History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies
by Ma Vang
Duke University Press, 2021 Cloth: 978-1-4780-1027-2 | Paper: 978-1-4780-1131-6 | eISBN: 978-1-4780-1284-9 Library of Congress Classification E184.H55V364 2021
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK During its secret war in Laos (1961–1975), the United States recruited proxy soldiers among the Hmong people. Following the war, many of these Hmong soldiers migrated to the United States with refugee status. In History on the Run Ma Vang examines the experiences of Hmong refugees in the United States to theorize refugee histories and secrecy, in particular those of the Hmong. Vang conceptualizes these histories as fugitive histories, as they move and are carried by people who move. Charting the incomplete archives of the war made secret through redacted US state documents, ethnography, film, and literature, Vang shows how Hmong refugees tell their stories in ways that exist separately from narratives of U.S. empire and that cannot be traditionally archived. In so doing, Vang outlines a methodology for writing histories that foreground refugee epistemologies despite systematic attempts to silence those histories.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ma Vang is Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced, and coeditor of Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women.
REVIEWS
“Ma Vang seeks out those places where secrets lie, not to reveal them but to consider their social force as archives and cosmologies of knowledge and power. Pursuing a wide range of inquiries that contribute to larger questions about historiography, ‘official’ histories, refugees, and ex-allies of U.S. foreign ventures, History on the Run is an important and necessary interdisciplinary feat. Stunningly original and thoroughly provocative, it is the most compelling book in refugee studies in years.”
-- Mimi Thi Nguyen, author of The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages
“In this rigorous and significant work Ma Vang shifts our broader understandings of the connections among state secrecy, racial and colonial war, and refugee subjectivities. By refusing to engage in a simple recovery project or to reveal hidden secrets, Vang offers instead a sophisticated analysis of the structuring logic, function, and effects of state secrecy that demonstrates that it is is liberal military empire's norm, not its exception.”
-- Jodi Kim, author of Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The Lost Bag and the Refugee Archive 1 1. Secrecy as Knowledge 27 2. Missing Things: State Secrets and U.S. Cold War Policy toward Laos 57 3. The Refugee Soldier: A Critique of Recognition and Citizenship in the Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act of 1997 93 4. The Terrorist Ally: The Case against General Vang Pao 117 5. The Refugee Grandmother: Silence as Presence in The Latehomecomer and Gran Torino 145 Epilogue. Geographic Stories for Refugee Return 179 Notes 189 Bibliography 231 Index 251
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
History on the Run: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Hmong Refugee Epistemologies
by Ma Vang
Duke University Press, 2021 Cloth: 978-1-4780-1027-2 Paper: 978-1-4780-1131-6 eISBN: 978-1-4780-1284-9
During its secret war in Laos (1961–1975), the United States recruited proxy soldiers among the Hmong people. Following the war, many of these Hmong soldiers migrated to the United States with refugee status. In History on the Run Ma Vang examines the experiences of Hmong refugees in the United States to theorize refugee histories and secrecy, in particular those of the Hmong. Vang conceptualizes these histories as fugitive histories, as they move and are carried by people who move. Charting the incomplete archives of the war made secret through redacted US state documents, ethnography, film, and literature, Vang shows how Hmong refugees tell their stories in ways that exist separately from narratives of U.S. empire and that cannot be traditionally archived. In so doing, Vang outlines a methodology for writing histories that foreground refugee epistemologies despite systematic attempts to silence those histories.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ma Vang is Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced, and coeditor of Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women.
REVIEWS
“Ma Vang seeks out those places where secrets lie, not to reveal them but to consider their social force as archives and cosmologies of knowledge and power. Pursuing a wide range of inquiries that contribute to larger questions about historiography, ‘official’ histories, refugees, and ex-allies of U.S. foreign ventures, History on the Run is an important and necessary interdisciplinary feat. Stunningly original and thoroughly provocative, it is the most compelling book in refugee studies in years.”
-- Mimi Thi Nguyen, author of The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages
“In this rigorous and significant work Ma Vang shifts our broader understandings of the connections among state secrecy, racial and colonial war, and refugee subjectivities. By refusing to engage in a simple recovery project or to reveal hidden secrets, Vang offers instead a sophisticated analysis of the structuring logic, function, and effects of state secrecy that demonstrates that it is is liberal military empire's norm, not its exception.”
-- Jodi Kim, author of Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The Lost Bag and the Refugee Archive 1 1. Secrecy as Knowledge 27 2. Missing Things: State Secrets and U.S. Cold War Policy toward Laos 57 3. The Refugee Soldier: A Critique of Recognition and Citizenship in the Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act of 1997 93 4. The Terrorist Ally: The Case against General Vang Pao 117 5. The Refugee Grandmother: Silence as Presence in The Latehomecomer and Gran Torino 145 Epilogue. Geographic Stories for Refugee Return 179 Notes 189 Bibliography 231 Index 251
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE