MPR’s Mark Heistad interviews Charles Johnson, a professor at Macalester University, about Hmong folktales. Johnson is the author of collected Hmong traditional folk stories translated in English for ESL studies.
Johnson was one of the first sponsors of a Hmong Laotian family in February 1976.
SPEAKER 1: Hmong who believe in the spirits believe that there are spirits-- good spirits-- in the home, which help the family and are always around to help somebody in times of trouble-- blessing the stove and the family altar and the door and the house and the roof and the center pole of the house.
There are also spirits which are actually the ancestors spirits, the souls of parents who have died go back to a spirit world. And they should be honored and revered through sacrifices and ceremonies.
SPEAKER 2: So these are quite religious stories.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Because the spirits influence the lives of people on Earth. But there are other spirits, now. Some spirits are just basically constitutionally evil,
[LAUGHTER]
They're only-- only exist to give people trouble. They're cruel and cause-- fight people, cause sickness. In their beliefs of the old legends and myths, they ate people-- ate them raw.
SPEAKER 2: Oh, my.
SPEAKER 1: A lot of violence in the stories.
SPEAKER 2: That sounds rather nasty.
SPEAKER 1: Yes. There are things in most folk literatures, myths and all, which are not exactly nice, polite, and clean.
SPEAKER 2: What's your favorite of the stories?
SPEAKER 1: Oh, maybe the first one that was told to me and recorded around my dining table by a social worker at the International Institute of Minnesota. It's the last story in this big collection, and it's about why there are some left-handed people and some right-handed people.
SPEAKER 2: What's the answer?
SPEAKER 1: Well, long, long ago, the way most Hmong stories start, there was a big eagle that was eating people in a village. And there was a large city, a big village like a city. The eagle had eaten almost all the people, and the people offered sacrifices to the gods of the region and the spirits and asked for help-- a rescuer to come and help them.
And so the spirits of the sky and heavens heard them and prepared a rescuer. And the rescuer shot the eagle with his big long bow and arrow and cut the eagle open, and inside were the bones of all the people. For days and days and days, he put back the bones together. He reassembled all of the remains of these people.
And for a number of days he worked well and energetically and attentively, but he got very tired and sleepy. And so when he wasn't watching, he'd put a left arm with a right arm and a left leg with the right leg. And so some people ended up left-handed.
SPEAKER 2: [LAUGHS] Boy, that's a roundabout way of explaining why there are some people who are left-handed and some who are right-handed.
SPEAKER 1: Sure. And the story doesn't stop there. These stories are just like flowing rivers.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, and they all lived happily ever after.
SPEAKER 1: That's often the end to these tales because-- and often, the people in them become wealthy, rich, prosperous and live a life of ease because this is a, well, wished-for goal for a lot of people in the world, especially those--
SPEAKER 2: The Hmong were rural, basically poor folk.
SPEAKER 1: Yes, rural farmers in the mountains of Northern Laos. They were very, very hardworking, industrious people just eking out a subsistence living growing their rice and corn as their basic staple crops, dozens and dozens of kinds of vegetables, and sometimes opium poppies for a cash crop. But they ended up really pretty poor.
SPEAKER 2: How well do these stories survive among the Hmong who have come to this country?
SPEAKER 1: I would--
SPEAKER 2: Are they still being told?
SPEAKER 1: Some, but not much. Because the adults are very busy learning English, going out shopping, trying to get jobs, going to jobs, working. Children are very busy in school learning an entirely different system of education. And there's television at home to watch instead of listening to the old people's stories.
This is one reason we wanted to record the stories because here in this country the old people who came-- not many that-- very, very old people came with the refugees. But those who have come have very little role to play in the family life. They don't know English as well. They can't get out and earn a living. They don't have the wisdom, the knowledge which the younger generation feel that they need in this country.
The children going to school-- English, science, math, technologies, job training, so forth. What do the old people have to teach them? But some of the wisdom and the beliefs and family practices, which are illustrated in the stories, we feel are the cement which has kept the Hmong people together for centuries.
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