Sharon Vanorny
Yang Sao Xiong remembers the bizarre hissing sounds the most. He was 7 years old, a refugee with his family from Laos, when he arrived in California in 1987.
"When we first got off the plane, all I could tell was that people were making all these 's' sounds," says Xiong, describing his first impression of English. "It made no sense at all. I was curious, but I had no idea what they were speaking."
Xiong soon became fluent enough in English to translate for his parents, relatives and other members of his community, and he has been building bridges between Hmong Americans and mainstream American culture ever since.
Now, as the UW-Madison's first professor in Hmong American Studies -- the only tenure-track faculty in his field in the world -- Xiong is working to help the university connect with the Hmong community. Locally, he's become a source of pride for Hmong, who have clashed with the university community in the past.
Yang Sao Xiong has only been in Madison for a year and a half, but the process that brought him here was 20 years in the making.
Refugee life
During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong operated out of parts of Laos, which was officially a neutral country. At the same time, Laos was embroiled in its own civil war against the communist Pathet Lao, who collaborated with the Viet Cong. The CIA covertly recruited many Hmong to fight against the Viet Cong.
Xiong's father was a sergeant in the CIA's special guerrilla units in northern Laos, and his mother worked as a farmer, embroiderer and homemaker. However when the country fell under communist rule in 1975, Xiong's family, along with close to a million other refugees facing persecution, fled across the border to Thailand. Like many Hmong Americans of his generation, Xiong's first memories are of refugee camps there.
"As a small child in the camps it wasn't as hard," remembers Xiong. "There were lots of people all lumped together." At one point Xiong lived with his family in a camp called Ban Vinai, which crowded between 40,000 and 50,000 Laotian and Hmong refugees into an area about one square mile wide. "[It was] certainly very lively, but very limited in terms of resources," he says. "Food was rationed, but I do not remember a time when I was hungry, in large part because my parents worked extremely hard to provide for us with whatever resources they had."
In the mid-'80s, Xiong's family went to a six-month training center, also in Thailand, which aimed to acclimate Hmong refugees to American society. The adults took classes in English and American culture. Xiong's family hoped to come to the U.S. to join relatives who were already living in California. Xiong's family, like many others, were sponsored by the Catholic Church.
"Not many other countries in the world wanted to admit Indo-Chinese or Southeast Asian refugees," says Xiong. "Hmong like my family made the decision based on whether or not they already had relatives overseas."
To get to America, Xiong's family boarded a bus to Bangkok and then an airplane to California via Tokyo. Xiong says that his family's experience was typical of many Hmong families, but cautions that it was not universal.
"There's immense diversity within the Hmong group depending on when and where you came," he says.
When Xiong arrived in Marysville, Calif., he was placed in first grade.
"We depended on bilingual aides at the elementary school to really help us know what was going on," says Xiong, speaking for himself and three siblings who were born abroad. "Like many other families, we struggled with poverty, we had to apply for public assistance for a time. My parents were struggling economically, socially, culturally."
One of the major focuses of Xiong's research today is the difficulties Hmong American students face in the classroom. Hmong students, as well as those of other minority groups, are often placed in classes with fewer opportunities for academic achievement. Xiong considers himself lucky to have had access to college prep programs such as Upward Bound, which helped get him access to guidance and resources, such as college tours.
"Thinking back, Upward Bound made a huge difference in terms of helping me and my siblings get into college. That was the starting point, the kick-start," Xiong says. "My experience as a student may not be reflective of many of my peers. That is not to say that there aren't others like myself, but there's not enough [of us].... I attribute a lot of my success to those various layers of support during various times throughout my educational career, from the time I started elementary school to when I graduated from UCLA."
Feeling marginalized
Of the 260,000 Hmong living in the United States, Wisconsin is home to almost 50,000 -- the third-highest population, after California and Minnesota. Members of the Hmong community in Wisconsin, as in other states, have typically struggled with poverty, achievement gaps and prejudice.
