of Brazil. Her mother got pregnant with Claudia but her father refused to acknowledge and claim the relation and so her mother lost her honor and reputation.

in January 2018. From there, they created a space more open, more collaborative in order to build on the momentum and be ready for the third video.

When Claudia was born, her mother had met a Frenchman. In order for the two of them to see each other, they had to get married, hence Claudia’s last name - Delahaye, her adoptive father’s family name. From the union came three children: Claudia has two brothers, 33 and 30, and a younger sister who is 20.

The first video was more generic with Claudia speaking up on issues unfair to Hmong women. In the second one, the group focused on a more specific topic: what is a good reputation [for a Hmong woman]? As they worked on this second video, they put out a survey to gather topics of interest and importance to their audience for the third video. The result was marriage in the Hmong community.

Claudia considers herself one of the Hmong women in France who have a progressive mindset and who are seeking to make some changes within the community. In October 2017, she created a video called Ouvre ta gueule (“Speak Up!” with literal translation “Open Your Mouth”) in which she explains and criticizes the unrealistic expectations and mistreatments of Hmong women in the Hmong community in France. Claudia acknowledged that the content is not intended as a generalization of all Hmong people and reflects mostly her own experience navigating the Hmong community as a woman. Actually, she explained that this first video was made as a publicity stunt with her cousin Alice, who appears with her in the second video.

One day, the two of them were talking about issues they saw in the community and thought to put a discussion group together to voice concerns. Their group didn’t attract a lot of Hmong women so Claudia decided to make a video to raise awareness and make them feel more comfortable about participating.

In the end, the group didn’t take off but the video brought together women who could relate to Claudia’s message. These women promoted and shared the video and its Facebook viewage has garnished 8,000 views as of date. It’s not too shabby of a success rate considering there are about 20,000 Hmong living in France. That translates to about a 40% representation of that population.

In the video, Claudia had included her contact information to encourage other Hmong women to either join the discussion group or to help create the next video. Given how much more spread out the Hmong population is in France, the goal was to meet and bring together other like-minded women like herself and Alice to have an engaging discourse on the lives of Hmong women. Some women did reach out to Claudia, eight of them in fact, and they got to know each other better, finding they had a lot in common. Together, they worked on the second video - in which both Claudia and Alice starred - and it was released

It was around the publication of the first video that Claudia heard about HWTOTW through one of the two Hmong francophone Facebook platforms. She was interested but did not contact Elizabeth until a friend on Facebook suggested Claudia be involved due to the similarity of their intentions: to raise up Hmong women.

One topic of importance to Claudia is the alarming trend of Hmong men, those who grew up in Laos when they were little and then emigrated to France, those over the age of 50, who now return to Laos and Thailand for sexual tourism. “Sexual tourism” is a term that Claudia uses to describe the use of power through money to shop for and buy younger women, more vulnerable to exploitation. “It’s revolting to us. It’s disgusting to us to see such hatred toward women from these men who despise their own wives and the young Hmong women who live there. This is the one topic that really angers [myself and the women in the video group].”

But what aspires Claudia is “to be connected with myself, to be true to myself: to love and respect myself, and to live among people who also respect and love themselves. Voilà, it’s very simple. It’s basic.” The work that she is doing now [with the videos] is to allow people - women - to express and be themselves, for Hmong women to better understand where they come from as Hmong women, for all to create their own dreams whatever those dreams may be. If Hmong means free, then those who live in rich, more developed countries need to use their economic clout and political influence, to participate in the privilege of such freedoms as civic involvement and to raise their voices for those who are less fortunate. It is this message of consciousness that drives Claudia in her video project and one that she advocates to other Hmong women. “There’s going to be some evolution, for the better.”

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S TO RY T E L L E R

Becoming a Face for Hmong in Mainstream Media Written by Catherine Thao

In the competitive world of media, women of color are scarce to find. According to reported responses to professional association queries by the Women’s Media Center, “women of color represent just 7.95 percent of U.S. print newsroom staff, 12.6 percent of local TV news staff, and 6.2 of radio staff.” Faces like Gia Vang, news anchor at a local Fox affiliate in Fresno, California, hold significant meaning to viewers because they don’t see them very often in media. Hmong families are able to watch Gia every night Monday through Friday and connect with her. “We are Hmong and we are so passionate about who we are and our culture,” Gia said.

Gia started her career in journalism in college at Sacramento State University in California. When asked about the doubts from her community regarding what would have been considered an atypical career choice at the time, Gia said, “I couldn’t argue with myself and this decision because this is what I really wanted to do.” The more people questioned her decision to go into journalism rather than law or medical practice, the more she was inspired to be successful.

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After graduating, Gia moved to Eugene, Oregon to work with a local TV station. It was there that she found her passion for being part of TV media, and it was also there that she was, for the first time, alone without a big Hmong community. “It was hard, but rewarding,” she said.

