History on the Run

During its secret war in Laos (1961-1975) the United States recruited proxy soldiers among the Hmong people. Following the war many of these Hmong soldiers migrated to the United States with refugee status. In <i>History on the Run</i> Ma Vang examines the experiences of Hmong refugees in the United States to theorize refugee histories and secrecy in particular those of the Hmong. Vang conceptualizes these histories as fugitive histories as they move and are carried by people who move. Charting the incomplete archives of the war made secret through redacted US state documents ethnography film and literature Vang shows how Hmong refugees tell their stories in ways that exist separately from narratives of U.S. empire and that cannot be traditionally archived. In so doing Vang outlines a methodology for writing histories that foreground refugee epistemologies despite systematic attempts to silence those histories.