Promise and paradox: The experience of Hmong women in college
Author(s):
Reavill, Lisa Kay
Format:
Thesis
Degree granted:
Ed.D.
Publisher:
Ann Arbor : University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), 1996.
Pages:
274
Language:
English
Abstract:
Education may be regarded as both a threat to the continuation of Hmong culture and as a tool for economic power that is essential to the survival of the culture. The Hmong have lived as a "minority" for thousands of years and have survived as a culture through flexibility and adaptation. Their relocation from Laos to the United States foregrounds questions of cultural survival. This study explores the experience of seven Hmong women college students. The research focuses on how Hmong women achieve educationally and maintain cultural identity. Issues addressed in the study include (a) the individual and social forces that have allowed Hmong college women to resist pressures to terminate their education, (b) strategies that Hmong women have used in moderating culture and gender conflicts prompted by the college experience, (c) how Hmong women have experienced education differently from other "outsiders" in the postsecondary setting, (d) the impact of university education on preservation of Hmong culture, and e) how university administrators can best assist Hmong women students. The study focuses on women who are "caught in a territory between two cultures" and explores processes they use for negotiating that territory. The paradox of cultural constructions that serve both as a valuable base for student achievement and as a challenge to their academic success is explored. There are indications that a combination of cultural and educational influences in the U.S. will serve as a catalyst for reconstruction of gender and prompt a more critical view of Hmong culture. The question is raised whether the anomaly of Hmong women with independent status, gained through education, in combination with the explicit pedagogy of higher education, might prompt the women to regard culture as a human construction open to reinterpretation and change. It is suggested that this critical stance toward culture allows provisional resolution of the inherent conflicts between the two primary goals expressed by the women: to achieve educationally and to preserve Hmong culture.