Gia recalled going to the farmer’s market and the excitement bubbling inside when she saw for the first time in a long time some friendly Hmong faces among the predominantly white community. According to Gia, the Asian population there was about two percent at the time, and not many of the Asians were Hmong. She instantly connected with the Hmong vendors and learned that most of them lived near or in Portland, not Eugene, but would travel to Eugene for the farmer’s market.

“Some people might think that it’s crazy,” she said, regarding her openness to connecting with Hmong she didn’t know, “but it’s important and it’s also important for them. You look at it as a two-way street. The vendors are reaching out because I’m Hmong. I’m responding because I’m Hmong. You think about the amount of Hmong people who live in this world and you think about how special that is, to have that connection with someone in this place that doesn’t really have that.”

Gia knew that her time in Kansas City had come to an end.

She organized her resume reel, a compilation of her work on DVD that she could show to news directors or managers for critiques and started attending job fairs. One job fair that Gia attended was the Anaheim Convention in California. There, she connected with a news director from Phoenix, where she eventually worked two years. In 2016, she found her way to her current station, the local Fox affiliate in Fresno, California where she would become a full-time news anchor.

One of the things that Gia always wanted to do was to return and help the Hmong community in whatever way she could.

“One of the reasons I got into journalism was because I didn’t really see Hmong people doing this,” Gia said. When she was younger, Gia only knew of a handful of Hmong journalists— one woman in Minnesota, and another woman in Fresno. “I just thought to myself that I wanted to do something to represent Hmong people because I wasn’t seeing that.”

“Everyone is so

happy and proud to see

someone who looks like

After two and a half years in Eugene, a local station in Kansas City, Missouri saw her work, was interested in her, and reached out. “I didn’t want to at first,” she laughed. As a California native, Gia said that she wanted to be by the ocean and wasn’t interested in the Midwest. Eventually, she agreed to an interview, and the station flew her out to Kansas City. After a comedy of errors, including her returning flight being cancelled due to weather and a meaningful conversation with a friend, Gia took the opportunity to get to know the city better. She connected with one of the reporters she met during the interview and explored.

Once she opened up her mind to Kansas City, she was amazed at its caliber which was highly underrated.

them on TV.”

Gia accepted the position in Kansas City, and a month later, moved. In her new position, she found the chance to connect with a local Hmong community of about 3,000 Hmong families, and to reconnect with her roots. “They were very welcoming and close knit,” she fondly said. With her newfound community, Gia embraced her heritage and made it a point to attend local Hmong celebrations such as the Hmong New Year when she had the chance. “There are only so many of us in this country, so Hmong people reach out to you. There is always this sense of home and a sense of humbleness in being Hmong and knowing another Hmong person.”

Two years into her career in reporting and part-time anchoring,

Gia recently had an encounter with a Hmong woman who expressed that despite her barrier in language and understanding of English, she watched Gia’s channel every night from 10:00 to 11:00 because she is so proud that there is a Hmong daughter as a news anchor.

“That makes me happy because I want them to go home and take that to their relatives, young daughters, cousins, and families and say ‘Look, you can do this, too! Or, whatever you put your mind to, you can do it.

Look at this girl who is doing it’, ”Gia said.

One of the most encouraging and heartening moments for Gia is when she goes to secondary and post-secondary education events and young women are excited to see her and to meet her. “Everyone is so happy and proud to see someone who looks like them on TV. I want them to know that going into careers that deviate from what their families wanted them in [i.e. medical and law field] is ok and that they can make it and be successful.”

As a Hmong woman who has contributed to journalism and represented the Hmong in media, Gia’s advice to those who want to go into journalism is “when you do get into journalism, don’t change who you are. Don’t change all the things that come along with who you are, because that is how you can add to this profession.” Gia brought herself and her culture into her profession, embraced it wherever she went, and stayed true to herself and her convictions. With her strong roots, she has brought pride into the hearts of Hmong women, young and old around her, and continues to be a face in the media that Hmong women can connect with and be inspired by.

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The Journey to Self-Discovery, Self-love, and Self-Acceptance Written by Catherine Thao

S

elf-love and acceptance have not always come easy for Kimberly. She comes from a family of six including her parents and three brothers. She is the only daughter and the second oldest child, and she is the first of her siblings to pursue higher education. Kimberly expressed that she had always known she was different. “I liked to dress differently, and I liked to do more masculine tasks rather than be into make-up and such,” she said. As a child, she was often made fun of by relatives and was questioned about her choice in clothing and lack of interest in more feminine pastimes. Despite the criticism, she stayed true to herself and wore what she felt most comfortable in - baggy pants and t-shirts.

With the Hmong community’s lack of conversation and acknowledgement of the Hmong LGBTQIA community, it wasn’t until high school that Kimberly would start on the path to self-discovery. She utilized the internet to research her feelings and identity, and learned that she wasn’t going through a phase, and that she did in fact identify as bi-sexual and that there was an LGBTQIA community out there. Kimberly had to do a lot of searching on her own via the internet to define and come to terms with what she felt, what it meant, and how she would accept herself. “I had a lot of internal battles where I was telling myself that I can’t be this way because it is not accepted in our community, and I believed myself to not identify as anything other than heterosexual because I thought that I was going to disappoint my parents, my relatives, and everyone around me,” she said.

