Mai Der Vang
Mai Der Vang is a Hmong-American poet. She is the daughter of Hmong refugees who settled in the U.S. after the U.S. withdrew from the Secret War in Laos, which left many Hmong displaced and searching for a home. Vang teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State, and she is the author of Afterland and Yellow Rain. In Yellow Rain, Vang refuses to let Hmong history be erased and silenced; she highlights the U.S.'s negligence in investigating the allegations of the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops committing chemical biological warfare against the Hmong with aid from the Soviet Union. In tandem, Vang explores the Hmong community's pain and rage of having their suffering dismissed through her visual collage-poems, along with her integration of archival research and declassified documents.
"Composition 5" from Yellow Rain. Vang uses archival research and declassified documents to create a collage-poem displaying the mixed outcomes of the yellow rain investigation.
At the end of the Vietnam War, many Hmong refugees recounted experiences and stories of a mysterious, deadly substance called "yellow rain" that fell from planes onto Laos in the mid-1970s. The yellow rain caused severe illness and thousands of deaths. Subsequently, the United States started an investigation. What followed would be an investigation full of negligence and mishaps as "shipping delays, specimens lost in transit, broken vials, backlogs of samples, and a lack of agency coordination" occurred.
The investigation into yellow rain eventually led to Dr. Matthew Meselson, a scientist at Harvard University, government consultant, and specialist in chemical and biological defense, and Dr. Thomas Seeley, a bee expert at Yale University, to claim that the yellow rain found from the test samples were bee feces, and the health problems found in Hmong refugees were due to poor sanitation conditions and lack of food. This is still the widely believed and accepted explanation.
In creating her collage-poems, Vang recognizes that archival research and documents are not enough to change people's mind, nor have they ever been used in the favor of the Hmong. "Composition 5," among other 4 compositions, pieces together the documents chaotically and disorderly, challenging the information presented in them, and the way knowledge and narratives are created. It asks us to engage in the words differently, see it as the weapons they were and are to Hmong refugees—The U.S. and Soviet Union had signed treaties banning chemical weapons, and would need to preserve the integrity and peace they represented, which meant covering up possible violations. So, what is the harm in blaming the bees and painting the Hmong as dumb and clueless? What is a few thousand dead Hmong in the face of the U.S.'s agenda in the post-Cold War climate? Moreover, the chaotic-ness of the compositions reflects how the Hmong are displaced and stateless from the war, stuck in a limbo of not quite knowing where they belong, like how the American public do not know who to believe about yellow rain.
These documents and archives cannot capture the turmoil of being dismissed, gaslighted, laughed at. But when Vang pairs her prose with the accounts of survivors and eyewitnesses, she shifts the focus to the Hmong refugees and the dead, giving a space for Hmong voices to finally be heard as she tries to remedy their pervading dismissal. Her poems and collages try to speak of a truth that many Hmong wish to know, while also conveying the grief and anguish that many experience from the constant waiting for answers and the loss of their kin and home.
The backdrop for Mai Der Vang's poem, "When the Poison Fell, Before 1979" is a digital drawing by Annie Quynh Nguyen. It depicts the mountains of Laos along with splattered specks of yellow liquid to represent yellow rain. In the poem, Vang pairs testimonies of Hmong refugees with her own prose.
Mai Der Vang's "Allied with the Bees" portrays the Hmong's frustrations with the Bee Theory, as Hmong have lived with bees for ages and have not developed the severe symptoms seen with yellow rain before. The backdrop for the poem is a digital drawing by Annie Quynh Nguyen, which depicts a hand reaching out among the honeybees.
"I inherited yellow rain as I also inherited the lost. When my parents recalled what they know about yellow rain, they did not speak of bees. Only in whispers did the elders say anything about the rain and those who fell beneath it, names and faces left to the mountain, spirits still searching under the leaves."
~ Yellow Rain, 2021
In Yellow Rain, Vang suggests that the Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome (SUDS) that occurs in Hmong refugees is linked to the yellow rain in Laos, as it may be delayed effects from exposure. Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome is when there is a sudden unexpected death during one's sleep. It was first noted in Hmong refugees in the United States and Canada, but also noted in other Southeast Asian refugees in refugee camps located in Thailand.
A newspaper article from the Paokong Chang Papers collection that features a story about a young Hmong refugee dying from Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome and its possible causes.
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A newspaper from the Southeast Asian Genetics Program (SEAGEP) Records collection detailing Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome (and AIDS) among Southeast Asian refugees in Thailand's refugee camps. The newspaper suggests that the sudden deaths have to do with poor diet in the camps.
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For more information about the Hmong and yellow rain, see Mai Der Vang's published
essay: Yellow Rain: A reckoning and re-investigation into the dismissing of Hmong allegations,
which is also available in pdf format here.
Mai Der Vang joins Eastwind Books of Berkeley for a talk and poetry reading hosted by Khmer poet Monica Sok.
Another poetry reading with Mai Der Vang, this time with interlocutor Viet Thanh Nguyen.
"Answer: it is not to know
The shape of what happened
But to know it happened, it
Happened, it happened."
~ from "Manifesto of a Drum"
in Yellow Rain, 2021