Subscribe to our newsletter by emailChong Moua receives 2013 Anne Frank Visiting Researcher Award
Chong Moua is the recipient of the 2013 Southeast Asian Archive Anne Frank Visiting Researcher Award. Thanks to an anonymous donor who established the award, Ms. Moua received $500 to defray her travel expenses to do research in the archive this past summer.
The award enabled Moua, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to enhance her research project titled, Refugee Cosmopolitanism: Hmong Refugeeism and Critical Statelessness. Her work involves analyzing the ways in which Hmong refugees upend the discourse of the United States as a nation of refuge for displaced immigrants.
“As someone who has been told that my people have no history simply because it is not written down, this award has allowed me to embark on a journey that will make my history valid and recognized through research and knowledge production,” said Moua.
The Hmong are an ethnic group with roots in China going back to 2000 B.C. Most of the Hmong in the U.S. come from Laos, where they suffered persecution. California has one of the highest populations of Hmong with over 91,000.
Moua’s research in the archive included examining files in the Brigitte Marshall collection of Hmong refugees’ camp experiences in Thailand and subsequent relocation to the United States. She also explored the Gayle Morrison collection, which houses materials about the activities of the Lao Family Community, Inc., an agency that resettled Hmong refugees in California and Minnesota. In addition, she went through the archive’s extensive collection of ephemera about Hmong refugees creating and maintaining family ties after the upheaval of displacement.
The Libraries’ Southeast Asian Archive is open to the public to learn about the refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and its materials are a rich resource of primary and secondary materials.
For further information, please contact Thuy Vo Dang, Archivist for the Southeast Asian Archive and Regional History, at tvodang@uci.edu, 949.824.1878, or 949.824.4968.