Kimberly started becoming more comfortable with herself while in high school, because her peers seemed to have more

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knowledge about the LGBTQIA community. “In my generation at that time in high school, it was something that we know about…but didn’t really talk about,” she said. In Kimberly’s senior year of high school, she found the courage to come out to a Hmong friend with whom she was comfortable and thought she could trust. “At first, it seemed like coming out to her was okay,” she said, “but after the next day, it was just like cold… cold treatment.” Shortly after, Kimberly found herself the victim of bullying. Rumors spread throughout her high school about her sexuality and her friendship with the friend to whom she came out. She quickly fell into depression, and it took her two to three years to overcome the trauma of her coming out in high school.

In fact, Kimberly didn’t realize how much this experience had affected her until she was in college. With the wound still fresh, Kimberly was hesitant to let anyone into her personal space, and didn’t open herself up to anyone. Living on campus two hours from her home, Kimberly found herself free of the expectations from her parents and the Hmong community. “Once I was able to live for myself…that’s when I started to discover more of myself and that…it is okay that I am this way because even though society doesn’t think this is normal, to me, this is normal for me because this is who I am. This is what makes me, me.” Kimberly has not yet come out to her family, and she isn’t sure where her family stands on the subject.

She stated that she is ready to tell her parents, but wants to wait until she is financially stable. She knows her parents love her and she has come to terms with herself: “if they have to love me from a distance, then that’s how it has to be because I want to

live my life in a way where I am free and I don’t have to keep acting like I am living two different lives.” Kimberly found solace in a high school acquaintance with whom she became close friends in college. This friend helped her through her depression from the aftermath of her trauma in high school. Having the support system of her friends helped Kimberly to gain confidence and belief in her inner strength.

“Now, instead of feeling so angry about what happened to me in high school, I decided to use my platform of being a part of the Hmong organization in college to educate my peers through discussion topics,” she said. Using her own experience, Kimberly educates her peers about the LGBTQIA community that exists within the Hmong community, and how to deal with the conflicts that arise at the intersection of these communities.

Kimberly expressed that one of the biggest challenges in accepting the LGBTQIA identity in the Hmong community is the mindset of what is considered “normal”. Because of the precedent of heterosexuality as the norm established, supported, and reinforced by the elders, some of the younger generation still hold the mindset that anything deviating from the norm is completely unacceptable.

“It’s a challenge to meet people with the same mindset as the elders, because then it’s like we aren’t really progressing as a community as time is passing on,” Kimberly said. “Since we are the ones that will be making the change for the future, then it up to us to educate each other about what these kinds of problems are and what we can do to fix them. There is a lot of relying on the older generation to change with the youth.”

With exposure to media and assimilation to the American culture, Kimberly can see that the current incoming freshmen definitely have a different high school experience than she did. “As they are coming in, I see that they are more open to talking about these topics and it seems that they are more exposed to it.” She expressed that although there is only a four to five year difference in age, there exists a greater acceptance of the LGBTQIA community from their generation versus hers.

Kimberly is currently the President of the Hmong American Student Association at her college. She helps run the organization in retaining and recruiting Hmong students. She also assists in educating the predominantly white campus and community about the Hmong. She holds workshops for her Hmong colleagues to better understand the LGBTQIA community and the misconceptions and cultural stigmas around what it means to be a part of the LGBTQIA community. In her workshop, Kimberly has an open discussion with the attendees about the barriers the LGBTQIA community face in the Hmong culture.

She also opens the floor for questions about herself. Kimberly’s advice to her Hmong sisters struggling with their identity as an LGBTQIA member is that “things will get better. You are who you are and there is nothing that can ever replace you, so you don’t have to live for someone else, just live for yourself.” As a note to the Hmong sisters worldwide - we are here, and we are your allies.

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The Path Up the Mountain: Becoming a Woman Shaman Written by See Xiong

D

ab neeb is different and often mistaken for qhua neeb. “Qhua neeb is spiritual guides. This is what shamans use,” said Angel Lee. “Not dab neeb.

Dab means monsters. These negative connotations make shamanism seem like a negative experience.” There are stigmas in every religion and Angel wants to open up the dialogue about Hmong shamanism.

It started with visions of her loved ones in dreams. When Angel was a child she’d dream of her cousins, who lived out of state, and within a few days she’d miraculously receive letters from them. This fascinated Angel. She could predict when her cousins would write to her and she soon started paying more attention to her dreams. She fell in love with going to sleep.

Her dreams connected her with people she knew. It wouldn’t be until years later that Angel would learn these dreams weren’t just dreams. They were the beginning of her calling to become a shaman.

