Week 8: Hmong Story Cloths

Haley Bergman

ASA-141

Week 8

This weeks reading was particularly interesting to me because I did not have much knowledge of Hmong textiles before and this gave some great insight. I had not previously known that the Hmong people had not had a standardized writing system. This I believe is what makes their story cloths so incredibly fascinating since they were not able to write their history they artfully and creatively depicted it through their textiles. I think it’s interesting that even things like their daily lives were painstakingly depicted in these clothes which gives us a unique opportunity to glance at the daily lives of these people through actual images. These story cloths also give a first-hand view of how the Hmong people viewed the world and history through all of their struggles without the biased eye that most of history has since it is written by the victors. I think the complexity of the young Hmong girls struggles in the US as immigrants were especially interesting as it highlighted the contradictions they are faced with of both gaining an education and getting a job along with the idea of traditions and taking care of the home. Overall I found the entire concept of story cloths to be extremely fascinating and new for me and my understanding of history.

https://www.luther.edu/anthropology/lab-collections/hmong-collection-and-history/?module_api=image_detail&module_identifier=module_identifier-mcla-ImageSidebarLutherModule-mloc-pre_sidebar_2-mpar-122bd694ab76dbc88d0a0f4bb0c0feda&image_id=781093