Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. xxviii, 348 pp. (Figures, B&W photos.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-8166-9778-6.
In my opinion, the foremost achievement of this collection is to be amongst the first full-length volumes to tackle issues linked to gender within and around Hmong society. A good number of dissertations and articles have been addressing this field from a variety of angles, predominantly in the US, but this book takes the field to new heights. This is accomplished with the majority of authors being members of the Hmong community themselves. The locale for this quest is resolutely the US, where fourteen of the fifteen contributors are based and where the subjects of their research are primarily located. The volume also touches on Asia through a discussion of diasporic Hmong experiences from Laos to the US.
The book is structured into four parts that unfold after an introduction by the three editors who, among other matters, locate the volume firmly within the field of post-Vietnam War diasporic movements to the US. Part 1, “History and Knowledge,” involves Leena N. Her, Ma Vang, and Chia Youyee Vang proposing a reading of the nascent field of Hmong feminist perspectives, justly bringing to the fore seminal works by Patricia Symonds and Pranee Liamputtong Rice among others. Part 2, “Social Organization, Kinship and Politics,” with Mai Na M. Lee, Julie Keown-Bomar, Ka Vang, and Prasit Leepreecha, presents what should probably be termed case studies supporting the ethnographic project underlined in the section’s heading. Part 3, “Art and Media,” incorporating Faith Nibbs, Geraldine Craigh, and Aline No, discusses current forms of expression such as social media, textile production, and cinema. Part 4, “Gender and Sexuality,” with Louisa Schein, Bruce Thao, and Kong Pha, contains the most original contributions as sex, eroticism, and LGBTQ issues have not often been addressed in the scholarly literature on the Hmong. Closing the march, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials writes a short afterword emphasizing further the Asian-American studies backbone of the book.
Clearly, bringing together a majority of female authors (12) to denounce “patriarchal domination” as the “culprit of women’s subjugation” (back cover) is not a novel idea within feminist and gender studies. Doing it in the context of a lineage, acephalous society, however—even when seen from the eyes of a small portion of its subjects accidentally transplanted to a hyper-modern world—is definitely taking the discussion one step further. A strength of this book thus becomes visible in the combination of an established, mainly Western feminist literature, with non-Western traditions. On the flip side, well-known critiques from the subaltern studies viewpoint of drawing on Western approaches for such work—Chandra Mohanty being referred to only in passing—also open the door to critique.
Hmong society—around five million in all—is poorly known to most despite a rich scholarship made visible in hundreds of publications, and through the accomplishments of a thriving diaspora making waves in the United States (around 270,000). This new book will definitely help bridge this gap. Nonetheless, it is important to put things in perspective and keep in mind that the American Hmong account for only about 5 percent of this group’s total population. The remaining 95 percent are found in the highlands of the six contiguous Asian countries where they have spread over a few centuries (in decreasing demographic order: China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia), with Southwest China as its historical and demographic hub (three million). In this regard, Prasit Leepreecha’s chapter in this book is particularly welcome. One of Thailand’s 155,000 Hmong and a researcher from Chiang Mai University with a PhD degree from the University of Washington, he addresses the predicament of Hmong women going through divorce in Thailand. In doing so, Leepreecha nicely bridges the East/West divide and contributes to giving a voice to Hmong women in Asia.
Claiming Place, thus, reflects the fact that a relatively small number of representatives of this largely Asian and rural society—though this book tends to talk about this latter fact in the past tense—have been very successful in putting down new roots in a Western democracy and are now giving back to their community. These representatives have been able to achieve, within two or three generations, the educational skills and credentials needed to critically analyze “the Hmong.”
One, however, can foresee the caveats inevitably linked to such a historically specific gaze, which can easily drift, as it often does in this book, into speaking indiscriminately on behalf of all Hmong. Ironically, this inattention exposes a hegemonic process by which a powerful localized narrative is pushed onto a larger transnational ethnicity that cannot talk back, still missing the political recognition of their distinctiveness from their respective states, particularly under communist regimes in China, Vietnam, and Laos, and not yet holding the power leverage to convey and promote their homegrown life projects on the national and international stages.
Nonetheless, most importantly, this book should be hailed as a novel and welcome contribution to gender studies among Asian Americans, the disciplinary field to which most of the contributors belong, with a special and fruitful emphasis put on one particular segment of US immigration, the Hmong, coming in this case chiefly from Laos. Readers should acknowledge and welcome this collection meant to help us better understand the experiences of female and LGBTQ Hmong and Asian Americans faced with high degrees of pressure to conform to a largely male-dominated world, both their customary one and, though in a different guise, that of their host nation.
Jean Michaud
Université Laval, Québec, Canada
pp. 624-626