But here I was, holding a beautiful anthology of work written by my own people whose words revealed to me the possibilities of who I can become, beyond all of the limitations and fears that were placed on me growing up.
I remember walking through the cluttered roads of the Fresno New Years when a wall of books stopped me in my tracks. Intrigued, I started thumbing through the various books, both written by and about Hmong people.
Some books confounded me with their endless paragraphs of Hmong sentences touching upon various cultural subjects. Other books I knew about, such as The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which had become the cornerstone of America’s understanding of the Hmong people.
I continued up and down the row of books, skimming quickly through them, until I landed upon a book that posed a question on it’s cover:
How Do I Begin?
It was 2014 and I was 4 months away from graduating from college with an English degree. I was in the tail end of finally healing from a terrible break up, and I was ready to move towards all of the new beginnings that presented themselves to me.
How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology
I held the book in my hand and began reading through the poetry and prose that filled all of its pages.
“Once, American poets were born
in the factories of Detroit,” began Soul Vang’s poem Here I am.
I continued reading further into the anthology, slowly becoming engulfed in the stories that unraveled themselves before me.
“Tomorrow, I will smear blue
across the skies from mountain to mountain
and scrape the rivers from their bellies,
cup my hands to your mouth,
so you can drink the love I beg.” ends another poem, Dear Father, written by Khaty Xiong.
In all of the stories and poems that I read, I saw a sliver of myself in a way that I never had before in my English literature courses.
I never knew the possibility of becoming a Hmong American writer until that fateful day. But here I was, holding a beautiful anthology of work written by my own people whose words revealed to me the possibilities of who I can become, beyond all of the limitations and fears that were placed on me growing up.
I pulled out a twenty dollar bill and handed it over to the vendor and brought the book home, keeping it close to me ever since, reading it whenever I needed ground myself amongst the chaos of this American life.
In starting maivmai alongside Chelsey See Xiong and Lilian Thaoxaochay, I wanted to continue the impact that the Hmong American Writers Circle has had on my own life. Growing up, I never knew that I had a story to tell. I always believed that my life was unimportant But the Hmong American Writers Circle paved a path for me to discover the importance of my own story. maivmai wants you, all the readers and writers, to honor your story as well by writing it into existence—so how will you begin?
