{"id":5001,"date":"2012-01-23T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=5001"},"modified":"2012-01-10T20:26:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T01:26:33","slug":"review-how-do-i-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/23\/review-how-do-i-begin\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: How Do I Begin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology<\/a> | Heyday 2011 | $16.95<\/p>\n

The NY Times <\/em>began the new year with a piece<\/a> about the Hmong American Writers’ Circle and the cultural context in which it operates. And our most recent issue of the Lantern Review<\/em> put a spotlight on HAWC in Community Voices<\/a>. This is only the beginning of much-deserved attention for this unique generation of new writers.<\/p>\n

How Do I Begin<\/em> is an apt title for an anthology of writers whose ethnic identity is doubly marginalized: though the Hmong roots are in southwest China, most emigrated\/fled to the US from places like Laos or Vietnam after the Vietnam-American War. Burlee Vang, in his introduction to the book, describes himself as \u201cborn into a people whose written language has long been substituted by an oral tradition.\u201d The written language of the Hmong was lost\u00a0after assimilation in Imperial China long ago; this is not to mention assimilation into Thai and Lao culture, where most Hmong are provided an education only in their host countries’ official languages. The Hmong language has remnants in traditional embroidery but they have become indecipherable. Writers identifying as Hmong American today, therefore, have the tremendous task not only of writing themselves into history and literature, but also of gathering their names and identities from the pieces available. English is their adopted language, and so these writers must weave a warp and woof through multiple traditions.<\/p>\n

The writing of themselves is a doubly difficult task because of the relationship between art and identity politics. Almost worth the purchase of the book alone are the short statements beginning each author’s pieces: in them, the writers describe their relationship to the term \u201cHmong American writer.\u201d Many of How Do I Begin<\/em>\u2019s contributors wonder whether the Hmong part or the writer part takes primacy, and many are skeptical of the \u201cobject of exoticism\u201d and of ethnic identity as \u201cartistic limitation.\u201d They struggle with negotiating the universal (empathy) and the individual (alienation). These writings are like a hand opening and closing, pulsing, from palm to fist. The impulse to \u201ctranscend ethnic and geographic boundaries\u201d is paired with the impulse to preserve those boundaries and distinctions. Vang writes, \u201cWe have overcome ourselves. Our writing attests to this. Legitimizes us.\u201d That overcoming is a matter of ownership and self-creation; yet the question of legitimacy is raised, and one wonders, On whose terms?<\/em> Mai Der Vang uses the word paradox in her statement: \u201cWriting for me has become a roadmap to navigate the paradoxes of life.\u201d Sandra McPherson writes in her advance praise that these writers \u201care new to themselves and yet they already have their elders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because their<\/span> chosen language is English, these writers’ elders must be equated across cultures. T<\/span>he two epigraphs of Vang\u2019s introduction, for instance, are from Shakespeare and Hmong American poet Pos L. Moua. The Shakespeare quote comes from Hamlet <\/em>V.ii, when Hamlet describes waking suddenly on his execution-bound ship: \u201cSir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, \/ That would not let me sleep . . .\u201d He finds the letter from Claudius commanding England to behead him, and he rewrites the letter, thus rewriting his fate. The scene’s metaphor\u00a0echoes with two of the last lines of verse in this anthology, from a poem by Mai Der Vang: \u201cWhen all along you think the only war \/ is the one inside you.\u201d And the epigraph from Pos L. Moua is the voice of a different elder: \u201cThen they rode in canoes secretly arranged for them . . . \/ straight toward the world where the torches are burning.\u201d<\/p>\n

All throughout the anthology are reconfigurations of cultural inheritance. Iconic images like picket fences are challenged\u00a0in Soul Choj Vang\u2019s poem \u201cHere I Am,\u201d while the Carveresque image of fishing in Americais written from a different perspective in V. Chachoua Xiong-Gnandt\u2019s \u201cLake Red Rock, Iowa\u201d and then in Ying Thao\u2019s essay \u201cThe Art of Fishing.\u201d Martha Vang\u2019s poem \u201cStill Life of a Fruit Bowl\u201d paints for us not apples and oranges but<\/p>\n

plaintains, lychees, longans, and mangoes.
\nPomegranate seeds are sprinkled around the
\nspiky jack and durian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Soul Choj Vang\u2019s \u201cOur Field\u201d lines up a mythic history of place names and people\u2019s names that begins in the East and ends in the West. The poem concludes with the exhortation: \u201cHold on to our new fields!<\/em>\u201d Bryan Thao Worra\u2019s \u201cThe Spirit Catches You, and You Get Body Slammed\u201d plays with exotic expectations by taking us to Missoula with thoughts of \u201can auspicious moon above ancient Qin\u201d while a shaman speaks enthusiastically in Hmongabout \u201cRandy Macho Man Savage!\u201d The image of the wrestling ring is an apt one as we think about the way these writers grapple with themselves in the box of their spaces, and as we think of Anthony Cody\u2019s words, a Mexican American writer contributing to this anthology in the \u201chope to connect to tangents of the universal human experience and tie us to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience of the alien is another theme. That now-indecipherable\u00a0embroidery, the paj ntaub<\/em>, graces the cover of this book in an artistic rendering. In Burlee Vang\u2019s author statement, he claims as his goal \u201csome universal experience or truth, despite how alien the world, situation, or characters . . .\u201d Andre Yang\u2019s poem \u201cCousins\u201d gestures at a painful language of love and recognition even \u201camongst the chorus of insects \/ that must have been so familiar to you, that were so foreign to me.\u201d Bryan Thao Worra\u2019s poem \u201cModern Life\u201d ends with the speaker<\/p>\n

Waiting for the cops in their fancy cruisers
\nTo blink
\nSo our race can begin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is a blink of longed-for recognition from authorities, and it is a blink that quickens the gap between the alien and the invisible.<\/p>\n

There is a self-estrangement involved in all writing, in the creation of all memories, and it is useful to consider Ka Vang\u2019s formulation: \u201cBeing Hmong makes me a better writer and being a writer makes me a better Hmong.\u201d This awareness of a split identity is one of upward lift, like two waves rising in their collision.<\/p>\n

I cannot stress enough the importance of this anthology, or how exciting it is to read these new voices and see the stirring of a people in words. I believe that the work of this anthology is not merely one of extending history or of grafting on labels. \u201cHmong American literature\u201d is not a name; it is a conversation, an evolution. Bryan Thao Worra writes:<\/p>\n

There is often the implication that ethnicity can be separated or masked in writing. This cannot be done any more than we can disguise the time in which we write. [. . .] my work remains, and that is my true body.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology | Heyday 2011 | $16.95 The NY Times began the new year with a piece about the Hmong American Writers’ Circle and the cultural context in which it operates. And our most recent issue of the Lantern Review put a spotlight on HAWC in Community Voices. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[785,784,553,777,776,786,778,783,779,780,781,782],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5001"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5031,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5001\/revisions\/5031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}