Yesterday, we had a panel of
three Hmong Concordia students come in to speak to us about their experience as
immigrants. They described how they came to the United States, their heritage,
and how they view their role in both American and Hmong cultures.
Something that was really reinforced
in their discussion was the importance of family and community in the Hmong
culture, which we have heard from many sources about the Hmong. Even though all
of the students were from families of varying degrees of traditional culture,
all three of them espoused the importance of the family. It was evident not
only in what they described about their families, but also what they said about
their goals in life: to help out the family and other Hmong people.
I thought it was really
interesting how different the three students were from one another. Xang seemed
much more Americanized, Xia was more in between the two cultures, and Pa Houa
seemed the most traditional of all. Not only were their positions different,
but their views of their positions were different as well. Even though Xang was
the most Americanized, he seemed to be the most eager to become more Americanized
(with independence, financial stability, etc.). I saw Xia as in between the two
cultures, but she wanted to stick to her Hmong roots because she was brought up
that way. Pa Houa was the same way. It was unexpected that the girls wanted to remain
close to a culture where they perhaps have less power than men do. However, I
can understand if the girls saw that they were brought up well (in not being
allowed to go out and having to help the family), then they would want their
children to be brought up well also. Of course, as we saw in the discussion,
perhaps Hmong women have much more power than we might expect! I ended up
seeing the Hmong culture less as one that makes women less powerful, but more
as one that gives men and women very different roles with respective powers. Still,
it's a little hard for me to break from my Western views of men and women, and because
of that, I do think that women have more power in American culture. This, of
course, brings back discussion from The Middle
of Everywhere about how American culture does not respect women and other
cultures do. This is very interesting to think about...we may give women more
power in Western culture but not respect, whereas other cultures seem to
respect or honor women but not give them as much power.
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