Strangers In Strange Land, No More
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| Nina Xiong has farmed with her family ever since she was a child. She spends up to 12 hours a day working in the field when she isn’t working as a bilingual resource specialist in Madison School District’s English as a Second Language department. |
Last Updated: October 1, 2011
The sun sets on a hot August day as a small airplane circles low over a Cottage Grove farm field, cutting its way through the thick evening air. The engine’s buzz drowns out the nearby whoosh of traffic traveling along a stretch of Interstate-94 between Madison and Milwaukee. A constant blur of autos flash by, seen through the thin stand of trees separating the roadway from the field where Nina Xiong works her way down a long row of radishes. She kneels every few feet to pick those that are red and ready to be sold at the Hilldale Farmer’s Market in Madison the following morning.
“I normally pick the vegetables the same day that we sell,” said Xiong (pronounced SHAWNG), explaining that she needed to pick the night before this time since school is back in session and her work as a bilingual resource specialist with Madison Public Schools now limits her time to farm.
This is the second year that Xiong—a Hmong immigrant—has leased this plot of land in Cottage Grove at Baxter Road and I-94. The six acres she farms with her family and four other Hmong families raises a variety of vegetables and flowers to sell at farmer’s markets in Madison, Milwaukee and other southern Wisconsin communities.
The small plane continues to buzz a few hundred feet above as the sun settles down between to two trees at the western edge of the field. Seen off the plane’s starboard side is a shiny speck inching east across the sky. The commercial jet 36,000 feet up is likely filled with passengers looking down on Wisconsin’s vast rural lands. Cruising far above, they make no distinction or judgment on the green and brown squares that come together in a wonderful and constantly changing patchwork of farms, homes, people and lives.
But descend a few miles to street level and things seem to look a little different. The detail becomes more defined and the distinctions are more evident. A closer observation reveals that the field where Xiong picks her radishes doesn’t resemble most of the other farm fields in the area. The variety of vegetables and colorful flowers covering the stretch might lead you to think it’s someone’s vegetable garden. But who has a seven acre home garden? You might also think that it is a commercial farm like the vast corn and soybean fields you see throughout Dane County. But this field, with its eclectic mix of traditional Hmong and more familiar native vegetation doesn’t fit that mold either.
The answer is that the field where Xiong, her family and the other Hmong families farm is its own kind of farming. Something relatively new to the Midwestern landscape that has slowly transitioned into Wisconsin and more broadly American culture over the past 36 years. This agricultural evolution is part of a larger transition involving the Hmong immigrants who have been coming to this country since 1975 to escape being killed in their own country.
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Xiong came to the U.S. with thousands of other Hmong cast out of their native Laos after the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam in 1975. At 2 years Xiong’s parents fled with her and her two brothers to Thailand where they lived for 12 years before coming to the U.S.
While it’s heartening to know that there were groups who were there to help the Hmong during their flight out of Laos to Thailand and eventually to the U.S., it is disheartening to realize how they were eventually welcomed to this country. Rather than being welcomed here like the war heroes they are, many were scorned, ridiculed and told to go back to where they came from by the same people they fought for during the Vietnam War.
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| Mailo Thor came to the Madison as a young woman in 1979 and lived in Chicago and the Dallas area before moving back to Madison in 1993. |
In 1962 the United States came into Southeast Asia and recruited the Hmong people to help the U.S. fight in the Vietnam War. Their primary mission was to protect and save American pilots who were shot down over Laos through their bombing run to Vietnam.
“They had been shot in Vietnam and attempted to land in Laos or parachute into Laos and the Hmong people would go and rescue them,” said Lee Pao Xiong, professor and director for the Center of Hmong Studies at Concordia University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. “The Hmong were also instrumental in cutting the supply route which later fueled the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the southern part of Laos. So they engaged the North Vietnamese in combat so they would not be able to go and fight the American troops in the southern part of Vietnam.”
