Bridge Generation Grows Up

There are large Hmong communities that relocated to Minnesota and Wisconsin following the end of the Laotian Civil War in 1975. Many of the children of these refugees are adults now who use translingual literacies as a bridge to connect places, cultures, and generations in their communities. These connections of language and culture are made manifest through literacy. Simon presents an ethnographic study of Hmong women. Their experiences reveal the relationships between displacement, relocation, education, literacy, cultural preservation, and upward social mobility. She engages directly with urgent conversations currently animating literacy and composition studies: immigration, social justice, language, gender, and dismantling oppressive power structures and systems. These daughters of refugees occupy a unique linguistic, literate, and cultural position that allows them to strategically and purposefully move themselves and their communities toward a more just, inclusive, and sustainable life.