Folklore is, in essence, an oral tradition, and this is particularly true in cultures like the Hmong, where the written language is a relatively recent development. Traditional Hmong culture utilized textiles to transmit texts through the medium of story cloths. This practice has been preserved and nurtured among Hmong Americans by the Hmong Cultural Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, which provides an online archive of the images of contemporary Hmong narrative embroideries, representing a variety of narrative types and genres. One of the most iconic images in these Hmong embroidered narratives is that of the tiger, which serves as a metaphor for struggle in Hmong arts and life.
A sequence from Nuj Nplaib thiab Ntxawm, which may be rendered “Nou Nplai and Yer,” was embroidered by Shong Thor in the 1980s. This story relates the misadventures of a young, newlywed couple. Nou Nplai escorts his bride only partway through the forest to her parents’ home, and when she proceeds on her own she is kidnapped by a tiger who becomes so enchanted by her beauty that he keeps her against her will as his own. Nou Nplai, when he arrives at the home of her parents, discovers that his wife is missing. Her parents accuse him of having done away with his wife, but Nou Nplai proves his innocence by discovering tiger tracks in the woods. He follows them to the tiger’s cave and slays the beast, rescuing his wife. An image of this story cloth, photographed by Noah Vang, is available through the online collection of the Hmong Archives. The story cloth in question shows climactic scenes from the tale, such as that when Nou Nplai greets his wife’s parents, only to learn that she had never arrived at their home. The embroidery also illustrates how his wife, Yer, was spirited away by the tigers, and her delight at finally being reunited with her husband. This tiger tale is a popular subject of Hmong books and movies, and its key element of a bride kidnapped by a monster reflects the traditional Hmong practice of “bride-capture,” in which a man and his family take a prospective wife by guile or force. As anathema as many Americans may find such a tradition, bride-snatching continues to a certain extent among Hmong Americans today. U.S. case law, as recently as the 1980s, recognized bride-capture as a cultural practice distinct from ordinary kidnapping. The prisoner bride theme also speaks more broadly to folkloric expression of fears of vulnerability and rapine common across many cultures; indeed, in its basic plot points it seems familiar to the European story of “Beauty and the Beast.”
Another tiger tale also features a young heroine named Yer, but in this case she is a younger sibling who goes to live with her sister and the sister’s husband. Often called “Yer and the Tiger,” this tale recounts how Yer lived happily with her sister’s family, taking special joy in caring for her little nephew. One day Yer’s brother-in-law, named Lau Lua, went hunting in the forest. Lau Lua shot his prey, but then fell victim to a tiger who had been stalking him. The tiger consumed the unfortunate hunter and put on his clothes, slung his game and gun over his shoulders, and went back to the hut where Yer lived with her sister’s family. Yer noticed immediately that Lau Lua looked and walked differently, but her warnings fell upon deaf ears. Terrified, Yer hid in the rafters that evening, only to have her worst fears confirmed: in the night, she heard the sounds of the tiger devouring her sister and nephew. Although the tiger tried to coax Yer down from her perch, the girl refused, blinding the tiger by throwing some peppers into his eyes. While the tiger ran howling to the river to wash out his eyes, Yer sent a bird messenger to her parents asking for help. A story cloth illustrating the tale of “Yer and the Tiger” was stitched by Ge Yang in 2011. An image of this textile captured by Xai S. Lor is available through the online collection of the Hmong Archives. This tale illustrates a “wise child” theme, common in many folklores, as well as examining fundamental fears concerning a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” These fears may be emphasized for parents by the dangers inherent in the maturation process of their daughters as they transition from living under their parents’ protection to entering homes of their own through marriage. Moreover, such fears may appear all the more evident in a culture that has left the security of its own ancestral home behind.
A further extension of the Hmong tiger motif in contemporary expressions of Hmong American folklore may be found in a recent theatrical production. Written by Cha Yang and R. A. Shiomi, with music by Gary Rue and direction by Maria Kelly, Tiger Tales: Hmong Folktales explores the Hmong immigrant experience through the lens of traditional folklore. First produced in Minnesota at the SteppingStone Theatre by Mu Performing Arts in 2009, Tiger Tales tells the story of a grandmother who helps to ease the transition of her Hmong family into their new home in St. Paul by telling them traditional stories that teach them lessons about themselves and their culture. Just as tigers represent folkloric representations of life’s dangers and pitfalls in a traditional context, this play uses the motif of the tiger to underscore the obstacles faced by the Hmong immigrant community in contemporary Minnesota.
C. Fee
Who Are the Hmong?
Hmong Americans hail ultimately from an ancient Central Asian culture by way of Vietnam, where two related groups—the Hmong Daw, “White Hmong,” and Hmong Njua, “Green Hmong”—moved in the eighteenth century. Several million speakers of related Hmongic languages still live in the region of northern central China. Traditional Hmong culture exhibits an extended clan structure with strict rules against consanguinity, which means that marriage within a given clan is strictly forbidden. Such mores both guarantee genetic diversity and may help to provide context for a cultural practice such as bride-snatching, which is common in traditional Hmong culture, and which may have left its folkloric paw-prints on some Hmong tiger tales.
C. Fee
See also Animal Tales; Beauty and the Beast Folklore; Great Gourd from Heaven, a Laotian American Myth; Written or Printed Traditions
Further Reading
Gerdner, Linda. 2015. Hmong Story Cloths: Preserving Historical & Cultural Treasures. Atglen, PA: Shiffer.
Hmong American Writer’s Circle. 2011. How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology. Berkeley, CA: Heyday.
Hmong Resource Center Library. 2015. Hmong Cultural Center website. http://www.hmonglibrary.org/hmong-studies-virtual-library.html. Accessed October 13, 2015.
Johnson, Charles, and Se Yang. 1992. Myths, Legends and Folk Takes from the Hmong of Laos. St. Paul, MN: Macalester College.
Yang, Kao Kalia. 2008. The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press.