Dia’s Story Cloth: The Hmong People’s Journey of
Freedom is an outstanding documentary look at an individual
and a people’s journey when forced by war to leave home and country behind.
Author Dia Cha was born in Laos; her family lived in a wood and bamboo house
and worked fields of rice and corn in their peaceful Hmong community. When Dia
was still a child, guerrilla warfare shattered Laos. After her father left to
join the loyalist troops against the communists, her family was forced to move
from village to village due to the fighting, sometimes fleeing during the night
to avoid bombing. She never learned the fate of her father. In 1975 when Dia
was ten and the communist regime took over, she and her mother escaped across
the Mekong River with other Hmong, settling in a refugee camp in Thailand. In 1979 they were allowed to emigrate together to America; sadly,
many families were divided in the refugee process. Fifteen years old when
arriving in America, Dia entered high school despite never having had any
schooling, and thirteen years later she earned her master’s degree in
anthropology and returned to Thailand to work with Hmong and Lao women in
refugee camps. The story of Dia’s early life, paralleling that of many Hmong,
is illustrated in this remarkable book through a story cloth – a large hand-embroidered piece, part of a
long Hmong tradition of distinctive needlework. Dia’s cloth depicts every part
of her journey with her mother, from the rice fields of their Laos home through
the warfare dividing and destroying the countryside, to crossing the Mekong to
refugee camps, and finally the airplane that carried them to America. It was
lovingly stitched by her Aunt Chu and Uncle Nhia Thao Cha and sent to Dia in
the early 1990s from Chiang Kham refugee camp in Thailand. A detailed afterword
by Joyce Herold, Curator of Ethnology at the Denver Museum of Natural History,
explains more about the important role of needlework both in traditional Hmong
culture and in American communities as immigrants, in Herold’s words, “daily
face choices for change, stability and renewal.” The beautiful textile art of
the Hmong (meaning “free people” and pronounced “Mong”) continues to be a
valued expression of culture and identity proudly and importantly shared
with the wider world as generations take hold here. Herold concludes by
saying “Let us all continue to tell our stories.” Ages 6-11.