Angel remembers a place in her dreams above the clouds. She was shown a stairway to a gate and when she asked why the gate was closed, they told her it was not her time yet. When she awoke from her dream, she told her mother. She remembers how silent her mother was. “Don’t think too much,” her mother replied. Angel, however, did the exact opposite. She started to dwell on her dreams. “I started thinking deeper and I started receiving answers in my dreams.”

Gradually her dreams began shifting. She started dreaming of strangers she would soon meet and her premonitions would come true. The dreams became more intense when she married and started having children. She even dreamed the genders of her children. “Anytime I pondered, at night my dreams answered my questions.”

She noticed she would get more visits from deceased individuals. “Scary dreams started coming. Disturbing dreams. The types of dreams that my husband would have to wake me up

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from,” Angel said. The sweet dreams where her cousins visited Angel were replaced with dreams of natural disasters, war, and violence. In one of her most memorable dreams she remembers lots and lots of smoke. There was a horrible war and there were very few she could save. Angel awoke with fear and much sadness. “The next day I was sitting in [in class] in college, and my professor turned on the TV, and I saw the images in my dreams.” That day would become known as 9/11.

The dreams were lessons Angel believes she had to go through.

It was her qhua neeb, spiritual guide, preparing her to become a shaman. “I felt it all my years,” she said. “All these dreams turned me into a different person where all this knowledge was coming to me.” The dream that really confirmed her belief was one where Angel was guided to sit on a wooden bench. She was verbally told she was going to become a shaman. In Hmong shamanism, a wooden bench symbolizes the horse a shaman uses as transportation to the spirit world. Angel woke her husband up and told him it was time. Able to laugh about it now Angel said, “He looked at me sleepily and said ‘Oh sure, ok’ not realizing what kind of journey was ahead of us.”

Becoming a female shaman in a patriarchal culture was a difficult process for Angel. Because she was married, she was told her husband had a role in her journey. Angel’s husband had never been a religious person, but now he’d be in charge of finding the proper contacts and arranging ceremonies for her.

If she hadn’t been married, her parents would’ve been the ones involved. Since they were so inexperienced with the path to become a shaman, Angel and her husband relied heavily on his parents. “What I could’ve done in half an hour took weeks just waiting for my father-in-law to call me up and say they found a person that would take the first step.”

There are several steps to become a shaman. The first step, tsawv qe, is a ceremony where someone used an egg to find a shaman mentor for Angel. Balancing the egg vertically, a shaman would call the name of possible mentors. If the egg doesn’t fall when a

mentor’s name is called, that person would be Angel’s mentor.

“Then my husband had to contact this sifu, or master, to schedule a time to go to his home and bring proper material and share with him our journey.” The man identified as Angel’s sifu could have declined her as a student, but he accepted.

ception] that if you’re a shaman then koj vvm,” Angel said.

You’re crazy. “I’ve also heard [people say] that shamans charge so much money and their healings don’t even work.” For Angel, it’s always been about what you can do to help a person suffer less. Not about the money.

Next, Angel and her sifu performed several ua neeb (shaman ceremonies) to see if their shaman styles would align. This took several months. During this process Angel discovered one of her gifts was to ua neeb saib. According to Angel, she heals with dream interpretations. She believes she was given this gift because of all the premonitions in her dreams.

As the world turns, so does healing. There’s a new generation of Hmong shamans, ua neeb tshiab. Angel says she’s a mixture of the old and new ways, but would probably be considered as ua neeb tshiab. Both of Angel’s grandparents, who were part of the old generation of shamans, wore all black. The new generation of shamans wears different outfits, which some people consider flashy. The tools of trade have changed as well. The older generation would use incense sticks, bells, leaves, or candles to reach their qhua neeb. The new generation of shamans will use whatever tools they are intended to use. Some don’t even use a tool, just their energy.

“Early on in my journey, I gravitated [toward] a pen and paper,” Angel said. Witnesses of her practices see a consistent pattern.

Angel writes people’s questions on one side of a piece of paper, sits with a pen and the paper in hand, her eyelids get heavy, and she goes into a trance. Then she travels “through the chant to different parts of the universe” and writes messages from her “spiritual guides” on the other side of the paper. “The writings would come to tell me how to treat that situation,” Angel said.

The messages come as fast as a conversation and Angel tries to transcribe as fast as she can. Sometimes she writes in English, sometimes in Hmong.

“I’m in the middle as the vessel,” Angel explained.

To become a full shaman Angel will have to graduate. Because her sifu passed away before she could graduate, she was at a standstill until his wife, who is also a shaman, stepped in and took Angel under her wing. There have been barriers Angel hasn’t been able to cross yet as a shaman. “At this moment I need to figure out if I need a new sifu to graduate, but I’ve been told I can help my family and close friends with my abilities.”

“I’ve known people who couldn’t complete their journeys as a shaman because [they had] no support,” Angel said. It’s been a long, and emotionally exhausting spiritual journey; and this was with a supportive circle. “If it was already lonely for me, I can’t even imagine how lonely it could be with someone without support.”

