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Making an impact
Zha Blong Xiong is a force within academia-and his Hmong community
By Suzy Frisch
Zha Blong Xiong knows what it's like to be new to the
country and not know enough English to ask the location
of a bathroom, let alone how to use the facilities
when he got there. He's familiar with the experience of feeling
lost in school, unable to understand what the teacher is lecturing
about and just trying to make it through the day.
When thousands of Hmong refugees immigrate to Minnesota
this year, Xiong will be there to help several family members
and the refugee group at large make the adjustment from
refugee camp to the Western world. He'll show them by
example what they can achieve with hard work and
perseverance. After all, in less than 20 years
Xiong has gone from being a refugee who
spoke no English to becoming the
first Hmong tenure-track professor
at the University of Minnesota,
and the first at a major research
university in the United States.
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Zha Blong Xiong |
An assistant professor in General College since 2002,
Xiong specializes in parent/adolescent relationships
in immigrant families, adolescent adjustment, and
parent education. He earned his master's degree and
Ph.D. in family social science from the University of Minnesota
in 2000, just 18 years after his family fled Laos for the safety of
Thailand.
Since joining General College, Xiong has undertaken several
new research projects, including a study of why some siblings in
a Hmong family become juvenile delinquents and others don't.
He also plans to track and compare the experiences of first-generation
immigrant General College students with those of
nonimmigrant students.
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Drive to learn and succeed
It was not an easy journey from Asia to America for Xiong's family. For two years his parents, five brothers, and three sisters lived in the jungle because his father had been a captain in the Laotian military and was wanted for reeducation by the new Communist regime. After a major battle in the jungle, Xiong's oldest brother was killed at the age of 14. Eventually the family made it back to Luang Prabang, the city where Xiong grew up, and an uncle helped them escape across the Mekong River to Thailand. The family spent a year and a half in the refugee camp before an aunt and uncle in Rosemount, Minnesota, sponsored their immigration to the United States in 1982.
Xiong entered school in the ninth grade and went through the struggles common to most immigrant children. "It was very, very difficult adjusting to the environment. It seemed at the time impossible to manage,” he says. "We had to go through learning the basics, using the rest room, the shower, the stove, learning how to get out of school and memorize the bus number because you don't know the language. When I was faced with the situation, my mind was trying to concentrate on getting through each day rather than learning the subject."
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Xiong brings this padao (embroidered
tapestry) to workshops. The artist portrays
the immigrant journey of the Hmong:
farmers whose land was invaded by
the North Vietnamese, followed
by escape to Thailand. Elders
use the padao, rather
than written language,
to express
their sorrow,
Xiong
said.
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But Xiong had a drive to learn and succeed, powered by the dreams of his parents that he and his siblings obtain a higher education. His father always said he wanted his kids to achieve something better than being a schoolteacher or a nurse, and Xiong shared that goal.
He and his family went to great lengths to make sure they adjusted to their new culture. For one year when Xiong was in tenth grade, he and a younger brother lived with an American couple on their farm so they would be immersed in the English language and American culture. Then the family moved from Rosemount to Hastings so that the Xiong siblings could repeat two grades. Xiong felt he had learned enough English by then to really master the subject matter of ninth grade, so he started over where he had begun when he moved to the United States. |
Zha Blong Xiong (left) was assisted in his study of Hmong siblings by undergraduate
research assistants (sitting, l to r) Tou Y. Xiong, Molly Yang, Dao Lor, LecLue Vang, and
(standing l to r) Ser Xiong and Pao Xiong. |
Community work began early
Xiong graduated from Hastings High School and went on to
college at Winona State University, where he majored in psychology.
It was there that he got involved with the community
and his fellow students, serving as president of the Hmong
Student Club. He volunteered his time to teach the Winona
community at large about Hmong people by offering adult
education courses about his cultural traditions, while at the
same time helping members of the Hmong community
settle in Winona. |
After graduating with honors, Xiong continued to work with the community, starting as an extension agent for the University of Minnesota Extension Service in Dakota County. He worked primarily with immigrants—especially those from Asia—on the issues they faced as parents in America. But he couldn't find a curriculum that was devoted to Asian Americans, rather than just being a class adapted from a mainstream American course.
Xiong approached Dan Detzner, then a professor in the University's College of Human Ecology who focused on family social science, to see if he knew of any curricula that Xiong could use or adapt. Detzner, who is now associate dean of General College, told Xiong that he would have to create a curriculum himself and encouraged him to enroll in the family social science master's program at the University to do just that.
Xiong took his advice. While earning his master's, Xiong teamed up with Detzner to develop the curriculum "Helping Youth Succeed: Bicultural Parenting in Southeast Asian Families." The coursework involves 24 family stories that prompt discussions among parents about issues facing their families, especially their relationship with their teenagers. It took the pair about five years to create the program while they held extensive focus groups with the Vietnamese, Hmong, Lao, and Cambodian populations and did research of their own on the communities. Commanding English (CE) instructor Pat Eliason wrote the scenarios based on information from the focus groups. (See sidebar.)
Detzner and Xiong had the curriculum translated into all four languages and produced a video to accompany the course. The goal of "Helping Youth Succeed" is to provide a way for Southeast Asian–American parents to blend what's working from their own cultural traditions with new American techniques.
Making an academic contribution
On a two-year leave from the Extension Service, Xiong had every intention of returning to work after receiving his master's degree. But he realized there was little social science research and academic literature about Asian Americans, and Hmong people in particular, so he altered his plans and decided to earn a Ph.D. from a major research university—the University of Minnesota. That way, he could make major contributions to the body of academic work about Asians in America.
After receiving his Ph.D., Xiong spent two years as an assistant professor at Iowa State University. But he wanted to return to Minnesota to be close to his large family and to be among the extensive Hmong community in the Twin Cities. He also wanted to live and work in an area where there was a vibrant immigrant community to research—something Ames, Iowa, couldn't offer. Detzner is grateful Xiong decided to continue on the family social science career path, for himself, the University, and the Southeast Asian community at large. "Blong is able to do research that no one else can because he's a cultural insider, and he knows people who will open doors for him that they wouldn't for anyone else,” he said. "He brings the insider information as well as the academic expertise, and that combination is rare and highly valuable."
Xiong also serves as a role model for General College students, among whom are significant numbers of first-generation immigrant students. "He shows these kids, who have a lot of difficulty overcoming their lack of cultural knowledge of the United States and of the University, that hard work and persistence pays off,” noted Detzner. "You can make it all the way through the system and be successful."
Smoothing the way for others
Later this year, Xiong and his family will greet about a dozen family members who are leaving the Wat Tham Krabok refugee camp in Thailand for Minnesota. He, his siblings, and parents will use their experience in adjusting to a new land to help these fresh arrivals get settled in America. With his experience as a new immigrant still sharp in his mind, and armed with the knowledge and expertise he has gleaned in family dynamics and the immigrant experience, Xiong should be able to make his family members' transition a smoother one.
"When you are refugees, your life just becomes chaos. You want to make sure these families never go through the same thing you went through,” Xiong says. "Their children will have an opportunity to play with our children, so they will adjust much quicker. We can take these parents to parent-teacher conferences and model the process. My family never had that opportunity. Those are things that are more personal for us and will make an immediate impact for these families."
Xiong seems to make an immediate impact wherever he goes, whether it's in the world of academia or in his own community. This time—both with his family and in blazing a trail for other Hmong academics in the United States—should be no different.
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