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Elders struggle with English, bias
By Gayda Hollnagel,
Lacrossetribune.com
May 7, 2003
Tong Khai
Vang of La Crosse pronounces English words during a literacy class
Wednesday at the La Crosse Area Hmong Mutual Assistance Association Inc.
Senior Center on La Crosse's north side.
WI - A role-playing mini-drama that teaches Hmong elders
how to respond to racist or derogatory remarks is a frequent exercise in
the English language class for elders at the Hmong Blacksmith Shop.
"It isn't in itself that Americans don't like Hmong.
It's in the communication, and once that goes away, it's OK," said
Jack Larson, a volunteer teaching assistant who was called on in a recent
class to play an angry accuser confronting a Hmong person in a store.
Kathy
Hofmeister, the class's volunteer bilingual teacher, played the Hmong
elder.
My
Mao Xiong, program director of Hmong elderly services, said she asked for
the exercise because it mirrored an experience her parents had while
shopping in a local store a few weeks ago.
"My
parents were speaking Hmong," Xiong said. "A huge American male
came up to them and said, 'You shouldn't be speaking Hmong. Why don't you
go back where you came from?' "
Xiong
has lived in America for 25 of her 26 years but said she still has some
problems with English as a result of growing up speaking both languages.
Still, her bilingual skills are valuable assets, she said, for bridging
the communication gap between Hmong with limited English skills and the
rest of the community.
Fluency
in English is a major key to getting along in the United States, she said.
But for Hmong elders who grew up in rural villages in their native Laos,
bridging that language gap is almost as tough as it was crossing the
Mekong River to Thailand to escape oppression and persecution in their
homeland.
"The
majority of clients know how to speak Hmong, but they don't know how to
speak English, and that's the basis for knowing what the Americans
want," Xiong said.
Tong Khai Vang, 62, is among those striving to improve his
English. A military veteran who worked with the Americans during the
Vietnam War, Vang said he was forced to flee his homeland after the
communists took over.
He
said he reluctantly came to America in 1991 from a camp in Thailand after
repeated pleas from his son, who already was living in the United States.
For
the most part, Vang said, he's very happy with his life and would have
joined his family sooner had he realized how good it would be.
A
good part of Vang's happiness comes from his job as a master blacksmith at
the Hmong Blacksmith Shop, where he makes items with metal and
demonstrates his craft to visitors.
The
shop, located in the Business Incubator at 1100 Kane St. in La Crosse, is
a project of the La Crosse Area Hmong Mutual Assistance Association. It
has a two-fold purpose: providing a place where Hmong elders can go to
socialize and practice their traditional blacksmithing skills, and a place
where individuals and groups, including schoolchildren, can go to learn
about Hmong culture.
Larson,
who got involved with Vang and other Hmong after stopping by the shop, now
is one of its most frequent visitors. He said the project helps to bridge
the culture gap that exists between the Hmong and others in the community.
"It's
an expression of the elders that they can practice their traditions, but
other cultures come in and there's a commonality," Larson said.
Another
English class student, 73-year-old Shoua Vang, is a widow whose husband is
believed to have been killed by communists in Laos in 1972. She has been
in La Crosse since 1986. She said she studied English at Western Wisconsin
Technical College from 1986 to 1990, but dropped out when she got a job in
a local factory. She was laid off in 1994 and now receives Social
Security. She lives with a son and his family and helps out by
baby-sitting her son's children.
Her
life in La Crosse is far better than life in Laos, Vang said. She broke
down in tears as she recalled how in 1972, after the Vietnam War, the
communists came and took away all the women in her village, promising they
later would be reunited with their husbands.
That
reunion never happened, she said.
Xia
Thao, 61, also a student in the elders' English class, doesn't speak any
English and is unable to write. She said she and one of her children, a
son who is now 16, lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for 14 years and
came to La Crosse in 1994 after the camp closed. Her husband remained in
Laos.
Life
in La Crosse is much better for her, she said through an interpreter.
"In Laos, you have to garden every day and run away from the Viet
Cong."
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