My Sister Preferred Marrying a Christian Because She Cannot Perform the Hmong Rituals

The chencki-man

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CONTENTS

Exploring: Current Experiences

Challenging: Women Issues

Reading: Research Articles

Learning: History

Guessing: Proverbs & Riddles

Studying: Literature & Poetry

Visiting: Photo Gallery

Admiring: Art Gallery

Listening to: Hmong Radios

Enjoying: Tales for Children

Taking: Courses of Cult & Language

Proposing: Story, Poetry & Artwork

Professional Background Hobbies Consultation Service Rules Website Spirit

Copyrights 2002 to Kao-Ly Yang
All rights reserved.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
A Hmong Women's Reason to Convert to Christianity.
My Widowed Sister Preferred Getting Married to a Hmong Christian Because She Cannot Perform the Hmong Rituals
followed by
"The Emergency to Intellectually Awake Hmong Women's Understanding"

Kao-Ly Yang

Join the Free Discussion Group: "Hmong Women Network"

All characters and events in this story are fictional.

My sister Sheen came to the United States in 1976. At that time, she was already married and has given birth to her 4 children. Unfortunately, her husband passed away in 1986, after ten years of happiness in this new country. My sister was left a widow at 31, with 7 children: 6 sons and one daughter.

The death of her husband totally changed my sister's social life. She became submissive to her husband's lineage, and especially to her brothers-in law. She has to consult them for almost all decisions: education of her children, important expenses and especially rituals events. As a young widow with 6 sons in an interdependent society with a patriarchy ideology and polygamic practices, she could not think by herself.

However, she strongly refused to marry a young brother of her late husband -- in Hmong society, there is the practice of levirate where a female widow can marry a younger siblings of her husband. After that refusal, she was considered by her husband's lineage as a "bad woman". Then she knew she cannot count on them to help her. Her days as her nights were lonely. She has to limit herself so that she won't depend too much on others, emotionally, socially and spiritually. During some long years, my sister Sheen withdrew into her domestic life in taking care of her children. Being still single and available -- in the Hmong community, people believe that widow or divorcee are "easy women for sex", her friends are quite afraid of Sheen as a potential second wife their husbands so that they cut hers from their social and family life. The rumors ?an important form of sanction--helped to totally separate her from all until some long years after.

As a very shy and modest person, I know that Sheen never shared her misery with any living soul during this period of her life. Even if she has been struggling with financial and emotional problems, she kept herself nice and kind, trying to appear in her best in public places. Years after, when I came to the United States to visit her, I learnt about her sad story. I know that her case is not isolate. There are many women in the same situation. Therefore, as my sister, I asked her permission to write her story. And she did agree because she hopes that it may help some women to understand that they are not alone. They could find again joys in this precious and short life. As a "free woman" --it was what she called herself now --my sister came from a very tough path where she did learn to cope with her total emotional dependency to the lineage of her husband, her self-pity of widow. She has gone through misery to awareness where she finally understood that she is responsible for her life and happiness. She could choose her life. Her story is really a journey from sorrow and social dependency to awareness and freedom of choice.

My sister Sheen was born in 1955 in her beautiful village of Long Het in Laos where fog still flies in September during monsoon season. Our parents gave her the beautiful name "Sheen", a very popular name of a female character in Hmong folktales. She got married to her first love when she was almost 15 years old.

Sheen was a beautiful girl, and her dreams were simple: having a husband, a house, some children, some land and a small pond. We were living with our parents in the mountains in Laos, far from the town and the worries. Sheen was not the older one of our family of 15 children. She was just the number 8, and I was the number 14. The oldest sisters and brothers took care of the farming activities in cutting woods, cooking, sewing and keeping the horses and the cows. Other younger children transported water from river, fed pork and chicken, accompanied parents or grinded paddy. As for Sheen, with her fragile physical appearance, my mother used to let her stay at home to take care of us, the 3 youngest siblings. I have to say that my best memory of childhood before war was associated with her face, her voice and her cake of maize. When arrived the season of new maize in September, she patiently grinded cobs by hand and cook the corns in some delicious and tender round cakes enveloped in bamboo leaves. My sister Sheen played hopscotch and knucklebones in front of the house. When lunchtime came, she took us inside; we ate standing around the small table near the fireplace where there were a bowl of rice mixed with water and a bowl of boiled vegetable. After she washed the dishes, we went back to play outside or around the beds until our mother came home.

Sheen's life as young girl was peaceful and useful. She learnt to be a good mother and a patient wife. Her universe, as many other Hmong people's one, was made of a house, a garden, some fields and a river. Sheen has had a very good friend whose name was Yee. They were at the same age. Sheen and Yee looked together after their young siblings. During the warm afternoons, they shared secrets of embroidering and of traditional songs, kwv txhiaj that sometimes they sang to their invisible lovers. In our family, Sheen also felt quite closed to her eldest sister and to her one-year younger brother. I think our eldest sister did take care of her as Sheen was doing with me. When she had pains, she used to go to sleep in her bed to find comfort.