After the United States pulled military operations out of Vietnam in 1975, the Hmong people were brought to the United States and across the world as refugees because they were hunted down by the Communists due to their allegiance with the U.S. during the war. But an unpopular war back home in the U.S., which made for a cold reception for returning military troops also brought a chilling welcome to Hmong coming to America.
“The Hmong people respected the Americans a great deal,” said Professor Xiong. “But when some of the Hmong people came to America the Vietnam War was not so popular.” Many Americans, he said didn’t know who the Hmong people were. So there were a lot of questions like, “What are you doing here?” “Are you on welfare?” “What are you doing in this country?”
“Go back to your country” was a common remark from many Americans, and Professor Xiong said many Hmong, including himself who was 8 years old when he immigrated to the U.S., were told to go back to where they came from. “We were harassed and called names. Called ‘Japs’ and ‘Gooks’ and ‘Chinks’ and all kinds of names.” This he said was confusing to the Hmong people who were U.S. allies having fought and lost family and friends during the war only to be banished from their own country. Then to be shunned by those people they had vowed to fight and die for was baffling. The American’s attitude frustrated and confused the Hmong who were not only displaced and trying to acclimate to a new country and culture but to do it in such an inhospitable environment. Questions like, “Why are you treating me this way?” “Why do you spit on an elder?” “Why do you call the kids names when we were on the same side over there?” Much of the resentment, prejudice and disdain came out of ignorance, which is what fuels most hate.
Mailo Thor remembered coming to the United States in the mid 1970s as young woman barely in her 20s. She, like many from her country, had followed Vang Pao, the highest ranking Hmong in the Royal Lao Army and the CIA’s direct link to the Hmong during what was called the “Secret War.”
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“The general moved out of my country to run away to Thailand,” said Thor. After 1975, Thor said eventually Thailand became an inhospitable environment for the Hmong people so many of them started following Pao to the United States. While many American’s initial perceptions being that the Hmong were lazy freeloaders looking for a handout and welfare, nothing could have been further from the truth. From the beginning, the Hmong paid their way and what they didn’t pay up front was paid back. Even the plane ticket to get to the United States was paid back. Plane tickets to deliver the Hmong people from their own country where they were made to be pariahs due to U.S. actions during the war were expected to be paid back.
“The government helped us get to the United States but later we paid the ticket for the plane,” said Thor.
Professor Xiong said that this was the case for all Hmong immigrants who were required to pay back the airfare. Inappropriate demands and ignorant comments endured through the years have built some resentment among the Hmong over time, but for the most part they are weathering adversity and settling in as American citizens just like so many other immigrants have done in this country over the past few centuries.
Professor Xiong has decided to take an optimistic approach to the ongoing transition. “You can look at the good and the bad,” said Xiong explaining how he has taken the high road in dealing with that time of transition in his life as a boy growing up in an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile environment. “I just focus on the good part of it. I think it’s important to see it that way. The Hmong people still love America.”
Professor Xiong used General Pao, who passed away in January 2011, as an example of the gracious nature of the generation of Hmong who came to this country. “He never criticized America even though they arrested him for attempting to overthrow the country of Laos." He was arrested about three or four years ago. Throughout that whole time, I never heard him criticize America. He always encouraged people to be good citizens, get a good education, work and not be bad people. I think that’s still pretty much the same feeling of the older generation.”
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| This is the second year Hmong farmers have worked the six acres along Baxter Road. The farmers sell their produce and flowers at farmer's markets in Madison, Milwaukee and other markets throughout southern Wisconsin. |
But times change as they always do, and much of the hostility toward Hmong has abated for the most part. A new generation of Hmong Americans are now growing up with no direct connection to their Laotian homeland. Education has always been of highest priority for the Hmong and the current generation has responded with many Hmong students performing at the tops of their classes. But there has been something lost in the process. The graciousness nature of their elders doesn’t seem to be as much a part of their lives as young Hmong view what happened to those elders through a new lens. A lens of entitlement common in the American culture they are growing up in. When this young generation of Hmong discovered it was the Americans who caused the war and that they used the Hmong people as bait, Professor Xiong said elements of adverse feelings became evident. He noticed this during a meeting he and a group of Hmong people had with Cornel Bill Lair, the CIA contact who worked directly with General Pao in orchestrating the Secret War.
