Critical Dialogues in Southeast Asian Studies. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016. xi, 211 pp. (Maps, B&W photos.) US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-295-99827-5.
This book on the conversion of the Vietnamese Hmong is important because, to an extent, the history of modern Vietnam is a history of contending with Christianity. French missionaries helped Gia Long, the Nguyen Dynasty founder, consolidate rule in 1802, for which he accorded them land in Tourane (Da Nang), but subsequent persecutory acts against Christians by his successors became the pretext for colonial rule. Da Nang was a gateway for American incursion in 1965, leading to another war between Communist Ho Chi Minh and American-backed Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic. Combine Christianity with the Hmong, a group that longs for ethnic sovereignty, and you get a volatile situation. Conversion is also a controversial topic in Hmong studies. Taking on the issue, Tâm T.T. Ngô argues that beginning in the 1980s the Vietnamese Hmong, disillusioned by broken promises and oppressive developmental policies, have seized Protestantism as a route to empowerment and modernity—one which is “not connected to the Party-State and do[es] not seek the subjugation of personal interests to those of the state” (9).
Fascinatingly, Christianity came to the Hmong in their language via radio waves, almost a literal dictate from the divine. One day, a low-ranking Hmong Communist cadre was tuning the dials of his radio. To his surprise the charismatic Pastor Vam Txoov Lis (aka John Lee) was preaching the word of God in Hmong (41). Over the next decade, many Hmong began gathering in houses that possessed the rare commodity of a radio to hear John Lee, a refugee of the secret war of Laos who lived in California, “indigenize” the stories of God and Jesus Christ by employing Hmong-style story-telling techniques. The program also catered to the agrarian life cycle by broadcasting when families sat down for breakfast and dinner (57). The pastor closed by answering questions from around the globe, and he prayed, creating a sense of community across space. The news reports drew curious non-believers to tune in as well. Soon, listeners were instructed to connect with lowland Kinh churches. Hmong American “tourists” also began appearing in Vietnam by the 1990s, smuggling in copies of the translated Bible. By the turn of the twenty-first century, there were over 200,000 converts, one-third of the Hmong population in Vietnam. The mass conversion occurred without missionaries or the leadership of a trained clergy.
There were other reasons for conversion; foremost among them is a history of communist oppression. Many Hmong aided in the victory against the French only to see the Party retract its promise of ethnic equality and target them for persecution because their co-ethnics, the “Vang Pao Hmong,” had fought on the side of the Americans in Laos. Mass arrests of the Vietnamese Hmong in Lao Cai occurred between 1958 and 1978, driving many into Laos and forcing Hmong officials to quit their posts (28–29). The Strengthening the Highland initiative legalized land seizures that resulted in one million Kinh in the Hmong highlands by 1966 (30). Other imposed programs also forbade the Hmong from practicing shifting cultivation (32). Conversion provided access to the power of the US, where the “Vang Pao Hmong” sought shelter after 1975. Against the Party narrative that they were more primitive in the Marxist historical timeline, the Hmong could now fire back that “their Hmong brethren in the United States…are…more advanced than the Vietnamese Kinh,” an argument “that allow[s] the [Vietnamese] Hmong to cross borders and jump over stages of historical development” (14–15).
Beneath the surface of conversion was a threatening agency at work that neither the Hmong American radio missionaries nor the Vietnamese government could anticipate. Many Hmong embraced Christianity as a means of forming transnational unity beyond traditional divisions in an attempt to achieve a larger political aspiration. The radio inspired the dream to reconsolidate the ancient Hmong kingdom, resulting in the government crackdowns by 2000, and forcing Hmong Americans to defend the converts. Today, Hmong Christians scramble to disassociate themselves from the millennial dreamers.
For others, Christianity offers more secular pragmatics. Different clans could now gather as family members who could die in the same house (i.e., the church). Converts also rejoiced at abandoning expensive ancestor rituals, and embraced changes like ending polygyny, the bride price, and adopting new forms of morality. Ngo argues that Christianity has eroded traditional forms of gender inequality, but she does not interrogate how Christian patriarchy has bound women in new ways. Furthermore, the argument about curtailing expensive rituals needs more critical examination. World religions like Christianity demand churches and a paid clergy—the reason for the requisite tithe. There may be financial reasons behind deconversion and why Hmong Americans are finding it harder to gain new converts.
While the Hmong hoped Christianity would be a unifying ideology and the government feared it, Ngo’s study reveals a different truth. Protestantism, despite providing a transnational connection, has caused family rifts and exacerbated preexisting divisions. Traditionalists denounce converts as ancestral apostates; converts claim themselves to be more modern and disparage the traditionalists as demon worshippers. The state exploits these tensions by exalting the beauty of Hmong traditional culture while making conversion illegal. There is no unity even among the Christians. Hmong Leng resent the Hmong Daw for dominating broadcasting services, while Hmong Americans are pretentious upstarts who perceive themselves as bringing civilization to their primitive counterparts (81).
Overall, I appreciate Ngo’s insights, but am left wondering what is her definition of modernity. Also, are there denominational interplays at work with the lowland Kinh being Catholics and the highland Hmong being Protestants? Finally, while it is evident that Ngo empathizes with the Hmong, she ignores the recent scholarships of native researchers, including Pao Ze Thao’s Keebkwm Hmoob Ntseeg Yexus (Thornton, 2000) and Nao Xiong’s and Yang Sao Xiong’s “A Critique of Timothy Vang’s Hmong Religious Conversion and Resistance Study” (Hmong Studies Journal 9 [2008]). An awareness of how the Hmong conceptualize their history and internalize conversion from the inside-out would add depth and prevent a top-down, West-East analysis. Still, Ngo is to be applauded for her courage in taking on such a divisive topic.
Mai Na M. Lee
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, USA