The Mediated Figure of Hmong Farmer, Hmong Studies, and Asian American Critique

The objective of this article is two-fold: First, it argues for critical engagement between Hmong Studies and Asian American Studies. Second, to illustrate the productivity of such engagement,this article analyzes the media coverage of an incident involving Hmong American farmers and their white neighbors in Eagan, Minnesota, June 2010. The focal question is how media discourses around farming and immigration serve to racialize Hmong American identities. Thisanalysis shows that Hmong Americans experience “Asiatic racialization” in that they are either discursively cast outside of the imagined American nation, or included contingent uponassimilation and conformity. Critiquing both the exclusionary and assimilative narratives, this article explicates the inherent contradictions of the U.S. nationalism, referencing both existingHmong Studies literature and Asian Americanist discourses on race and nation. Both bodies of work foreground the historical and social construction of identities, as well as the simultaneous,intertwined workings of race, class, gender/sexuality and nation. Critical dialogues could generate new ideas and possibilities for both Asian American Studies and Hmong Studies.