Week 8 - (Re)making Identity through Fashion

Jinia Lee
ASA141
Week 8

When reading McCall's Speaking Through Cloth: Teaching Hmong History and Culture through Textile Art, I found many similarities with Hmong's culture and my own. Whenever I look at Hmong and Iu Mien traditional wear, I never question if there's deeper meanings to the embroidery and honestly just assume that whoever sown it chose the stitches and colors because they're pretty. However, I recently came across an article about an Iu Mien Cultural Clothing Exhibit in Sacramento where an interviewee said that embroidery was used to tell stories since there was no written language until 1984. This was surprising to me because I didn't know that the embroidery meant something, and it makes me appreciate it more. Since I'm a second-generation Mien American, there's missing pieces of history and narratives that I don't hear because the war was a difficult time for my family and now that I think of it, sewing and embroidery can be a way to cope and express trauma.