Hmong Culture Analysis

543 Words3 Pages
A cross-cultural misunderstanding happens when anything we can think of has different meanings in two cultures. It’s hard to imagine a culture, that is more different than Hmong. Anne Fidman wrote a lot about Hmong people and their culture in her book “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”. I was really impressed with the differences and how Hmong just wanted to be left alone to be Hmong and not to be like american. It’s not surprising that “The immigration and Refugee Affairs” called Hmong “the most indigestible group in society” (189). Hmong were involuntary migrants in this country, and not like most migrants that wanted to be americanized. For the older generation of Hmong people, life in this “strange” country is a terrible and lonely journey. They do not accept the new culture, and just want to stay Hmong: they want to speak just Hmong language, celebrate just Hmong holidays, practice only Hmong religion, cook only Hmong food, tell only Hmong…show more content…
There are aspects of Hmong culture that crash strongly with American lifestyle and law. Some of the names that journalists used to describe Hmong people include: “the most primitive refugee group in America”, “low-castle hill tribe”, “Stone Age”, “emerging from the mists of time,” “extremely simplistic,”. Incredible rumors were going around people. Americans called Hmong “Vietcongs” and “boat people” (236) and some rumors included that Hmong eat dogs, run a white slave trade, sell their daughters and buy their wives. And, for example, Hmong rumors about americans were saying that doctors can eat their organs, there are alligators in sewers and worms in Big Macs. Unfortunately, there were a lot of violence against Hmong as well, they were “prime meat for predators”(191) because of their taboos against theft and intra-community
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