Back Cover Copy

Written for ‘A Portrait of Grief and Courage’, Hmong oral history project.

“A shadow in the dark corner of the room moved. Slowly a woman walked toward us. Tears streamed down her face. She pointed toward me and spoke to May Lee in Hmong. This is what she said.

‘Please give me the words to speak my grief.’”

When Sandra Shackelford, an artist and documentarian, heard these words while working for Northeast Wisconsin Technical College’s High Risk Family Support Program, she knew she was about to begin a decades-long project to preserve the words of the Hmong people living in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Forced to flee from their homes in Laos to escape a secret holocaust, the Hmong people have found refuge in America for the past fifty years. This compendium presents readers with gripping and compelling perspectives told first-hand and reveals the hardships faced by this forgotten community. Many voyaged through jungles without much food, water, or shelter. Many lost family members along the way, some even had to be left behind to protect those running.

Transcribed from Hmong into English, these raw testimonies will tell the stories of the grief Hmong refugees faced when first arriving in America and the courage they had to persevere through it.