Group Reflection: Gender & Sexuality

          First off, the topic that this group chose is really interesting.  Personally, it is a topic that I really want to get a better understanding of.  As a Hmong women, I was taught by my grandparents that the Mien and Hmong are really similar because both groups resided together in some villages and both did not have a country of their own.  So I grew up thinking that both of the Hmongs and Miens were always marginalized because we didn’t have a country.  My kindergarten and first grade years, I learned more about the Mien culture in school during Mien New Year.  But even then, all I knew were the happy things that seemed to be the same as Chinese New Year.  However, once I went to highschool, I stopped hearing about Mien people and grew more political awareness of the Hmong.  Coming to Davis, I realized that my whole awareness of the Mien completely faded from me because I was too focused in my Hmong culture.  Despite the animosity that some Hmong people have pointed out between the Hmong and Mien, I still believe it is important for me to learn about the Mien and understand why they remain to be marginalized. 

What I noticed that this group did really well in was critiquing the article’s research method.  The fact that these ladies noticed the small sample size that the researcher used demonstrates that they understand the lack of applicability to other lu-Mien women.  Also, this group dived straight into important points in the articles that should brought to attention.  They didn’t waste time talking about the whole article which would have been a waste of time. 

            Some suggestions that I have for future research or their research paper are the improvement of article’s research, personal opinions or accounts (their own research), and other factors that should be taken into consideration to improve the researches so far. One of the problems that I had with the presentation was that it lacked some personal accounts and research.  I understand that with such a small amount of time, there probably was not enough time for this group to conduct enough research, but if they had done at least some, it would be interesting if they brought up the researches that they had so far.  The survey questions that they mentioned which they sent to the professor would have been important in demonstrating some the improvements that they would have made from the article’s research.  If they already have these research questions, it would have been great if they had emailed it to student organizations on campus that can forward it to Mien organizations in Sacramento area.  So this is an important suggestion that this group can use to help them with their research.  Now, going back to my point earlier about the group’s personal opinions or accounts, it would have been interesting if some of the group members talked to some of the students in class and ask if they had any insight in the lu-Mien women.  I know for sure that I don’t have much understanding about lu-Mien women, but I have had several lu-Mien female school friends, who I still keep in contact with, and maybe my opinions about them would have indicated whether the article’s research is applicable to them or not. 

            Now as I mentioned earlier about my goal to understand why the Mien remain marginalized, I think this is an important factor that the group should take into account.  The fact that the ethnic group to be marginalized already and then to also have the Mien women marginalized in their own marginalized ethnicity, it just makes me wonder how is their culture and ethnicity still surviving? What is still keeping this ethnic group alive?