Angel’s work as a domestic violence and sexual assault advocate has crossed paths with her work as a shaman. She’s found that domestic violence can hinder a Hmong woman’s journey to become a shaman. Angel has met women who’ve said they have qhua neeb, but their partners don’t support them. She’s heard of partners who’ve been verbally abusive. Some who’ve called their gifts “gifts from the devil”. Some partners have even physically broken their shaman altars.

“If a partner is violent, it puts a barrier on her spiritual journey,” Angel said. “It doesn’t matter what religion. It’s a major contributing factor to her spirituality.” She believes until the woman can break away from the violence, she can’t grow spiritually.

Becoming a shaman is a lonely path. A dear friend once said to Angel, “The higher you climb the mountain, the lonelier you get,” and this is exactly how Angel feels. “There’s a [miscon-

“I was worried when nothing was working for me and my mentor told me that I would find my own method,” said Angel.

“It was organic for me to grab a paper and pen. Those are my tools.”

It hurts Angel to hear others say that what the new generation is doing is not right. “It’s like medicine. People are going to ua neeb tshiab because we will find new ways to heal. Medicine is changing and healing is changing.”

Angel has had supporters and discouragers. “I don’t think their intentions were to hurt me, but the ones that didn’t know how to help me would suggest things like [going] to church,” Angel said, “as if my gifts were evil.” She’s even experienced sexism in the shaman community. She’s had people enter her home and ask if her shaman altar belongs to her husband, implying that a woman isn’t qualified enough to be a shaman.

It wasn’t until recently that Angel accepted all of what she was capable of providing as a healer. Finding other life healers has helped Angel’s spirituality. “Shamans of other cultures, priests—it’s important to be connected to people who share the vision.” Sometimes you can find support in the least expected places. Angel found support on some Facebook groups and pages. These mentors helped Angel feel comfortable about her spirituality.

Angel first started her path to become a shaman back in 2013.

She’s had her shaman altar for more than 5 years now. There have been moments where she’s felt tied down with traditions and discouraged by non-believers, but there’s a quote by Maryam Hasnaa that she’s found comfort in: “A healer does not heal you. A healer is someone who holds space for you while you awaken your inner healer, so that you may heal yourself.”

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On the Ability to Choose Your Own Journey Written by Mai Pa Lee

Living with a disability for Mai Thor has been a journey filled with many insights and a lot of self-advocacy. While living in Laos, Mai was infected by the poliovirus and has lived with it since the age of five. In the late 1970’s, poliovirus was widespread in Southeast Asia. Unlike in Europe and the United States at the time, there were no vaccinations available there.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that being infected by the virus leads to paralysis because of its invasion of the brain and spinal cord.

Mai’s family immigrated to the United States in the 1980’s when relatives and a church sponsored them to come to America. She watched as her mom single-handedly raise their family in a new world. She used the determination fueled by her mom’s hard work to influence her life and impact her success. Growing up, Mai’s mom worked two jobs to take care of her family. Reflecting back on those memories, Mai states, “My mom did the best with what she had. She’s not going to go to PTA meetings or call up county services, she didn’t know how to do that.” Like many immigrant families finding their way in a new place, her mom may not have known about these resources but she did teach Mai how be strong-willed.

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Mai’s mom continually pushed her to do well in school and, thus, from an early age the pursuit of education was instilled in her. In college, Mai started searching for more opportunities and support services, a lot of which were not available to her as a child. At the time of her childhood, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, section 503, had not yet been well-established. Neither had the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These two laws now serve as a protection for individuals with disabilities, protecting against discrimination and providing affirmative action.

Social Stigma Despite having laws in place, it is looked down upon to have a disability in the Hmong community. As a Hmong woman with a disability, Mai faces a vast amount of stigmatization. Because of the patriarchal nature of the Hmong culture, household chores like cooking, cleaning, and caring for children fall mostly on the shoulders of Hmong women. Mai remembers people doubting her ability to fulfill the role of a “good” nyab (daughterin-law). She even questioned some of those thoughts, stating, “Should I care that people don’t expect me to be a good nyab?”

They were very conflicting feelings. On one hand, she wanted to take care of her family and on the other hand, she did not want to be placed into a mold. Mai wanted to have the option to choose what she can and cannot do. The assumption that she was incapable because of her disability meant that folks took away her options.

Mai still faces challenges like everyday access, and will get the occasional person coming up to her to make a crude comment.

She recalls a scene at the Hmong market with her two sons, when an older Hmong lady approached her to ask, “Ua cas koj tsis txom nyem na” which translates to Why aren’t you miserable? Questions like these are frustrating and Mai does not have the time to feel self-pity; she is too busy living her life. Looking outwardly in, people assume many things about living with a disability. Abled bodied folks are often surprised to find that Mai is able to live just like most people do: she has a career, a marriage, and a family.

