Hmong wives finding new-world freedom
Source: 13-DEC-2005 Mercury News
Dec 13, 2005 - 7:00:00 AM She was born a refugee, a Hmong child of semi-nomadic hill-tribe people. She prefers ankle-length sarongs, a traditional skirt, that modestly covers her legs.

Mai Lee is a modern American woman, and yet, she can't get her husband to do laundry.

This minor domestic duality-her old-world husband Tong Yang disdaining her request for help with either the dirty laundry or their crying daughter-has become the everyday dilemma of young Hmong wives in this Central Valley city. More than 2,000 Hmong refugees, half of them women, have settled in Fresno since the summer of 2004 to become part of the largest resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in the United States since the end of the war with the US.

In the male-dominated Hmong culture, the husband's refusal is expected. But in this new world, Lee, and many Hmong women like her, are facing life-changing situations an elder aunt called ``balancing the old culture with the new.''

And as Lee and other Hmong women transition from a clan-based culture of shamans and taboos to a new, liberated life in America, they encounter many gender-based tensions that may ring familiar to American women.

Culture clash

A first lesson came the day she arrived in Fresno in July 2004. A man in the welcome party, not Hmong, extended a hand in greeting, smiling.

Lee shrunk back, bewildered.

An uncle saved the moment explaining that in America women can shake hands with men other than their husbands.

``There's no class for them to explain what the roles of men and women are,'' said an aunt, Mayder Yang. ``But they're determined. They want to learn.''

Yang, a career woman and the wife of a clan elder, arrived in the United States in the 1980s, part of the first wave of Hmong refugees. She and others have become enthusiastic private tutors to Lee and five other Hmong wives who arrived with their families 16 months ago from a refugee camp in Thailand.

Yang, who relishes her role, is known as ``the rebel of the Yang family.''

Early this year, for example, she took the six newly arrived women on a night out, and the husbands had to stay home and take care of the children.

``Women don't do that,'' said Tong Yang, Lee's husband, recalling what he thought then. ``Women take care of the children.''

By a clan elder's wife decree, Lee and the others went out on Mother's Day and Valentine's Day for shopping, eating and even pulled a few casino slots.

``Women aren't supposed to go out without their husbands and have a good time,'' Mayder Yang, the aunt, said. ``That's what the old culture says.''

Said Lee, ``Going out was really, really good for me. It was like tasting real freedom as a woman.''

Born in refugee camp

Lee, 22, was born in Ban Vinai, a refugee camp in Thailand. Her father, like many of the men who fled Laos, had helped US soldiers navigate the treacherous terrains of northern Laos during the war in Southeast Asia. When the communists took over Laos, tens of thousands of Hmong fled to Thailand. The US government promise of refugee resettlement took years.

Lee, her husband and their two children, were among 14,772 refugees who arrived in the United States in the past year, settling in California, Minnesota and North Carolina.

Seven Yang brothers and six wives were among the 2,034 who came to Fresno to join relatives.

Today Lee and Tong Yang have three children, including Joe, who was born in FresHe is the first American in the Yang family.

Growing up at Wat Tham Krabok, Lee realised early a vital disparity. Her three brothers were allowed to attend school while she and her sister couldn't.

"I really and badly wanted to learn,'' she said through an interpreter. "I'm kind of sad about not being literate, because it was the one thing I wanted the most.''

Her eyes open wide just thinking about the world of education suddenly open to her. For several months in the summer she studied English with other Hmong and Mexican immigrants at a neighbourhood centre next to her children's day care.

"I tell them the world is very competitive,'' said Chao Vang, a case manager at the centre. "The wife and husband have to do things equally.''

Vang, who came to the United States from Ban Vinai, the refugee camp where Lee was born, said she is sympathetic to newly arrived Hmong wives.

"The men will say, `I'm right, you're wrong,' '' Vang said. " `You do what I tell you.' ''

Counseling Hmong couples, Vang said she can empathise.

Over many conversations and interviews, Lee expressed her frustrations about the rigors of learning English, and her disadvantage as a woman, a wife, a mother. Her husband attended school at the refugee camp and has the equivalent of a fifth-grade education.

She wants to work but has to start, like her children, with the ABCs.

"It's sad," she said. "I'm old and it's difficult to learn and I have children."

Dealing with pregnancy

One hot day in July, Lee learned that she was pregnant. For the next week, she conferred with family, including Mayder Yang, and her husband. She wasn't seeking permission or blessing. She was informing them about her decision to terminate the pregnancy.

"I'm not ready to have another child now," she said weeks later. "I want to go to school and better myself."

In Hmong culture, abortion is not the political, emotional lightning rod it is in American culture. "Hmong women have a free choice," Mayder Yang explained. "They don't even have to consult their husbands."

The world of men and women is upside-down in Fresno, and the Yang husbands ask an uncle, Pheng Yang, a bilingual educator, for insights: Why do you let your wife drive? Why do you stay at home and cook and care for the children?

"I tell them no matter who you are-man, woman, everyone is equal," Pheng Yang said. "Women have rights."

"They don't like that idea, but this is a step-by-step process. We show them how we do it."

Lee and the wives, for example, are learning to drive. At mealtimes, eating is no longer a segregated affair where men eat first.

At a summer family gathering, Lee and the other wives and various aunts prepared grilled chicken, sauteed hot peppers, an herbal broth with winter melon, a curry with potatoes.

An aunt suggested to Lee that instead of setting the table for the men, she arrange a buffet. Everyone ate together, at the same time, that afternoon.

"I believe being independent is good," Lee said. "We get to do what men do."