MPR’s Lynette Nyman presents a series titled “This Is Home: The Hmong in Minnesota.” In this part, Nyman reports on an increasing number of Hmong Americans returning to visit their homeland of Laos…or Thailand, where refugee camps became home for thousands after the war ended in 1975 and Laos became a communist country.
The visits to Laos and Thailand are times to see family and friends as well as places Hmong Americans left behind. The trip back is never simple.
THE 150,000 HMONG PEOPLE living in the United States traveled thousands of difficult miles to get here. Many settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, giving it the largest urban Hmong population in the world. Today these Hmong are wrestling with issues of culture and identity, with maintaining ties to the past and seeking to thrive in modern urban America.
This is part four of four-part series "This Is Home: The Hmong in Minnesota"
Click links below for other parts of series:
part 1: https://archive.mpr.org/stories/1999/03/08/this-is-home-the-hmong-in-minnesota-hard-work
part 2: https://archive.mpr.org/stories/1999/03/09/this-is-home-the-hmong-in-minnesota-leading-the-people
part 3: https://archive.mpr.org/stories/1999/03/10/this-is-home-the-hmong-in-minnesota-sew-it-right