Pang Xiong, 21, is a senior at the UW-Madison majoring in psychology with a certificate in education. Like Yang Sao, to whom she is not related, Pang came to the United States as a young child. Also like Yang Sao, her family made the decision about where to move based on where they already had relatives. In her case, it was Wausau.
"It was natural for us to come and all stay together in the same area so that we could be together as a family," Pang Xiong says. As a child, she was removed from the classes of her peers and placed into English as a second language (ESL) courses. Pang Xiong remembers exactly what prompted her teacher to remove her from the general class.
"I would read and then when I made a mistake I would go back to the front of the book and read again," says Pang Xiong. "I thought I was doing a good thing by correcting myself each time, but the teacher viewed it as my being much slower than everybody else. So then immediately after that I was placed in the ESL class."
Other times, cultural differences were interpreted as ignorance. For instance, during one test, her teacher pointed to a picture of a stethoscope, and asked Xiong for the word. Says Pang Xiong: "The problem with that is, if our parents aren't doctors, if there aren't any stethoscopes inside the classrooms, where are we ever going to learn that word? It's culturally biased."
Pang Xiong felt stung by the exclusion. "I hated when I was asked to leave the classroom," she says. "I remember I spoke a lot with the teacher, and I tried to let her know that I'm capable and I can be moved [back with the other students]."
She succeeded. But a lot of her peers weren't as fortunate and stayed in ESL courses throughout high school.
"The thing about the ESL program is that it's supposed to be a quick transitional program. You're supposed to go in and then get better and then get out," says Pang Xiong. "A lot of the Hmong students that went with me to my high school that were not part of the ESL program, came here to Madison. But I don't think any of the Hmong students that were labeled as ESL came here."
Cultural conflicts
Even the diverse university community has been slow to embrace Hmong students. In 2007, two incidents sparked a conflict that precipitated the creation of Yang Sao's position.
In 2007, the Madison school board agreed to name a new Madison elementary school after Gen. Vang Pao, the leader of the Hmong fighters in Laos during the 1960s and '70s.
Vang Pao is much venerated in the Hmong community, and the honor of naming a school after him was championed by school board member Shwaw Vang. But Alfred McCoy, a UW historian of Southeast Asia, protested, pointing out that Vang Pao was a controversial figure.
"There are numerous public allegations that he ordered point-blank executions of both his own soldiers and enemy troops in violation of all the laws of war," McCoy said in a 2007 interview with Isthmus. "One would think before naming a school after someone, that they would have checked the available resources to make sure it's appropriate."
Later that year, the naming of the school was revisited after Vang Pao was arrested in California for plotting a coup against the communist government of Laos. Although the charges were dropped two years later, the school was renamed after deceased Madison principal Paul J. Olson.
That same year Leonard Kaplan, a professor in the UW School of Law, provoked an even larger controversy in one of his classes when he made some remarks about Hmong men that were perceived as disparaging, allegedly calling Hmong men unskilled and effeminate. The outcry was such that then-Chancellor John Wiley reached out to members of the Hmong community and invited them to share suggestions about what the UW should do to be more inclusive and informed about Hmong issues.
Among the 10 demands made was that Kaplan resign and that the UW create a special Hmong American studies department.
"Kaplan's remarks could have been alleviated if there was someone that he could have conversed with," says Peng Her, a Madison resident and public advocate for the Hmong community. He acted as spokesman for the Hmong community during the meeting with Wiley.
"What the Hmong community wanted was much bigger than what the university could deliver," says Lynet Uttal, who was the director of the Asian American Studies Program at the time. "They wanted a department, they wanted a cultural center, they wanted three professors hired all at once."
'Home run'
While there was never really a chance of Kaplan leaving the Law School, Chancellor Wiley, through Letters and Science Dean Gary Sandefur, did initiate the process to hire a professor in Hmong American studies. Uttal, however, was cautious about the approach. She wanted to better understand the field of Hmong American studies as well as gauge interest from both the university and the broader community.