Even before she had children and started a family, Mai and her abled-bodied partner would get stares when they were out in public. Assumptions that her partner was her caretaker would be made, or he would be praised for dating someone with a disability. There is a huge misconception, Mai explains. “My husband is not taking care of me 24/7.” They are in a relationship and are in it together equally. With moments like these, she knows there is still a long way to go for folks to understand that having a disability does not change one’s humanity.

Although Mai does not want be pitied for having a disability, she also does not want to be seen as an inspiration. In her dayto-day, she has a job, drives her own car, and is independent.

For living her life, just as other folks live theirs, she is praised, rather uncomfortably, for being able to do so. To her husband, she is a wife, to her kids, she is a mom. As a couple, they do what most married couples do. Like many parents, they want to raise their kids well and nurture a healthy family.

Advocacy Self-advocating for Mai would be more defined in adulthood.

She states, “I was making the best decisions for myself, my responsibility to help my community, and to inform them.” When thinking about a career, she wanted to choose a path that she would excel in. The limitations that society put on her meant that Mai had to be thoughtful about her career path. She says, “If you have a disability, you have to reconcile feelings and thoughts, what do you really want to be? Work hard at becoming what you want to do.” It was after college when she held various careers pertaining to non-profit and community organizations doing advocacy work. Her first job out of college was working at a non-profit, specifically working with low-income folks with a disability. Mai got into this field because she wanted to change that narrative and to stand up for herself and for other folks with a disability.

Currently she works in Minnesota as a civic mediation coordinator. Prior to that, she held positions providing accommo-

dations for folks with disabilities. Just before interviewing to be a part of the HWTOTW virtual summit, she was at a local Minnesota college talking to students about advocacy for folks with disability. Fifteen to twenty years ago, having a disability was a huge stigma. Since then, Mai acknowledges that a mind shift has started. She states, “Hmong people, now more than ever, are equipped to talk about it and to access resources.”

There is still a long way to go and she hopes to deconstruct the conversation about folks with disabilities through education.

Self-Empowerment Mai’s work has been fulfilling and a journey she has paved on her own. Regarding topics of disability, she hopes that one day it can be a subject talked about freely. Although she faced a lot of barriers as a disabled Hmong woman, she learned about self-empowerment and focused on the things she needed to do in order to find personal success.

Mai’s message to Hmong women is to think outside of the box.

She wants young women to know that there is a world of possibilities. Before thinking about marriage and settling down, there are still a lot of experiences that can be had. Mai leaves us with these words, “Dream big, work hard, experience life to the fullest.” Even when others try to limit Hmong women, she hopes that they can still pave their journeys towards self-empowerment.

Mai does not want be

pitied for having a disability,

she also does not want to be seen as an inspiration.

In her day-to-day, she has a job, drives her own car, and

is independent. For living her life, just as other folks live

theirs, she is praised, rather

uncomfortably, for being able to do so.

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A Life Worth Living, a Viv Ncaus Worth Loving Written by Lilian Thaoxaoxchay

Xue Vang nee Lee is a woman of great faith and purpose – however, that hasn’t always been the case. In her nearly 40 years of life, she has had to struggle against and overcome a number of tremendous obstacles, some of which caused her to question whether or not it was truly worth living. Xue once attempted suicide by drinking an entire bottle of hard liquor and taking prescription pills. At the hospital, her mother asked her “why”. She thought, “I don’t know, I don’t know why you wouldn’t know – you guys did this to me...and I did this to me.”

Xue was born in Laos in 1979. Four weeks after, her parents made the decision to flee their war-torn homeland for Thailand. They hoped then to be able to immigrate elsewhere with more opportunities for their children. Xue was given some opium to keep her quiet and strapped to her mother’s chest. As her parents approached the border, marked by the rushing waters of the Mekong River, undoped babies belonging to other fleeing Hmong families began to wake and fuss. Their cries alerted nearby communist soldiers who then opened fire on the families, both on the shore and in the water. Xue’s father felt bullets whiz by his face and pierce the water. Xue was nearly ripped from her mother’s chest. They watched as a lifeless child floated by along the river within feet of its parents. But one-month old Xue survived – the opium,

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the river, and the bullets. The family was eventually resettled in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Xue is one of six children, four girls and two boys. However, she has always keenly felt the burden of her parents’ journey, both the struggles and sacrifices made to give them all better lives. Xue was her Upward Bound program’s graduation speaker and voted “Most Likely to Succeed” in high school, but in the months leading up to her first semester at the University of Wisconsin, Milwuakee, her father was injured in a car accident. While her mom worked to pay for his care, the family had no “extra” money to help make up the difference between her financial aid and scholarships and the tuition that was due. So Xue, who was still unsure of her potential major, opted to take the semester off and find work instead. She would not return to college for nearly eight years.

