Project Director: Christina Esposito, Linguistics
Part of our 2023/2024 DLA Faculty Fellows Cohort

The goal of this project is to create an archive of Hmong folktales in partnership with the Hmong community.  The Hmong language is spoken in Southeast Asia, and by diasporic communities throughout the world, including St. Paul. When Hmongs first resettled in St. Paul, they had limited English-language skills and no English-Hmong resources. This prompted Macalester Professor Charles Johnson and wife, Ava, to create language-learning materials for the Hmong community. Together with Hmong storytellers, they published a series of well-known, traditional Hmong folktales, with illustrations and easy-to-read English translations. In conversations with the Hmong community, I’ve  learned that these books are no longer being published because of copyright issues.  I plan to  collaborate with Ua Ke (the Macalester Hmong group) and community contacts to create an online repository, which would include 1) a text version of the Hmong stories, 2) an audio version), 3) modernized English translations, and 4) illustrations by a Hmong artist.