Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2021. xiii, 257 pp. (Figure, map, B&W photos.) US$26.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-4780-1131-6.
Ma Vang’s book brings a fresh breeze to conventional refugee studies and is a gem to ethnic and Amerasian studies. In her work, Vang focuses on Hmong refugee epistemologies which, she shows, unsettle hegemonic narratives of the United States’ illicit war in Laos and its violence, and also uncovers the interstices between US imperialism and decolonization and nation-building in Southeast Asia during and after the Cold War. In her analysis, she juxtaposes the knowledge produced through the US National Archives and personal narratives with the knowledge produced by Hmong refugees resettled to the United States.
At the centre of her work stands the idea of “history on the run.” According to Vang, history on the run is a history that is fugitive, in which archive is the moving refugee subject. Conceptualized as such, history on the run is a Hmong refugee epistemology—an embodied “an/archive” (123) to US official archives—which has escaped but is not lost. History on the run, Vang argues, situates Hmong refugees in a certain place and time after their stories have been violently erased by US official record-keeping, both materially and epistemologically. This history narrates the violent loss of the refugee subject who becomes a site of disruptive knowledge, unravelling the secrecy constructed around the war and the Hmong refugee subject.
The book’s first and second chapter focus on the secretive construction of US official knowledge about its illicit war in Laos. Vang contends that the US’ war in Laos followed imperial colonial logics: imagining Laos as an empty land and Hmong as a people in need of liberation and civilization through soldiering. The disavowal of the war’s colonial logics and its violence created secrecy, which the refugee soldier as former ally threatens to disclose. In the third and fourth chapters, Vang hence elucidates the gendered and racial construction of the refugee soldier and former ally who, when finally resettled, becomes reconfigured as a terrorist. This reconfiguration serves to undo the threat of exposing the US’ imperial violence in Laos. As the refugee soldier narrates the war in Laos as a story of broken promises of liberation and speaks of ongoing violence against the Hmong, the US state reconfigures the refugee soldier into a terrorist and aims at silencing (t)his counter-narrative.
In the fifth chapter, Vang then turns towards another refugee figure and subject—that of the Hmong grandmother “dragging histories” (146). According to Vang, the Hmong grandmother performs and embodies silences which articulate a disturbing presence and, as such, she drags histories. Like the refugee soldier, the grandmother’s acts of dragging histories threatens to expose the secret, but not lost, memories of Hmong refugees of the US’ illicit war. While her acts of dragging histories might remain illegible to some US audiences, they carry meaning for Hmong refugees. The grandmother’s performed silences affirm Hmong presence in history.
In the epilogue, Ma Vang concludes her theorization of history on the run by returning to the spiritual dimension of Hmong displacement. She demonstrates that Hmong refugees’ return to the homeland becomes possible in death, “undo[ing] their displacement” (180). With their spirits being guided home to Laos, Hmong refugee stories do not speak of journeys from escape to rescue (as narrated by the US), but as experiences of survival and return. In death, Hmong refugees finally overcome their states of unsettledness as perpetrated by the violence(s) of imperialism.
Theorizing history on the run as an embodied and fugitive history of resettled refugees, Vang challenges common postulations in refugee studies that displacement is resolved with resettlement. By contrast, she shows how refugees’ unsettledness continues after resettlement—discursively and physically. Refugees often remain displaced as their (hi)stories are marginalized, silenced, and erased. As such, they remain fugitive. Although Vang’s book makes a valuable contribution to refugee studies, she does not always use this literature to her full advantage. Focusing on the idea of history on the run as an archive of refugees’ embodied history, it is unfortunate that Vang did not contextualize her work more comprehensively within the emerging literature on refugee voices specifically, and wider refugee studies literature in general. Especially her chapter on the refugee soldier would have profited from drawing on such literature to further untangle the tension between the refugee subject constructed as victim and (potential) perpetrator of violence based on racial and gendered imaginations ( Cabeiri debergh Robinson, Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadis, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2013).
Overall, Ma Vang’s work reflects an interesting tension between unsettling US hegemonic discourses and narratives while centring Northern American academic perspectives and literatures. Her work is reflective of a decolonial practice and writing in and about the US, which only partially explains the subject matter of her book. Notwithstanding, Vang’s book is captivating. Her focus on Amerasian studies allows her to theorize refugee epistemologies in a specific international context (US, Hmong, and Laos connectivities) while still offering new theoretical insights to refugee studies of other inter-/national contexts. As such, the value of her work to refugee studies and ethnic studies is undeniable.
Miriam Jaehn
National University of Singapore, Singapore