Vang Pao, Hmong Culture, and Western Academia
Today the Star Tribune ran an article about Hmong support for General Vang Pao, leader of the Laotian army in the CIA's "secret war" during the United State's involvement in Viet Nam.
While I have little to say about Vang Pao and his current situation, the article did make me think about Hmong culture and just what Hmong culture might provide in terms of insight into what we do as teachers. This is especially pertinent here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, as we have the 2nd largest Hmong community in the United States (the other being in California). I have had several Hmong students in my classes who were, for the most part, brilliant.
But what is interesting about Hmong culture is that, until very recently, it existed as a purely oral tradition. There was no written Hmong language. Everything was passed from generation to generation through art and spoken language. Even today, with a westernized alphabet and written language, there are still many aspects of Hmong culture that do not exist in print as we know it.
My thoughts on this are, of course, undeveloped (this is a blog, after all), but I've been thinking alot about how the University of Minnesota envisions its new writing program. One of the cornerstones of the new writing initiative is a massive focus on "research" and "academic writing."
However, this becomes problematic when we start considering communities such as the Hmong community. Academic research, as is commonly taught in undergraduate education, is woefully inadequate to tackle communities such as the Hmong, where community history, traditions, customs, and values exist largely with no paper trail that can be found in libraries. Simple "research" and "citing sources" on Hmong culture falls apart rather quickly. Ethnographers have noted this difficulty in the past and it continues to be source of debate among people who do ethnography.
Simply put, I worry that western conceptions of "research" fail to account for cultures outside of the western mindset, such as the Hmong. In these instances, where a culture has not been westernized, the culture is largely ignored or swept under the rug. For a student of this culture in a classroom, learning the ins and outs of westernized academic research potentially creates a situation where the student has no outlet to investigate their own culture and values. These must be abandoned for more western cultures and values that can easily be described using conventional academic research.
No where is this more apparent than the revulsion many in academia have towards the personal experience in academic writing. The "personal I" has all but been banished from "good writing" due to an existential crisis in theory over just what this "I" entails. But while western academic theorists fret over the nature of the personal "I," writers of cultures like the Hmong have no way to express their own lives within the walls of academia. Their loss results in the ever hegemonization (is that even a word?) of professional middle class values and norms.