Sunday, April 7, 2013

Week One Blog, Kevin Vang

So I read Gary Yia Lee’s “Diaspora and the Predicament of Origins: Interrogating Hmong Postcolonial History and Identity.” This article made me think like crazy on how I identified myself. It just made my own identity crises a bigger problem after reading this. The history of Hmong and Miao are of the same but different. What this means is that there are historical and genetic connection between the Hmong and Miao but is it possible for Hmong to accept that they are a subgroup within Miao because Hmong was created after Christians converted some of them in 19th century. What made Hmong and Miao the most different was when Hmong people fled to Southeast Asia and Miao people stayed in China. Lee brings up such good points that I would have never thought of. I still do not know how to react about this article just because it again is very conflicting because I can’t imagine myself identifying partially as Miao if subsequently Hmong were just a subgroup. So my question based on this reading would be, what and who is exactly Hmong?

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