Writing from These Roots documents the historical development of   literacy in a Midwestern American community of Laotian Hmong, a people who   came to the United States as refugees from the Vietnam War and whose   language had no widely accepted written form until one created by   missionary-linguists was adopted in the late twentieth century by Hmong in   Laos and, later, the U.S. and other Western nations. As such, the Hmong   have often been described as "preliterates," "nonliterates," or members of   an "oral culture." Although such terms are problematic, it is nevertheless   true that the majority of Hmong did not read or write in any language when   they arrived in the U.S. For this reason, the Hmong provide a unique   opportunity to study the forces that influence the development of reading   and writing abilities in cultures in which writing is not widespread and to   do so within the context of the political, economic, religious, military,   and migratory upheavals classified broadly as "globalization."Drawing on   life-history interviews collected from Hmong refugees in a Wisconsin   community, this book examines the disparate political and institutional   forces that shaped Hmong literacy development in the twentieth century,   including, in Laos, French colonialism, Laotian nationalism, missionary   Christianity, and the CIA during the Vietnam War. It further examines the   influences on Hmong literary in the U.S., including public schooling,   evangelical Christianity, ethnic self-help organizations, and media   discourses about Hmong refugees. In relating the particulars of the Hmong   story, the author asks broad questions--still urgent and unresolved--about   the nature of literacy development: How do people learn to read and write?   What are the forces that nourish, compel, sustain, deny, or redeem   literacy? What processes are at work when a majority of people within a   given culture, begins, for the first time in its history, to acquire and   use written language? And, finally, in what ways do minority   peoples--refugees, immigrants, and others--claim the possibilities of   literacy for themselves, using it as an instrument to compose identities,   cultures, and conceptions of the world? Writing from These Roots   offers a theoretical perspective on these and other questions concerning   literacy development, one rooted in the symbolic interactions of peoples,   cultures, and nations.

Writing from These Roots: The Historical Development of Literacy in a Hmong American Community PDF

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