Reviews for The Hmong

The average rating for The Hmong based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-04-18 00:00:00 Hursell Dolly Folk Stories of the Hmong is a more challenging collection than it appears at first blush, and readers may be discouraged in the early going. However, as one becomes accustomed to the tales and their style, it gets easier to appreciate both the aesthetics of the tales and their relationship to world folklore. The front matter that the authors provide on Hmong tradition and history is also a fine, concise introduction to these stories that makes for fine background. The Hmong tales presented here have some aspects in common with European folk tales. For instance, the wall between the world of magic and mundane is very thin, as would be familiar to anyone versed in the Grimm collections. The wall between the worlds of the dead and living is also rather permeable, which is less common in western folklore (excepting ghost stories - and these Hmong tales do not carry a ghostly air at all), as is the barrier between human and animal. Specifically, these stories make great use of the relationship between humans and tigers that is ubiquitous in Hmong cultures, and death is not seen as a final separation between people - the idea that lovers will be reunited in death is very concrete here. Structurally, these tales seem to lack many of the oral conventions that characterize folktales from elsewhere, such as the "tripling" of elements that make it easier for raconteurs to remember stories. Most likely these are supplanted by other conventions that I did not pick up on at first read, or that may have been lost in translation. A somewhat disturbing trope in these stories is the disposability of wives. Though this is not unknown in western folktales (the prince does leave his first wife for Sleeping Beauty, after all), the folkloric convention of "hero gets married and lives happily ever after" simply does not apply in Hmong folktales as presented here; often, marriage is a mid-story plot turn that prefigures the husband looking for other options. These tales are not necessarily more misogynistic than what you will see in the collections of Afanasyev, Yeats, or the Grimms - women do seem to have more agency in Hmong love stories, for example - but it is an intriguing difference. This volume, though slim, is a fine addition to anyone's library of folktales or books on Hmong culture.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-10-23 00:00:00 James Levey I felt that some of the stories were really short, only a paragraph or two long. I don't know if that's the way they're told traditionally and the author didn't feel comfortable dressing them up or what. It was a really quick read and I love love love the color plates... actually as soon as I finished this book I started doing my needlepoint again. Anne Fadiman does a superb job explaining Hmong culture and traditions in her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures... the folk tales are sometimes charming, sometimes mildly offensive, and never having read a book full of just folk stories before, they seemed kind of repetitive--but that's not the book's fault. Anyway, I liked this book just fine but in the future I'll probably take my folk stories in small doses, peppered into larger works as the book by Fadiman I mentioned earlier does.