I Refused to be Absorbed into a World of Cultural Lost
What is your ethnicity?
I'm Hmong.
Mongolia?
No, Hmong. Miao Tzu. A hill tribe of China.
Do you find it a humility that your ethnicity remains anonymity to society?
What are you? Chinese? Go back to where you came from, HA-MONG, oh wait, you don't have a country! Lost all of your cultural history, remaining a mystery, only thing you have left today is worshiping ancestry. You would've never smelt the aroma of free if it wasn't for the help of my American military
Made it through generations of mass genocide
Nowhere to run or to hide
Escaping Miao rebellions, refugee camps of Laos
and running through rivers and jungles of Thai
Scattered throughout every country worldwide
Exposed to diversity, leaving my cultural roots behind because
growing up as an Asian descent is an easy target for people to tyrannize
Putting fingers to their face, ching chong ling long, slanting their eyes
Didn't want to speak my native tongue nor wear my cultural clothing outside
Gave up learning my cultural history because of the fear of judgment
to concentrate on living the American dream peacefully
and to be more Americanized
So, what is my ethnicity?
I’m Hmong. Miao tzu. Hilltribe of China.
I do not find it a humility that my ethnicity remains anonymity to society
We do not have a country, but what I can tell you
is that we, I, held on to our cultural history
The cultural history that made it through generations of mass genocide
with nowhere to run nor to hide
Escaping Miao rebellions, refugee camps of Laos
and running through rivers and jungles of Thai
The traditions and cultural history that we carried on for thousands of years
not letting our rituals and practices die
Scattered throughout every country worldwide
Exposed to the sun of diversity, I spread the seeds of my cultural roots,
watering it every day to keep it alive
Speaking my native tongue and wearing my cultural clothing outdoors with pride
We do not have a country
but when we were promised a country of our own,
there must have been a misunderstanding
They meant America and this IS my country
Though I strive to live the American dream,
I refuse to be absorbed in a world of cultural lost
and will balance being Hmong and being Americanized