Digital Extra

  3/09/99
The fabric of history
Blia Vang, 50, a Laotian emigre, tells a college audience about her ''story cloths,'' ancient Hmong textile art depicting life in the homeland.

By ELISA CROUCH
Journal Staff Writer

FALL RIVER - Blia Vang described a peaceful Hmong village, where women in brilliant colors carried water on their backs.

Children played with goats and dogs. Then suddenly, an airplane shot a thatched hut, and the home burst into flames.

"We had to run to the jungle," Vang said, after lecturing college students yesterday. "It was terrible for us."

Vang, 50, spoke to students and faculty at Bristol Community College about ancient Hmong art, traditionally passed from mother to daughter.

Vang cannot read or write English, nor her native language. But Vang, of Providence, has mastered her culture's art and its way of recording history. And because of her visual narratives and intricate stitching, she is world renowned.

Born in the mountains of Laos, Vang learned the ancient traditions of embroidery when she was about 5. In 1975, Communist soldiers with rifles and bayonets forced her family to flee their mountain village and cross the Mekong River. For a year they settled in a Thai refugee camp.

Thousands faced a similar plight. Before Vang and her family left the refugee camp and immigrated to the United States, a Catholic missionary advised her to make "story cloths" of what she remembered about her history and her homeland.

"So someday your children know where you come from and how you live," Vang said, remembering the missionary's advice. The words of the missionaries have become a tradition in the Hmong community.

Vang was one of several guest speakers the college invited to lecture on women's cultural contributions, in celebration of Women's History Month. Other speakers this month will discuss Puerto Rican and Portuguese culture in America, and children who witness domestic abuse. Following Vang's presentation, a different speaker talked about the one-child rule in China.

"The majority of people in the world are living in Asia," said Sue Olmstead, an English professor and chairwoman of the college's Women's Issues Committee. With several thousand Cambodians living in Fall River, Olmstead said, the college wanted to focus on speakers from Southeast Asia.

The Hmongs primarily live in Laos, but occupy parts of southern China and northern Thailand. It wasn't until the 1950s that they developed a written language, which only their men were permitted to learn.

Intricate textile art was women's way of taking photographs and writing books.

"This is the one form of education within the culture that they could carry," English instructor Ellen Olmstead told the class.

It's important to know and understand international cultures, said Pat Dimeo, sitting in the middle of the room. "If you can't get to the country, the country just has to come to you," she said.

The story cloths Vang brought were four feet by four feet. She has made some that are large enough to cover a bed.

On them were visual legends and pictures of daily living. For Vang, there were memories of home: stories of war, when the Viet Cong forced the Hmong from their mountain villages during the Vietnam War, and the tranquility people felt before the Viet Cong ransacked their homes.

Vang spent nearly a year stitching one particular royal blue cloth, which shows women carrying sacks of corn and rice on their heads. Pumpkins and cucumbers grew beside each other in tiny fields, "because we didn't have room" to grow them apart, she said.

This was life before she fled to Thailand, she said.

"This one tells how we survived in my country."

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