Today I had the privilege to sit with a story cloth that was hand stitched by a Hmong woman in 2002. Story cloths, or paj ntaub in Hmong, are embroidered fabric squares made to narrate and preserve history.¹ In particular, Hmong people living in refugee camps in Thailand in the 1970s began creating these works…
Category: Source Institution
East Side Freedom Library Story Cloth
The object we studied was a story cloth made by a Hmong woman detailing the Hmong leaving Laos and entering Thailand. It was made from different layers and types of cloth and was embroidered, likely using a template to do so. It is very good condition, with only a few loose threads. Karen James donated…
Escape Story Cloth
By Michelle Armstrong-Spielberg and Cordelia Jones The object we studied was an 80x75cm story cloth describing Hmong people’s escape from Laos in the 1970s and 1980s. The object was donated to the East Side Freedom Library by Karen James, a woman who received it as a gift from a Hmong family she helped settle in…
Ethnic Tourism in Kaili
Rena Zhang and Nathaniel Lay For our object analysis I and Nathaniel investigated a palm-sized, hard-cover travel guide donated to the East Side Freedom Library in 2002. The guide introduces the town of Kaili in Guizhou Province, China, which is home to a large number of Chinese Hmong (Miao) people. Using bilingual (Chinese-English) text and…
East Side Freedom Library: Hmong Story Cloth
This Hmong story cloth, with accession number 2002.12.5.433, is about five feet tall and made from what appears to be some sort of colored yarn. It depicts a rural Hmong village in Laos where people are working peacefully until they are attacked in the context of the Laotian Civil War and forced to become refugees….
East Side Freedom Library: Story Cloth
The story cloth I was examining was donated to the East Side Freedom Library in 2005 by a retired schoolteacher. The outer stripes that indicated dialect were lavender, light gray/blue, and white. The story has three distinct parts; the first tells of a king with seven daughters and how his youngest daughter, Yer, married Yao,…
Hmong Freedom Library: 「サルとトラ」, “The Monkey and the Tiger”
Written by Claire Menard, Macalester College During our trip to the Hmong Freedom Library, I became interested in a Japanese children’s book called ”Saru to Tora” (”The Monkey and The Tiger”). The book is clearly for (Japanese-speaking) children due to its strong use of images, lack of Kanji (complex Chinese characters), and simple sentence structure. It…
ESFL Story Cloth
Sofia Parmelee Jonathan Goldman HIST 290-01 Story Cloth Blog Entry While examining the Hmong story cloth, we identified several physical and cataloged features that illuminated the object as a primary source. First off, the cloth is the size of a blanket at 94 X 137 CM. The cloth is categorized under the “EA” category in…
Cupcakes
Tart ice cream toffee. Bear claw cake caramels biscuit donut pie. Cotton candy brownie candy canes toffee oat cake sesame snaps cookie. Jelly topping wafer chocolate biscuit marshmallow topping cotton candy. Macaroon wafer cotton candy. Chocolate bar muffin carrot cake liquorice wafer toffee carrot cake ice cream bear claw. Caramels soufflé pastry. Cotton candy cake…
East Side Freedom Library: Story Cloth P9.2005.110/UNK/
P9.2005.110/UNK/ Donated by Charlotte Prentice (P9), a public school teacher, to the East Side Freedom Library in Oct. 2005. Created by unknown maker. The story cloth I examined depicts a Hmong folk tale about a king’s daughter. The upper quarter of the cloth shows the king with his seven daughters, the youngest of whom marries…
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