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Color Added

Photo by Jim Gertz, Star-Tribune


Years ago, when we lived in a small town in Iowa, a relatively large number of Hmong people tried our small town on for size and fit.  Almost all of them moved to the Twin Cities, 150 miles north, because they needed more than a town:  they needed each other.  It has been Minnesota's gain.  


Every once in a while, I think that our part of the Americas was a plain place, when I grew up.  I was part of a Scandinavian immigration, but we Norwegians were too anxious to become Americans to add color to the culture.  We wanted to belong.  I recall that, in our family, where our father was a first generation immigrant, we tried to get him to speak Norwegian to us, one day a week.  It lasted about ten minutes.  "No!  No!", we said to him.  "That isn't a Norwegian word!  That's just an English word pronounced wrong!"  Dad gave up.  Blending in had begun to happen to him, too.


The Hmong, like all immigrants, learn English very quickly.  They want to blend in, too, or at least to communicate freely.  But they are better at keeping their celebrations, and their glorious costume.  Maybe it is because the differences between their parent culture and that of the Americas is greater than the difference between Scandinavians and the Europeans who came here earlier.  


Whatever it is, we are a far finer place because of the finery, and food, the look and the lilt of a nation full of immigrants.  The ignorance and mean-spiritedness of the people who have forgotten that all of us came here from somewhere is shameful.  Even the American Indians, long ago, came here from Asia.  


What delight!

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