At 19, Xue’s parents forced her to marry her then-boyfriend after she broke her curfew one night. Although she was legally an adult, Xue felt obligated as a “good Hmong daughter” to do exactly as her parents demanded – especially as she had broken “the rules”. But when she was five and a half months pregnant with her second child, Xue’s now ex-husband walked out on her and their one and a half year old son. Xue’s life as a young, divorced Hmong

woman in the late 1990s was very difficult – it may still hold some truths or similarities to the lives of Hmong divorcees in 2018.

Xue was quite literally considered spoiled and spoiling goods.

People speculated as to what was wrong with her and why her husband had left her. She was also considered a bad influence on both young unmarried girls and already married women.

As opposed to being supportive or sympathetic, some ladies worried she might try to steal their husbands. Xue was largely excluded from the community. However, she was determined to rebuild her life and provide for her sons. She also returned to God. While her parents had always been shamanists and animists, and as a young girl, Xue had sworn to follow in their footsteps, she had attended a private Catholic school from fourth to sixth grade.

There she was exposed to the teachings of God and how to communicate and reflect via prayer. She was also heavily supported by a community not bound to her by blood. In her quest to find self-worth and enduring love after divorce, she chose faith in God and His plan to help guide her through her darkest hours.

fort zones of their upbringing. Additionally, her struggles with mental health and wellness has made her aware of the great stigmas surrounding getting help and/or taking medication to “feel happy”. Her parents were particularly confused about her need for therapy and medication. However, as Xue has slowly began accomplishing her many educational and professional goals, and found her feet, both gaining a deeper sense of self and worth - she also remarried - her relationship with her parents has become clearer. While she may not condone all of their actions or decisions, she has come to a better understanding of the cultural differences and historical forces driving them to particular points of view about life. Xue considers herself very lucky to have a close relationship with them.

In her quest to find

self-worth and enduring love after divorce,

she chose faith in God and His plan to help

guide her through her

“This is how change begins – from within...[I want to] share my story, share my message [and] inspire people to first take the steps to transforming themselves, to radiate positivity and purpose.”

darkest hours.

At 26, Xue moved to Arkansas where her parents had become chicken farmers. They agreed to help watch her boys so that she could pursue her degree. She eventually received a Bachelor’s of Science in Organizational Management and finished her master’s degree in 2013. She has hopes for pursuing a Ph.D. in education one day. Although Xue has talked about a “clock ticking” and the possibility that she might be “running out of time” because she will be 40 this year, listening to her has been greatly inspiring. Xue will soon receive her certification as a transformation coach and would like to become a professional speaker.

Xue is currently a career coach at the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She spends her days working with college students, helping to prepare them for the workforce and teaching them what it really means to be “adulting”.

However, she knows none of this is easy, especially for young Hmong men and women who might grow up isolated or heavily sheltered, and are unsure of how to proceed outside the com-

“I want to share my story as a means of communicating that there are those like me who are passionate about serving as a role model to guide [young people] to achieve any of their personal/professional goals...Y’all have so much potential – when I look at you, I see time, I see gifts, I see that you can do so much with your life and make a difference and change the world – [so] what do you want to do with your life?

Have you figured out your purpose yet? How can I help you...?!”

Xue described herself as very ambitious, sometimes taking on too much. In our interviews, I came to know her as open, honest, and very articulate.

However, this year she chose to be “more intentional” about both her work and projects. In her busy life as a mother, wife and niam tsev, sister, daughter, child of God, and professional, she made room for Hmong Women Take on the World.

Xue serves as a Tribal Leader. “[I am] doing this [as] my own way of imprinting my presence on this world as well as for my beloved daughter, Eliana-Grace, to know that being born a Hmong girl is not a tragic curse, but a beautiful blessing. To not only become a strong woman, but one who has a rich identity of proudly being Hmong...and what it means to be a Hmong woman.”

“My dream is to be able to do everything I love...and see the world, live life to its fullest. When I’m gone...the rest of the people here on earth [will say] she definitely made her mark in this world and she left the world a better place than it was before.”

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The Deliverance of Truth is Unapologetic: Star’s Journey for Social Justice in the Hmong American Community Written by Lilian Thaoxaoxchay

S

tar Bright Lee has always had a penchant for the truth. From an early age, she asked a lot of questions and pushed boundaries in pursuit of knowledge about herself, her family, and the world around her.

Star is also passionate about sharing the new things she has learned. “I always felt the need to say a lot about how I felt.” She found an outlet through writing, public speaking, and the arts. “Writing is a form of protesting. Writing is a form of understanding ideas. Writing is a form of calling in who is not part of the picture that needs to be included within this movement [and] within this picture…Art can be its own form of weaponry or revolution and it can create ideas and movements.”

