In the Halls – Zha Blong Xiong, Associate Professor
The journey that brought Zha Blong Xiong to the University of Minnesota Department of Family Social Science has all the elements of an adventure story: tragedy, danger, and sacrifice. As a child, Xiong lived in the second largest city of Laos – Luang Prabang. He was a city kid who preferred hanging out with his friends instead of going to school. In 1977 everything changed. At age ten, he and his family (mother, father, five brothers, and three sisters) fled in the night. He left behind his friends, his belongings, and his pet rooster (for fear that its crowing would reveal their whereabouts).
Xiong’s father had been a captain in the Laotian military during the Secret War – one of the largest clandestine operations ever run by the CIA. As a result of his involvement, Xiong’s father was wanted by the new communist regime for “re-education camp”– code for imprisonment, torture, death.
On May 14, 1975, Xiong’s family had to leave their home in the city and travel with his uncle to a rugged Laotian mountain village where his uncle lived. His father went into hiding. His family lived there for a year and a half (from May 1975 to February, 1977) before his father appeared and took them to join the resistant force called Chao Fa or Prince of Sky in the jungle, which was located between the cities of Luang Prabang and Vientiane, still in hiding from the communist government.
In April of 1977, Xiong’s eldest brother, along with several other children, was killed in a night-time attack by the communist army while the community was hiding in caves. After running from jungle to jungle because of various at-tacks from the communist army for one year and eight months, Xiong and his mother, along with his three sisters and four brothers, finally were forced to surrender to the communist army, leaving his father and several men who served under his father behind in the jungle.
Two years later, in January 1979, Xiong and his family, without his father, returned to his uncle’s village thinking it would be safer. With an absent father, at age eleven, Xiong was now the eldest male and assumed the responsibility of providing for his family. Xiong, his older sister, and his mother worked in the rice and corn fields while his siblings and other children his age went to school. He spent his days producing food for his family and their animals, in addition to collecting water and firewood. While his family appreciated his efforts, Xiong dreamed of returning to school.
In January of 1980, unknown to Xiong and his family, his father escaped to the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp (the largest Hmong refugee camp in Thailand that accommodated more than 30,000 refugees). Meanwhile, Xiong’s family also realized they needed to escape to Thailand for their safety. To flee the city undetected, Xiong’s family broke into two small groups. Xiong and his three younger brothers rode on a military truck under the guise that they were traveling to a funeral. Upon meeting up with the second group the next day, the family began their five-day walk to Thailand. Xiong’s family was fortunate to have two escorts guide their way. When paths were discovered by the military, soldiers planted land mines resulting in escape routes being changed. Forging new paths through the dense jungle added time and difficulty in reaching their destination. Each family member was responsible for carrying his/her own belongings, food, and some-times the younger children as well. After five days, the family arrived in Sotuang Refugee Camp, a small rural camp with approximately 15,000 refugees, in northern Thailand. The refugee experience introduced Xiong to the routine of standing in numerous lines to receive food, water, and clothes. With the help of relatives, he and his family built a structure in the camp where they lived for the next 18 months. During this time, Xiong and his family learned his father was alive. After numerous complications, his father finally rejoined the family in time to immigrate to the United States.
Xiong’s aunt and uncle, who lived in Rosemount, and the local Lutheran Church, sponsored the Xiong family’s relocation to Minnesota. They arrived in Rosemount during the winter of 1982, mid-semester, allowing Xiong to attend the last half of 9th grade. Xiong found himself in a completely new environment – this one full cold weather, and a totally unfamiliar culture. At age fourteen, he began to learn English, his fourth language (Hmong, Laotian, and Thai being the other three).