As a Hmong woman grown up in the traditional lifestyle, my sister knew she was destined to several pregnancies, hard work and a total submission to her father, her brothers then to her husband and his lineage. After she got married, she felt satisfied with this life because her man loved her. In 1975, came the war, which exiled them in Thailand then in the United States. She first lived in Portland in Oregon, before settling in Fresno in California. After, her husband's sudden death, her life stopped. Having no education, no experience in working, my sister was simply despaired. As her parents and siblings lived in France, as her parents-in-law have passed away, she has had no support. She could not expect assistance from her two brothers-in law married with several children. Alone with 7 young children, from 1 to 15 years old, she has had to survive alone for the material needs, and to submit to the lineage of her husband for moral and spiritual guidance.

The condition of a newly refugee widow with 7 children was very hard. Sheen's everyday worries were about how to find money to buy food. As she refused to marry one of her husband?s cousins, she felt guilty and dared not ask anymore her lineage to support her. The brother was indeed younger than her of about 10 years: in such a case, she knew that there would be no lasting love in this relationship. Once she will get old, the younger man might take a younger wife. As for marrying somebody outside, she was also afraid because a man from a different clan might not love her children. In addition, it was not sure that the lineage would let her keep the male children, even if she lived in America. Then, when people came to hurry her to find a husband, she just said: "Which man will be willing to accept to take in charge 7 children who are not his'?" She spent her days to be the perfect mother always worried for food and for education, and her nights to think about her personal life so empty and so lonely. After all, she thought she still loved her husband. At the end, tired of this perpetual torment, she decided not to get married, and to hold her life until her children will get older.

Years passed; the children started to be more independant. The 2 older now earned their living and were recently married. She almost reached 40 years old. My sister started to think again about remarriage. Her relatives from France kept reminding her to find somebody so that she won't be alone in her old days. More mature and less afraid of her husband?s lineage, Sheen accepted to date some men. But she kept saying: "Txaj txaj muag"(I am ashamed). She believed that those men might be bad men. This question of marrying out of her husband's clan preoccupied her a lot because there will be several consequences. One of them may be the custody of the youngest sons: according Hmong tradition, the sons remain in the clan of the husband. But her deepest fear is socio-religious: she would like, after death, to be buried by her sons. But if she married out of her husband's clan, her sons wouldn't be able to fully fill their duties towards their mother because they would not share the same types of rituals (Each lineage has its own rituals).

One day, a man called her for a date. She took good care to check his background, and realized that he was a good man. He was widow not because of divorce or bad conduct but because of a cancer that took his wife away. He got some education and has only 4 children who are financially independent. Sheen liked him. However, there was an issue: he was Christian, Catholic precisely. Sheen never thought about marrying a Christian. She still practiced traditional rituals where she still asks for shamans when her children were sick. Then she used to ask her husband?s brothers to accomplish the rituals during domestic ceremonies and Hmong New Year. Dating a Christian was a new issue for her. Of course, she has heard about the Christian God that Hmong people call "Vajtswv". She kept repeating this anecdote during their first years in America where some Hmong pastors tried to convert her husband. But nothing occured because this latter was very negative towards Western religion. She now faced this man with his beliefs. From time to time, he talked to her about God. Knowing a little more about church and Jesus Christ, she felt that marrying him would resolve issues regarding her sons' duties. She took the initiative to share her concerns with him: they discussed about her fear and his will to readjust to her request. This man agreed to let her children do whatever they will need to do. She thought so that her sons could continue to practice Hmong cults under the guidance of their uncles.

Having not a clear idea of what Christianity was and its spiritual engagement,my sister only measured the best way to a less social and emotional cost to her children and to her. In getting married to this man, Sheen believed she would keep all her children, the beliefs of their dad for them and she will find the easiest way to avoid long and sophisticated traditional funerals rituals when she will come to die. When she accepted to attend her friend's church gathering, she saw that there was a real and concrete support from members. People simply provided assistance without requesting traditional procedures like kowtowing, drinking alcohol or paying money for any service. Their solidarity based on faith more than differed social exchange. However, something disturbed her: it was this overflowing passion on behalf of members to sing and to cry. And since her marriage, she never sang in public. She just felt quite ashamed to sing in front of people in the church. But more than that, becoming more aware of the expectation from church, she started to ask crucial questions: "As a person with integrity, could I marry somebody and not share his faith? Is it possible to learn to believe in God?"

My sister did not share her plan of remarriage with her in-law. She only told her mom in France about this spiritual issue. Finally, mother and daughter came to this conclusion: as Hmong women did not neither carry out Hmong traditions nor practice ancestors' cults, they just need to follow their husband's beliefs. Socialized in the traditional way, Sheen realized that it is not difficult to detach her mind from Hmong traditional rituals and to accept this man's beliefs.

