The History of one Hmong Family

The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang (Coffee House Press, 2008) tells the story of one Hmong family and their experiences as refugees and immigrants to the United States. Only a handful of books have recounted the experience of the Hmong in America (I Begin My Life All Over from Beacon Press is one of the few others), and Yang's telling of her family's history sheds light on an entire community. The book recently received an Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. Beacon Broadside invited Yang to discuss why she wrote her book.

I'm the second oldest daughter of Chue Moua and Bee Yang, two Hmong refugees, surviving victims of the Secret War in Laos, 1960 to 1975. The war and its ramifications killed two thirds of the Hmong population in Laos. I was born in a refugee camp called Ban Vinai after my family crossed the Mekong River in 1980. When I wrote my memoir, The Latehomecomer, it was my best effort at making my history and our lives meaningful. I have been taught that by documenting our deaths we are documenting our lives, that the two cannot be separated.

When the book was first published in April of this year, my father said, "If Hmong tears can reincarnate then the world would rain in our sorrow. But they cannot, so they can only green the mountains of Phou Bia, but if your words on the page, carried by the winds of humanity, blow in the right direction: then the lives were not lost."

I've always believed in my father's words. If I cannot believe in the man who has tried, from the moment my ears can remember hearing, to teach me of a better, bigger world, a world worth belonging to, then I would not know where to turn or who to trust. So much of the book is dedicated to the people who have taught me faith and understanding, one of whom is my grandmother, Youa Lee.

Link Roundup: Student Loans, Funding Locally-Owned Markets, Cow Gas

Kathryn Joyce (whose book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement will be released by Beacon this winter) compares the candidacy of Sarah Palin to the biblical story of Esther.

The student loan credit crunch may just be a "convenient" distraction for lenders who would like to keep attention away from predatory lending practices, says Alan Collinge, author of The Student Loan Scam.

On Democracy Now!, David Bacon, author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, discusses how aggressive tactics by Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes some undocumented immigrants too afraid to evacuate in the face of dangerous hurricanes.

The state of Pennsylvania brings fresh, healthy food to underserved populations with a grant-funding program for locally-owned grocery stores in low-income communities.

A special diet can help reduce cow methane emissions (which is to say "bovine flatulence") and thus reduce the impact of cattle farming on global warming.

Link Roundup: Immigration, High Food Prices, Loving Memorial

David Bacon, author of the forthcoming Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants , sent these pictures from Oakland in the wake of last week's raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) near schools in Oakland and Berkeley. You can read more about the impact the raids had on school children in Oakland at New American Media:

As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.

Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."

Mayor Dellums, whose memoir Lying Down with the Lions: A Public Life from the Streets of Oakland to the Halls of Power chronicles a life of fighting for social justice, "labeled the ICE actions 'inappropriate and unnecessary' and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. 'There should be no raids in Oakland,' he said."

The last picture here is from a rally last Friday in San Francisco to protest of the raids. For more on immigration in California, read Bacon's post from last week about immigrant farm workers in California, and also read his commentary at Truthout.org about the May Day rallies for immigrant rights.

Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap, posted on his blog about the effects of the rising cost of food on those who are already experiencing food insecurity:

For some, these events may mean that those weekly strolls down the tastefully lit aisles of Whole Foods now become monthly. For those who have naturally spurned such discount pariahs as Wal-Mart, second thoughts may be in order.  

But for another class of American shoppers, rising food prices, whether organic or conventional, is just another bump in the road on an already trying journey. I’m speaking of low-income families, and increasingly low-to-middle income families who now find themselves treading closer to the lower end of the income spectrum.

Also be sure to check out Mark Winne's post on our blog about the Food Gap, Poverty, and Income Disparity.

American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom of Expression (whose president Chris Finan has posted here about free speech) has joined the Media Coalition in a lawsuit challenging an Indiana law requiring bookstores to register with the state if they sell sexually explicit material. ABFFE has also joined Powell's Books, Dark Horse Comics, and others in Oregon to fight a law in that state making it a crime to allow a minor under 13 to view or purchase a “sexually explicit” work. An affidavit from Dark Horse explains why they feel the law is unconstitutionally vague:

“I believe the only way for Dark Horse to ensure compliance under the statute would be to refrain from publishing this material entirely,” He said. “Attempting to determine, book by book, what may fall under the purview of the satute, including whether there are any ‘sexually explicit’ portions and if so whether such portions ‘serve some purpose other than titillation’ (even if I knew what that meant) is totally impractical, unduly burdensome and surely would result in our over-inclusive self-censorship.”

The recent death of Mildred Loving, whose fight against a Virginia interracial marriage ban took her all the way to the Supreme Court, inspired this post on the Courting Equality blog about the ban on gay marriage in Virginia. On the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that ended racial discrimination in marriage, Loving issued a statement in support of gay marriage:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry.  I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.  Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

Living Under the Trees: Indigenous Mexican Farm Workers in California

Today’s post is from award-winning photojournalist David Bacon. Bacon spent thirty years as a labor organizer and immigrant rights activist. His articles appear in The Nation, American Prospect, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he hosts a weekly radio show on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California. Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, will be published by Beacon Press this fall. The photos in this essay are from his photography project, Living Under the Trees, and are used here with the photographer’s permission.

In 2006, Mexico experienced profound social turmoil. Dramatic political and economic conflicts uprooted and displaced thousands of families, forcing many to consider leaving home. Teachers struck in Oaxaca, and after their demonstrations were tear-gassed, a virtual insurrection paralyzed the state capitol for months. Economic desperation lies at the root of these political and social movements — one major basis of the pressure on people to migrate north. But repression brought to bear on those movements also leads to migration.  It's no accident that Oaxaca is one of the main starting points for the current stream of Mexican migrants coming to the U.S.

About 30 million Mexicans survive on less than 30 pesos a day — not quite $3. The minimum wage is 53 pesos a day. The federal government estimates that 37.7% of Mexico’s 106 million citizens — 40 million people — live in poverty. Some 25 million, or 23.6%, live in extreme poverty. In rural Mexico, over ten million people have a daily income of less than 12 pesos — a little over a dollar. In the southern state of Oaxaca that category of extreme poverty encompasses 75% of its 3.4 million residents, according to EDUCA, an education and development organization. That makes Oaxaca the second-poorest state in Mexico, after Chiapas.

How to solve the problem of illegal immigration with the stroke of a pen

by Aviva Chomsky

As I’ve been doing interviews and talks over the past several months about my book, "They Take Our Jobs!" And 20 Other Myths About Immigration, I've become more and more convinced that a key, central issue that's hampering those of us who support immigrant rights is the absence of a basic, fundamental ability to say “immigrant rights are human rights.” No politician or talk-show commentator is going to risk saying this—but we have to.

Although I stand by my arguments about the myths I try to deconstruct in the book (Immigrants DON’T take American jobs! Immigrants DO pay taxes! Immigrants ARE learning English!) I also, deep down, think these arguments miss the point. Immigrants are human beings who have arbitrarily been classified as having a different legal status from the rest of the country’s inhabitants. The only thing that makes immigrants different from anybody else is the fact that they are denied the basic rights that the rest of us have. There is simply no humanly acceptable reason to define a group of people as different and deny them rights.