Knowing that their children needed to understand the English language and a new culture, Xiong’s parents arranged for him and his younger brother to live on a family farm with a Caucasian family. After spending a year immersed in the English language, learning about life on the farm, eating new food, and living with a western family, Xiong and his brother returned to their family who were now living in Hastings, Minnesota. With a deeper understanding of the English language, Xiong chose to repeat ninth grade in Hastings High School. He audited numerous English classes, focused on learning and acquiring knowledge. The first novel Xiong selected to read in English was Jules Vern’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
After graduating from high school, Xiong studied at Winona State University where he majored in psychology. He became active in the Hmong community by serving as the president of the Hmong Student Club. Xiong actively volunteered as a teacher at the Winona Community Adult Education Center, teaching a course about Hmong cultural traditions and helping new Hmong immigrants settle in Winona.
After graduating from Winona State University, Xiong worked as an extension agent for the University of Minnesota Extension Service n Dakota County, developing curricula and programs relating to family issues of recent immigrants primarily from Southeast Asia.
Looking for further educational resources to use in his extension classes, Xiong approached Daniel Detzner, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s College of Human Ecology Family Social Science department (now Detzner teaches in the Department of Post Secondary Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Human Development). Detzner encouraged Xiong to develop the curriculum himself while pursuing his master’s degree in the Family Social Science program at the University of Minnesota. Xiong applied and was accepted into the master’s program.
Over the next five years, he and Detzner worked together to develop the curriculum “Helping Youth Succeed: Bicultural Parenting in Southeast Asian Families.” The pair had the curriculum translated into Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, and Vietnamese. Discovering there was only a modest amount of social science research related to Asian American families, Xiong continued his education and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in the Family Social Science Department.
After teaching for two years at Iowa State University, Xiong returned to the Twin Cities to be close to his family and work in an area with a vibrant immigrant community. In 2006, while teaching in General College at the U of MN, Xiong became the first Hmong tenured professor at a research university in the United States. Xiong joined the faculty in Family Social Science in the fall of 2007 and is currently working on several projects.
Collaborating with seven non-profit agencies, Xiong is working on a community engagement project funded by Blue Cross and Blue Shield. This is the first year of a training model that will bring together various groups of people: business leaders, medical providers, clan leaders, spiritual and religious leaders, group leaders, and influential community leaders. These leaders will receive training and become tobacco educators in their community throughout Minnesota. The premise is to access the larger community through various channels with a consistent and unified message instead of each group working independently. Because of their connection to the community, they will penetrate community-educating the leaders on the consequence of tobacco usage in addition to seeing the value in a tobacco-free community. The mentoring and training model will be developed to encourage self sufficiency and momentum of communicating the message through a wide network of leaders. This model will be tested and, if successful, the team will add parent education and other components into the program.
In 2006, Xiong received an 18 month grant from ClearWay Minnesota, an independent, nonprofit organization that focuses on the health of Minnesotans by reducing the harm caused by tobacco. ClearWay Minnesota’s mission is to enhance life for all Minnesotans by reducing tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke through research, action, and collaboration. The grant funded a pilot study “Intervention Approaches to Reduce Tobacco Use Among Southeast Asian Communities” that revealed which intervention models work with specific Southeast Asian communities. The project was completed in August and the final report is due December 2008.
This fall Xiong is launching a bilingual project that will be the first in the nation. He will be working with Jackson Magnet School in St. Paul, the English Language Learners (ELL) Program at St. Paul Public Schools, and Concordia University. The program will teach Academic Hmong in reading and writing so that the student’s acquisition of English as their second language will be much richer and fuller.
The premise of the project is that if children receive a strong understanding of their first language, they will learn a second language successfully. During the Pre-K year they will be taught in Hmong 70 percent and English 30 percent. For the first grade the Hmong/English ratio will be 55/45; second Grade 30/70 and by the third grade they will be taught 90 percent in English and 10 percent in Hmong. The actual research program begins fall 2008.
Xiong’s cutting-edge research and creation of new knowledge significantly contributes to Southeast Asian refugees transition to living in Minnesota and helps those working with refugees to better understand the personal and cultural challenges they are experiencing. Xiong’s personal experience blended with his academic research helps forge the way for others by developing unique projects that connect immigrants to the community, education, and culture.
(Originally published in the fall 2008 issue of the Family Social Science newsletter, Interactions).