"What I negotiated instead was that we were going to have a visiting professor position for five years," says Uttal. The visiting professorship was paired with an unorthodox speaker series that was geared towards the Hmong community. "For speakers, we scoured the United States for not only established scholars, but also up-and-coming graduate students as well as community people who were speaking on really interesting topics."
That series transitioned easily into a robust collaborative effort to hire a permanent faculty position. The hiring committee was unusual for an academic position in that it included non-university employees, members of the Hmong community, including Her.
"It was a really cool process," says Her. "Overall, very constructive."
But the process was also contentious, with disagreement over what qualifications the applicant should have. Some insisted the new hire be able to speak Hmong fluently. Her wanted to make sure the applicants fully understood the cultures they were studying. "If you're non-Hmong...and you want to go study them, there are some things that you'll just never be able to understand...because you weren't born into that culture."
Eventually Yang Sao Xiong was selected.
"I thought he was very mature for his age, very knowledgeable about contemporary Hmong issues," Her says. "He was a good fit, a very soft-spoken and mild-mannered person who could get his information across without being too aggressive or assertive or turning people off."
Uttal is even more enthusiastic.
"To me, Yang Sao was the home run," she says. "What he represented satisfied 98% of the people who were actively involved in the hire. I can't tell you what an amazing feat that in itself is.
"The [Asian American Studies] program really needed a sociologist. We really needed somebody who is doing community-based research about Hmong Americans. Home run. The community wanted somebody who could communicate in Hmong, who could go to Hmong events and understand the traditions, who could understand the intergenerational tensions, and who could act as a bridge between the community and the university. Home run.... The university wants top-notch scholars, not someone just because of their race. His background, his list of publications, for a graduate student he was really sophisticated.... Home run."
"We did so many things differently than traditional practice, and it really made a difference," Uttal adds. "He is just amazing."
Her says that Xiong's arrival in Madison may set a new tone in relations between the Hmong community and the UW. "It sent a very strong message to the Hmong community that the university does listen and that there are people there who understand what we're saying and willing to work with us."
And so when Xiong arrived in Madison, the Hmong community threw a big reception for him in celebration, an event lovingly referred to by many as "the Coronation of Yang Sao."
"When professors of color come to the university they are challenged a lot," says Her. "So we wanted to make sure that he knew that the Hmong community was very supportive of him and his role and his success, and also wanted to show the university that collaboration really works, that if you collaborate with us and work with us, then we'll support you as much as you support us."
Pang Xiong read poetry at the reception. She, too, is thrilled to have a new mentor. "I am so grateful that he is here to represent Hmong students and other minority students as well," she says. "It's just good to know that he is there, and that he has done great things, and that we can rely on him. It's a great relief."
Building bridges
As an academic at a world-renowned research university, Yang Sao Xiong certainly has his work cut out for him. Broadly, he studies assimilation patterns for recent U.S. immigrants. These include health and education disparities, welfare reform policies and socioeconomic mobility. He's excited to work in the hands-on fields of Asian American Studies and social work, where he gets to do research, teach courses and meet with organizations and service providers such as Refugee Services and the Department of Human Services.
"We actually get to meet and work with people who really care about social justice," he says.
Xiong's work will be wider in scope than the traditional academic pursuit of tenure -- he is involving community groups, such as the Urban League of Greater Madison, in his work. He says he also hopes to promote more interracial coordination on issues that affect all populations, such as LGBT awareness and domestic violence.
But perhaps the most cherished of Xiong's ambitions is to serve as a role model and guide for other minority students who themselves hope to achieve success as professionals.
"My priority is to serve the student population," says Xiong. "My responsibility is to the community who's interested in promoting greater inclusion and developing scholarship, including scholarship about Hmong Americans."
Xiong is neither naive about what he can accomplish, nor ignorant of the historical tensions between his new institution and his ethnic community. But he's hopeful.
"It's not easy to build that comfortable safe space where people can actually come learn to about each other's life experiences," says Xiong. "That takes time; it just takes time."
