I Begin My Life All Over : The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: Begin My Life All Over, Mekong River, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This book,a mostly-oral history of Hmong refugees from the country of Laos, is a must-read for anyone interested the immigrant experience, or in the implications of U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia.

Lillian Faderman, award-winning author of books on lesbian history and multiethnic studies, collaborates with a Hmong assistant, Ghia Xiong, to collect refugee stories of passage into American life. The book, divided between tales of survival and escape from the old world, and disorientation and upset in the new, is in turns harrowing and inspiring. Elder immigrants speak of the erosion of their traditions in the face of American culture, while the young talk of being pulled between love for their parents and a need to assimilate for their own survival. Here and there Faderman effectively draws parallels between the Hmong experience and the history of her own mother, a Jew who emigrated from Eastern Europe to America in the 1930s, and encourages readers to consider the story of their own ancestors' arrival into this country.

Several photos in the book express the spirit of Hmong people and offer visual evidence of the conflicts they face. But it is Ghia Xiong, himself a Hmong refugee, who most eloquently speaks for the immigrant experience in his own brief afterword. Of the book's subjects, he says, "I felt that they also were lost in this enormous American jungle. As wise and determined as many of them were, they could not see their way to the light." Perhaps this book will inspire readers to help illuminate the path. --Maria Dolan

From Publishers Weekly

Faderman (Speaking for Ourselves) offers a perspective on immigration to this country that artfully combines the personal and the universal. By linking together 35 narratives from Hmong immigrants displaced from their native Laos by the war in Vietnam, she uncovers their common concerns, such as gender relations, parental control and assimilation to technology. Many first-generation Hmong came to the U.S. from relocation camps in Thailand, after escaping the Communists, and those experiences have shaped their interaction within the technology-based American culture. However, second-generation Hmong straddle the demands of their birthplace with the expectations of their parents. The differences between these generations offer a clear picture of what the Hmong and other immigrant groups face when confronted by societal change. Faderman's inclusion of the Hmong's history in Laos and China provides a context for the first-person accounts and deepens our awareness of the obstacles they've overcome in adjusting to their new country. This enriching book fulfills the author's aim "to capture [the Hmongs'] living voices, and to make those voices resound in the reader's ears." Photos.
- living voices, and to make those voices resound in the reader's ears." Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (March 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807072346
• ISBN-13: 978-0807072349
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,253,902 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for Multi-Cultural or Ethnic Studies Students, July 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (Paperback)

This text was an amazingly comprehensive look at the experiences of Hmong immigrants to the United States during the past three decades. I used this book in my Teacher Education courses at a California State University and found that each of students who read it was moved to a new level of understanding of culture, the challenges of the second language acquisition process, and the complexty of the modern immigrants' acculturation experience. It illustrates the difference in cosmology between immigrants and non-immigrants by examining a variety of real life topics through short vignettes. The range of accounts (from teenagers to the elderly) gives a breadth of perspectives that adds to the value of this text as a classroom resource. I recommend this text to high school and college instructors in reading, writing, history and multi-cultural studies courses as a required text or a supplemental reading assignment for student projects. For others, if you want to expand your mind and look at the world and life through the eyes of others, this is a compelling book that will not quickly be forgotten.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that lives up to its title...., January 25, 2004

By	Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (Paperback)

This is an astonishing book. The author, working with a Hmong colleague, collected many moving oral histories. She then wove them together into an astonishing tour-de-force.

This book provides a voice to Hmong people, telling their stories in their own words. At the same time, Faderman places the Hmong experience in the larger context of the experience of leaving one's home to come to the United States as an immigrant. Using the particular experiences of her Hmong informants, as well as her own history growing up as the child of an immgrant, she sheds light on the general topic of what it means to be an immigrant in this country.

For most US residents, there is immigration somewhere in our histories; this book speaks to how our families were profoundly affected by the dislocation and courage of these immgrants, whether they are ourselves, our parents, or lurking in the more distant past.

