Author/artist Vicky Lyfoung's debut upper middle-grade memoir, Hmong: A Graphic History, smoothly translated by Kao-Ly Yang, evocatively explores her French-born Hmong identity. Lyfoung was born near Paris in 1990 to Hmong refugee parents, and her childhood was marked with racist taunts, microaggressions, and questions about her ethnicity. At 15, Lyfoung watched a documentary, Laos, la Guerre Oubliée (Laos, the Forgotten War), that changed her life: "It was precisely that moment... that I began to want to know the history of my people."
To better understand herself as a diasporic young Hmong woman, she turned to diligent research. Although specific origins are unclear, the Hmong were "nomadic mountain people from Northern China." Repeated, vicious displacements began in 2000 BCE and populations eventually settled in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. The French colonized Laos in 1893, recruiting the Hmong to cultivate poppies for opium, and later to serve as guerilla fighters. The U.S. military followed the French with promises of safety (ostensibly from Communism), then abandoned the country to violent turmoil. Fleeing was the only chance of survival for Lyfoung's family, instigating a perilous journey through Laos, Thailand, and arriving in France in 1977.
Lyfoung displays an unblinking vulnerability and proud admiration as she reconstructs her parents' challenging, isolating experiences as non-French-speaking refugees. Her stark black-and-white panels with impermeable borders suggest a tightly controlled narrative as she concisely condenses sprawling political and cultural history into an approachable, informal graphic novel for young readers. Her rounded characters--more cartoonish cute than realistic--help temper the inhumane brutality she bravely refuses to elide. Stalwartly bearing witness, Lyfoung promises, "I am proud to be Hmong--and will be until the day I die." --Terry Hong