“One of the young individuals point blank asked Cornel Lair, ‘don’t you feel any guilt; don’t you feel any sense of moral obligation to help those still in the jungle of Laos. They are still over there. They are stuck over there because of you.’”
An elder person, Xiong said would never challenge someone of authority like that. “A younger individual they are willing to ask. They are very much Americanized.”
It’s a frustration tough for young Hmong to understand. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they haven’t had the years to work out the pain and anger. It’s resentment that will likely take some time, understanding and reconciliation to process through.
Resentment seems nearly nonexistent in the farmers working the land along Baxter Road. Neighbors who stop by to visit rarely leave empty handed as Thor and Xiong make a point to pull together a bouquet of flowers or fill a couple of sacks full of fresh vegetables before they leave. Teresa Stamm Olson, who lives across the street from the farm, testified to their kind generosity saying: "They are some of the nicest people. They have given my daughter flowers for simply telling them how much she likes their flowers. They are a true example of believing in the American dream."
Many of the crops grown on the farm are traditional Hmong vegetables—mustard green, bok choy, jicama, bitter melon, long beans and the popular Hmong cucumbers. While they are good sellers for their Hmong customers, most everyone else at the local farmer’s markets just pass by admiring the well displayed, colorful arrangements as they make their way to stands with more familiar American fare.
Xiong notices the target market of mostly “meat and potato” Americans she is missing, and because of that she does grow many non-Hmong vegetables like the radishes and green peppers, potatoes and tomatoes that appeal to Midwesterner’s pallets.
There’s a great deal of adaptation going on among Hmong farmers throughout the country, said Professor Xiong. Head down to the flower section of Pike’s Market in Seattle, Washington and he said about half of the flower vendors are Hmong. “If you go to southern California, the Hmong people control nearly 70 percent of the strawberry market. If you go to North Carolina and buy eggs for your breakfast it’s from a Hmong farm, because they dominate the egg and poultry market. And if you go to Arkansas or Missouri and you buy turkey for dinner you buy turkey from Hmong farmers. They are diversifying the crops and capitalizing on their skills. That’s what they do.”
Xiong is using the diversification in hopes of eventually buying land for her own farm one day. But with five children and a mortgage in one of the toughest economies this country has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, that dream seems somewhat lofty for her family. “My family, they do not support my idea. I don’t make enough money for them to trust me.”
But betting against Xiong out would be a poor bet as she has overcome so much in her life so far. Just coming to America as a young teen speaking no English was tough. “It took me two years to get used to this country,” said Xiong. Getting used to the Wisconsin winters was another challenge. Learning how to walk on snow and ice took some time as Xiong had grown up in a tropical rainforest.
“I still don’t like the winter time,” Xiong said with a little laugh. “The first time was hard. It was so slippery. We didn’t know how to walk on the snow.” But she survived the winter and farmed her teen summers with her mother on a couple of small plots she had. Xiong later moved to California and worked for farmers there while taking business classes at a local college. This is also where she met her husband. When they moved back to Wisconsin in 1995 to start a family, she continued to work for farmers until one day she decided it was time to lease plots of her own. Her desire is to continue working toward a business degree, eventually win over her family’s confidence and buy that land to start her own farm. It’s that rags-to-riches American dream that the writer Horatio Alger, Jr. made so popular back in the day.
With no sight or sound of the once buzzing plane and only the sun’s remaining glow lighting the sky, Xiong takes the last few sweet bites of a jimaca root she pulled from the ground as she talks on her cell phone standing next to her white cargo van. The 12 hour days working on the farm are behind her for this season as she settles into her second job with the school. But the farming is far from done as the growing season will carry well into October.