Hmong American Poet Mai Der Vang Tells the Story of Her Heritage at CLC

Central Lakes College’s “Verse Like Water” program has been inviting visiting poets to speak at the Brainerd campus for 12 years. Wednesday’s speaker was Mai Der Vang, a Hmong American poet, whose work is centered around the history and culture of her heritage.

Vang’s story began as her parents fled Laos as refugees after the fallout of the Vietnam War. They resettled originally in the Twin Cities before moving to Fresno, California, where Vang was born and raised. She began writing as a young child and used poetry as a way to express herself. Her poetry now is focused on her heritage as well as other issues she holds dear.

“A lot of my poems explore my Hmong American identity. There are also poems that look at other things that are important to me, such as the environment and also cultural issues within my own community,” she said.

For Vang, one of the most important parts of her poetry is telling the story of her people and their culture, something that is not often told in America.

“During the US war in Vietnam, the CIA recruited and had many Hmong men fight in this war alongside the Americans. And then when the Americans ended the war in Vietnam, they left a lot of young people behind. And so Hmong families had to fend for themselves in this very troubling time,” explained Vang. “A lot of them escaped the country by fleeing to Thailand in the refugee camps where they resettled for a short period, including my parents. And then after a couple of years, the United States allowed many Hmong families to resettle in the United States.”

Vang’s goal is to make sure the Hmong people’s history is never forgotten, and the number of people who have supported her work inspires her to continue.

“When I see people who are interested or just curious about the Hmong story, it really encourages me to want to share it, to continue to write about it, to continue to talk about the history of this war and the Hmong people’s role in the war, and just to create a space where people can learn and ask questions, because I think that’s an important thing, is to be able to ask questions, especially if you don’t know. And so I hope to continue to do that in my own writing.”

Mai Der Vang’s “Yellow Rain” was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her first poetry collection, “Afterland,” won the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets in 2016.