TRACING HMONG/MIAO DIASPORIC CIRCUITS AND TRANSCULTURAL ENGAGEMENTS

This chapter chronicles the proactive fashioning of transnational connections between Hmong/Miao who never left Asia and those who dispersed as refugees after the Vietnam War. Especially because departure from Asia was involuntary, Hmong refugees harboured acute longings to experience the homelands left behind, even those beyond personal memory. We show that burgeoning travels between Hmong and Miao sites have material, emotional and cultural impacts on global Hmong relations. Relying on multiple methods, including textual and empirical work, which is intentionally transdisciplinary, ranging across humanities and social sciences and enfolding many of our first-hand observations, we trace circuits of education, research and commerce and engage creative works of film, music and literature. What becomes clear is that Hmong diasporic cultural production is not simply using new mediums to reflect on longstanding histories and traditions. Rather, emerging works constitute new forms of Hmong culture implicated in 21st-century transnational connectivities.