Hluas Nkauj Hmoob Lauj: An Archive of My Mother's Life
The Refugee as Abolition: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon
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The Refugee as Abolition: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon -
PaNhia Yang
My mother carries her memories of the Ban Vinai refugee camp with her every day. Her past—a heavy memory that never fades—is a life that still resonates with her each day as if she had only just left yesterday. She describes the living conditions as overcrowded with sanitation issues. Food scarcity was always a worry, as was insufficient healthcare. There was not a day that went by where she didn’t stress about her lifestyle.
My mother’s photographs reflect her lived experiences as a hluas nkauj (young woman) before marriage and immigration, through sociocultural and historical context. I draw on Ma Vang’s concept of a “refugee archive,” which focuses on how refugees and marginalized communities create their own forms of history and memory that are often excluded from formal state archives. My mother’s photographs showcase her traditional outfit, daily activities, and community gatherings, all of which embody the act of documenting her memories of identity, culture, and resilience before the reality of displacement.
In Ma Vang’s work, the refugee archive is portrayed as a significant means of preserving cultural practices, stories, and histories, and is often overlooked in mainstream narratives. My mother’s photographs serve as a testament to her Hmong cultural heritage, resisting erasure and invisibility by anchoring her deep-rooted identity and memories.
In her work, The Lost Bag, Vang introduces the metaphor of a “lost archive”—an archive of fragmented, hidden, and fugitive knowledge tied to displaced identities. My mother’s photographs can be seen as part of this fugitive archive, resisting erasure by preserving her personal memories that, like all other refugees, go unrecognized in dominant historical accounts.
Much like Vang’s lost archive, my mother’s photographs symbolize the silenced voices of refugees, contributing to the creation of a refugee archive that defies forgetting and marginalization. They stand as enduring markers of personal and collective memory, akin to the histories and knowledge Vang highlights in her work.
As a young woman, my mother’s life was not much different from her upbringing in Laos and her life in the Ban Vinai refugee camp. She was still deeply intertwined with the responsibilities and expectations placed upon her. From a young age, my mother grew up learning the importance of hard work. She worked in rice fields, helped my grandmother plant, tend, and harvest crops, and other duties as a Hmong daughter. That’s just a bit about my mother–a fighter, a daughter, a strong woman, a loving mother—as a person. In the face of everything she lost during immigration, she kept everything else close to her heart.
This semester, I found myself deeply connected to theories surrounding memory, resilience, archival significance, and identity formation. Nguyen (2016) emphasizes the critical role that personal and collective memory play in preserving histories that are often marginalized or erased. He examines the trauma and memory of the Vietnam War, exploring how both Vietnamese and American narratives about the war are constructed. His analysis shows how memory, forgetting, and the moral aspects of history are complex. It also emphasizes how the effects of war still influence the identities of refugees and their communities.
These ideas are further developed in Nguyen-Dien's The Haunt of Home. Nguyen-Dien (2024) explores how Vietnamese refugees, particularly those displaced by the Vietnam War, are haunted by the intertwined traumas of violence and displacement. The grief of uprootedness, alongside the ideological tensions between Vietnam and the U.S., shapes their struggle to reconcile their past and present identities, making it clear how displacement affects both individual and collective memory.
Vang (2020) offers another perspective by introducing the idea of "fugitive" knowledge within the context of Hmong refugee communities. Vang argues that Hmong epistemologies are often shaped by secrecy and fugitivity which pushes against standard archival practices. This reflects how Hmong refugees navigate histories that are erased by both state power and dominant historical narratives. Vang, like Nguyen-Dien and Nguyen, emphasizes how these silenced histories speak to the broader refugee experience, underscoring how displacement forces refugees to actively resist the removal progress of their stories and identities.
Together, I found that these works help explain how refugees shape their own stories despite the challenges they face. Family stories and collective memories are important for keeping these histories alive, especially for people whose pasts have been hidden or ignored because of war or displacement. These readings highlight how refugees fight against being erased and take control of their identities and histories. They also stress the importance of remembering and recovering stories that have been lost or overlooked.
Works Cited
Nguyen, V. T. (2016). Nothing ever dies: Vietnam and the memory of war. Harvard University Press.
Nguyen-Dien, G. (2024). The haunt of home, Vietnamese refugee melancholia, and the challenges to Asian American critiques. Journal of Asian American Studies, 27(1), 35-60.
Vang, M. (2020). History on the run: Secrecy, fugitivity, and Hmong refugee epistemologies. Duke University Press.