“From the Valley’s Embrace to the Land of 10,000 Lakes: Hmong Texts in the Diaspora”

Over the past five decades, the Hmong community in Minnesota has navigated displacement, adaptation, and culture preservation in various ways. One of the most profound aspects of this journey has been the role of language in shaping identity and belonging in a new social world, specifically in the context of formal education. Hmong Americans exist within a part of the world where English dominates, yet efforts to maintain the Hmong language continue through initiatives such as heritage language programs and summer camps designed to promote language development and use among younger generations. While the Hmong community in Minnesota has gained increased visibility, the use of the Hmong language in Minnesotan educational settings has not been systematically studied through the lens of language reclamation and cultural preservation. This paper examines Hmong texts (written, oral, and non-linguistic) in and alongside American spatial and semiotic landscapes at a Minneapolis college campus during a Hmong summer camp known as iStrive. The program’s goal was to cultivate a space where students and teachers could transcend the cultural myopia that marginalizes language patterns and cultural practices that differ from the mainstream, which provided a context ripe for inquiry into this paper's research question: “How have Hmong oral language traditions, writing, and non-linguistic modalities each fared in the United States when practiced outside of their traditional Hmong spaces?” This study raises awareness of how the material world shapes and constrains the Minnesota Hmong community’s efforts to reclaim their heritage language and helps lay the groundwork for future pedagogical approaches that support Hmong language teachers in the authentic use and transmission of Hmong.