Learning more about the after life with the Paradise only reserved for the elected, she was wondering about her loving ones who are not Christians. In the Hmong traditions of death, died people would go back to the village of their ancestors. Feeling sad, she often wondered about the separation after death: "As my parents are not Christians, will we be together in the afterlife? I have been separated from them for so many years, once dead, I want to be with them. I would lovethe Christian Paradise to be the Hmong village with roosters singing in the foggy morning and with smokes flying above the roofs where I will find my parents waiting for me."

Even now more aware of the good and the bad sides of the changes that Christianity has introduced into Hmong community in America, she decided to retain the material side: the concrete support between members of the same church, the support on behalf of a new husband, the avoidance of practicing sophisticated rituals and harassing exchange of services. My sister, saddened by being born a girl in a patrilinear society, finished to simply remarry, and marry this time, a Hmong Christian because life must go on.

The Emergency to Intellectually Awake Hmong Women's Understanding
The story above "came out of Hmong closets" as a normal thing to write after a few years spent to collect Hmong women's stories of hope and of despair in France, in Laos then in America. I am in debts. I need to pay back to these women who are all times available, especially widowed and divorced women.
Hmong women are experiencing changes in their life and in their communities. The ones who brought changes are divorcees. It is questioning. In my observation, Hmong women see joy as ephemeral, love temporary, more a game of seduction than a lasting relationship made of respect and of project: in fact, love seems vanished after the marriage.

And I still think that in this journey, they still need to discover that life is a unique gift where there are joy and love. Joy is the source of all reasons to live and it is inside oneself. The base of love finds its source in reciprocal respect and self respect.

In the West, Hmong women become more curious, ask for a more and better relationship with men. Not all husbands, but some did not understand their new needs indeed. These men only see women as inferior, assigned to traditional gender roles. Divorce becomes an answer to some women therefore. Because the social structure of this society is patriarchy, divorce put women in more complicated and complex situations where they experience social rejection, pressures, loneliness, and all things that have names, but difficult to name them.

I hope this story will awake your awareness of divorcees' difficulties to live inside the Hmong community, help to wash away your stereotypes, stigmas, and support all women who come to knock your door, especially when these ordinary widowed or divorced women are yourself, your mother, your aunt or your sister. I really hope you will understand Hmong women's dilemma: trying to escape a life without love, full of loneliness, at the same time trying to preserve the love and the respect of families and friends. Just accept them, listen to their fear of rejection, of their lack of courage to live, to face Hmong regards.

As a Hmong woman and an anthropologist expert of my own culture and language, I often realize the difficulty to study subjects like this one because I also share the fate of these women. What I have observed at others might be my own path if I come to step out. The Hmong community is still controlling. While visiting a friend during the Hmong National Development (HND) conference in Fresno, CA in 2005, one of the Hmong EdD male Hmong, confirmed this patriarchal view on Women: he said to me "When you get married, we (the clan) will say our law!" Otherwise said, "you are a woman, how highly educated you are, we, men, will decide your fate". I was shocked by this sexist statement. I was thinking that he is opened minded. I was wrong. Could I now conclude that how highly educated Hmong men are they still think that women are inferior to them? Afterwards, I really hope for gender equity and reciprocal respect. This men lacks totally respect. He may get his degree in the US, but his mind is still in the mountains of Laos. "Cat doesn't become tiger over night". Life as a woman in the Hmong community in transition is still a challenge. Proposing new behaviours are not yet given to everyone. I have learnt that the most important work that one needs to do is on oneself: you have to go beyond your own community and its pressures, above rumor, ignorance, jealousy, loneliness, gender competition, and sexist statement, etc. Being a woman doesn't mean being intellectually inferior to men. Men and women have the same rights to education, to respect, to freedom of choice. Women need to practice what they said, and to live courageously by example, not only deliver speech and do not act accordingly to their statements. The forest of trees needs to grow, and not only to gather together to make a forest.

I would like to say that many of them, in divorcing, do not know yet that they are questioning and reinventing the cultural abilities to adaptation of Hmong traditions in the West. They only suffer and fear of losing their souls in the hall of darkness because the divorce put them in situation of "religious no man's land". If you want to know about divorcees' relationship with Hmong rites, read the article "Hmong Women's Issues on Religious Belonging".

I really hope this story will raise your awareness on this very sensitive issue on Hmong women's religious challenge in America, in France and other parts of the World.

Fresno, California, November 13, 2002
Edited on 18th December 2003
Re-edited on 14th January 2006

Copyright © 2002 Kao-Ly Yang
All rights Reserved.

TOPICS OF 2002
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Why do Hmong people try to catch Lady Gaozuapa?

July 29
Kev Zoo Nkauj Zaum Peb
The Third Beauty or How to Cope with Desire of Early Marriage
La troisième beauté ou Comment vaincre ses désirs de se marier trop tôt

August 8
Critics on Hmong Representation of Excellence in Education

August 20 (Guest Writer: Yaj Saub Xiong)
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La Belle Gaozouapa a t-elle combien de kilos?
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October 13 (Readers' comments)
Vim li cas kuv thiaj yuav tau ua tshoob hmoob?
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Dilemmas in Hmong Wedding

November 2
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(Thèse de doctorat)