In November 2017, Star published a column on the experiences of being Hmong and the “intergenerational trauma” Hmong American youth carry and have inherited from the generations before them. Intergenerational trauma is “the trauma that [continues on] through generations even though we [as a future generation] are not in proximity to physical war today.” Such trauma manifests itself in many ways, including both emotional and physical pain, and stems from the social, cultural, spiritual, and political struggles of our ancestors. For Hmong Americans, this is often the knowledge that Hmong people have no geographical place to call their own and have remained both migrants and a minority no matter where they have lived. Star writes, “Hmong people carry their home on their backs. Inside their soul seeps a golden light in search of sovereignty. Though we do not see a home, we feel one heavily in our hearts everyday…[but] I want you to know how great it is to be a Hmong person, that despite the pain, this script was written from power emanating through Hmong people. I cry tears of eager wonder, knowing that our community is my strength, and in it [and from Shamanism], is my power.”

Star adamantly believes that having a Hmong identity is “something that’s very political”. She was only eight years old when Vang Pao, general and former leader of the US-Hmong guerrilla forces in Laos during the American Secret War and a number of his compatriots were arrested for conspiracy to overthrow the

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Laotian government. They were alleged to be in violation of the Neutrality Acts which disallows violence with and against countries the US is currently at peace with. Star, her older sister, and some family members joined the hundreds of other Hmong protesters demanding their release in Sacramento, California, in June 2007. This rally marked a historic moment and record turnout for the Hmong American community. “A lot of Hmong folks brought their families, children, [and] people saw [for the first time that] we had a very political community.” This event was one of Star’s first political actions. “When I look back I realize that all this work I am involved in today started from a very young age...each event along with emotion were factors that led me to where I am today.”

A year later, Star and her older sister attended a second rally for Vang Pao. The two girls came alone and wore matching white t-shirts. They had duct taped their mouths shut and had written the words “hope” and “truth” in bold black letters across the silver tape. They were carrying signs that read: “‘No soldier left behind’ has been forgotten”. An older Hmong man quickly approached them and told them that they weren’t allowed “to do this here”. The man claimed that the girls were “disrespectful”, unprofessional, and detracting from the message of the event.

Star disagreed and saw the man’s continued “policing” of the girls’ movements throughout the protest as unnecessary censorship. “[Protest] is supposed to start a disruption.” “Respectability politics”, which Star defines as “the need to abide by the comfortability of viewers” or the audience - often limits the reach and messaging of protest, inherently political movements.

The higher the stakes, the more stringent and censoring the respectability politics, and when the man ripped the tape from her sister’s mouth and told them that they had to stop, Star felt a fire begin to burn within her.

This moment of confrontation sparked a change in Star and it inspired her to begin crafting her own space and place as a young Hmong American woman in the very political struggle for reparations and healing for people of color in the US, especially through forms of unapologetic protest. While “unapolo-

getic protest” may make some people uncomfortable, it also allows more vividly communicated messages. During the Vang Pao rally, Star and her sister not only carried signs with pictures of Secret War soldiers and veterans, but incorporated a performance of silenced “truth” and “hope”. Their message was that while US-Hmong relations remained excised from the history books, the sacrifices of Hmong veterans were ignored, and that for the Hmong American community, the greatest injustice wasn’t just the arrest of Hmong leader Vang Pao, but the entire amnesia of war.

“Starting out, looking back—despite the political work and the political positions I hold today—it was never my initial intention to jump into a lot of political work…wanting to tell my own truths, but figuring [and finding] out the truths [and history] of my [Hmong] identity—that brought me to want to become more involved in political work.” Although political work may seem exclusive, Star sees it as an integral part of everyday life, both shaped by and shaping the experience in this country especially for people of color. Politics pervade everything from work to health and education. Star cannot be quiet about social injustices affecting her intersecting identities as well as those of the communities around her - the same communities that make America what it is today. She is an unapologetic organizer fighting for human rights and justice in a world increasingly segregated by partisan politics.

Star’s nominator describes her as both strong and courageous, using her voice, writing, and activism to represent her communities and to help gain them access to important and necessary resources. But despite her many accolades and roles, Star remains down-to-earth, rooted in the knowledge that what she is doing has real-world implications for those around her.

Star’s journey, both the successes and strifes, remind us all that politics are important and fraught, sometimes proving very tense as when she and her sister were confronted by the older Hmong man’s demand to be polite and pleasing at the Vang Pao rally. However, political work within and outside the Hmong community is absolutely necessary for building and repairing the damages caused by war, emigration, and colonization. As multi-generational youth come of age, Star works to guide them towards an understanding of where they come from and where we all might go in the future with the shards of our ancestors’ dreams in our hearts.

Star is currently college student in Southern California double-majoring Business Administration and Political Science. In 2017 she was elected Chair of the National Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition Caucus with the United States Students Association (USSA) based in Washington, DC. She is also an assistant editor and writer at the “Hmong American Experience”, an online source for news and information about the Hmong American community. In the future Star aims to “induce more artwork, more poetry, and writing as a form of expression, as a form of revolution about what it means to have a Hmong identity.” You can follow her on Medium.com (@skydovvaspeaks) and read “The Home in My Heart Stands Still” in its entirety online.

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