This story about Saint Paul’s Hmong Village is part of Home, Made, a collection of stories honoring Asian diasporas creating vibrant communities by weaving their heritages with their American hometowns. Read more here.
In late 2009, when my cousin Maiv told the family that she’d set down a $10,000 deposit on two tables in the produce market at a new shopping center that was opening up in Saint Paul’s Eastside, the collective response was one of uncertainty. Across the city, there was already Hmong Town, a collection of vendors selling household products, traditional clothing, Hmong food, and a green market full of produce from central California’s Hmong farmers. Could this city support a second Hmong market?
“What will it be called?” I asked.
She replied, “Hmong Village.”
I thought then, exactly what I thought of Hmong Town when I heard it for the first time: What a lovely possibility—but is it viable? I had no idea then what I know now: that it would become a center of commerce not only for the Hmong American community across the country but that it would become an integral part of life in Saint Paul and its newest refugee groups, among them the Karen. I also didn’t realize the role that space would play in my own life.
As a child from the refugee camps of Thailand, I was born keenly aware that I belong to a people without a country. When I saw my first globe in second grade, I remember trying to find among all the named places, a spot where my people might call home. I often heard my elderly grandmother talk of her life “long ago and far away, before the guns fell into the hands of the men and broke into the hearts of the women.” It was a life on the high mountains of Laos, in villages and towns filled with Hmong farmers and craftspeople, places of business and belonging. Her words painted a vision of the world I had never known before. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned we are an ethnic minority, separated as a consequence of war and now scattered around the world, from France to Australia to the United States of America, and many nations in between.
I was six years old when my family was resettled in St. Paul, Minnesota as refugees of war in 1987. We were part of the biggest influx of southeast Asians to enter the country. The Minnesota waiting for us had no idea who we were, let alone the history and circumstances that had brought us to its doors. Growing up, I saw the Hmong community gather during our New Year’s festivities in cold November and the Fourth of July soccer tournaments in hot July. It was then that I heard Hmong music blast from loudspeakers, smelled the scent of grilled Hmong sausage wafting through the air, and saw the bright red and green of our embroidered clothing glint under the sun or the fluorescent lights atop old stadiums.