I can't imagine a better book on this topic.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sarah C. Book Review (Author Arguments)-ex.cr., November 29, 2006

By	Ann Madison "SAC" (Milwaukee, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (Paperback)

Lillian Faderman, author of I Begin My Life All Over, claims to be telling her readers that the social world is a very harsh and difficult aspect of life, and is not as easy to live with as some may think. The social world can especially be cruel if an individual can not communicate with others due to language differences. When someone is all alone in a new place, with no indication of what to do or not do, where to go or not go, it becomes very intimidating and scary. Imagine being in a country not your own, entirely unfamiliar from language to culture, even the government is different, and are unable to speak to anyone, or know what street lights are and their meaning; this is a little bit of how Hmong immigrants felt when at last in America.
Hmong immigrants are who Faderman primarily relates this claim of the social world to. In several places throughout her book, she speaks of her own memories of her family's immigration. Her mother was a Jewish immigrant herself and had many hard times with the changes America held for her and her family. Faderman recalls the trials of language barriers, knowledge of how life in America works such as education, job seeking, and many more issues of the social world that her mother endured. In these ways, the author not only portrays the social world as a harsh and difficult aspect of life for Hmong immigrants, but can relate these difficulties to her very own life, showing how immigrants from different walks of life deal with similar issues as they come to America.
The claim of the social world being so harsh and difficult, especially for immigrants, is reasoned by the research of other books about the Hmong culture, as well as the personal stories. Each and every one of the people who shared their personal stories told of how coming to America or even having parents who did, was a struggle, not knowing how streets worked with street lights, how to cross the street, or even how to get around from one place to the next. All of these factors in the social world were different for the Hmong immigrants as well as Faderman's mother's experience as a Jewish immigrant. The cultures are so very different, one does not even know where to begin when in America, a strange land. These few reasons are that which make the claim true.
When relating Faderman's claim to those personal stories, including her own memories, as well as the other background information given about Hmong people, these reasons for stating such a claim are relevant. I think that although some data or case study information, if accessible, would have been a great addition to these personal experiences, the reasons to this claim of a harsh and difficult social world were backed up effectively within each person's story.
Faderman co-wrote this book with a Hmong immigrant by the name Ghia Xiong, who helped to tell her very own story, and gave other Hmong immigrants the comfort to be interviewed for this book. The majority of this book is focused around personal stories of many different Hmong immigrants, young and old, of their experiences with growing up in America and immigrating to America. Every single person who was interviewed and told their story for this book, commented in one way or another about how tough the social world changes were for them and their family. Older Hmong people could tell of their immigration and coming to America, where the young could tell of how tough their parents had it and relied on them for any literacy or education, since they were very much more Americanized than their elders. Faderman uses books on the Hmong immigration and culture as other creditable sources of information for her book to enhance and make clearer the personal stories of struggle and achievement.
The information from these book sources is always at the beginning of each `chapter' or section. Faderman uses these facts to enlighten the reader about the topic that will be talked about by Hmong immigrants' stories and to `set up' the mood for better understanding these stories. I think that this evidence is convincing and relevant even though nothing is shown as being a direct quote from a source. The information that is given prior to personal stories is always backed up by what the Hmong person says in their excerpt. The two areas always seem to match up in factual information, making it all relevant in my mind.
Faderman does not offer or refute alternative explanations that I can see. The entire book seems to be straight forward and all flow together without any conflicting ideas by the author or other personal stories. I find that one story will make sense of the others and so on. Each Hmong had some difficult experiences getting used to the social world in America, even many did not get used to anything, but would depend on their offspring to become educated and help them make it in the world.
This book was very well written and easy to follow. The argument given was clear throughout the entire text as being how the social world was and still is a harsh and difficult aspect of life, especially in the cases of being an immigrant. I believe this was a good and thought provoking claim that was constantly supported by the stories of Hmong immigrants as well as Faderman's references to her own life as a child with her mother struggling and her helping her mother make it through. I don't see any aspect of this claim as a weakness, only data and case studies would have made a nice addition. The book and it's claim are strong throughout and constantly supported over and over by the content therein.