Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
This paper examines how Hmong people in the diaspora imagine each other and develop diverse and multidimensional types of longing in the absence of a "true" ethnic homeland. Even before the Hmong dispersed around the world after the Vietnam War, they never identified or agreed upon a "true" ethnic homeland. As a result, Hmong people have inevitably developed various other types of longing. The objects of these longings have been conceptually expanded to include a Hmong culture, a powerful leader, and a future time when Hmong will again be reunited. In this sense, I will examine the way Hmong people express their perspectives on their objects of longing in the absence of a "true" ethnic homeland by focusing on the viewpoints of some Hmong people residing in Laos. Based on my observations and analysis, I also propose to rethink the limitations of the dominant view about how Hmong imagine their ethnic homeland. Although current theoretical perspectives of transnationalism and "imagined community" have contributed to an understanding of the Hmong people's imagination and their diasporic ethnic identity, those views cannot fully explain how Hmong people's longing is not just associated with the lost homeland but can have multiple directions and meanings. These different types of longing expressed by the Hmong people suggest that diasporic communities can be maintained without a territorial ethnic homeland.
Introduction
My young friend, a Hmong living in Laos who used to tell me many funny stories, asked me a secret question one day, which made me speechless and forced me to re-examine both of our lives.
"Dao [my Thai/Laotian nickname], do you think Hmong people have a country? Where do you think Hmong people are from?"
(A conversation with a Hmong boy in Laos, February 13, 2006)
I have had to keep this question in my mind for a long time, not only because I was unable to give an answer but because I wondered what made him ask that kind of question in the first place. It seemed to me natural that he should assume his home country was Laos, but his question was not just about a nation of residence or formal citizenship. This seemingly simple question actually contains two very important lifelong issues for the Hmong...