Queering the Hmong Diaspora

A groundbreaking exploration of race, gender, and sexuality

In the wake of the US wars in Southeast Asia, the arrival of Hmong refugees reignited American anxieties about race and sexuality. Sensationalized media portrayals of child marriages, bride kidnappings, and polygamy framed Hmong communities as sexually deviant, reinforcing a racialized perception of their cultural practices. In Queering the Hmong Diaspora, Kong Pheng Pha dismantles these narratives, revealing how legal cases, media representations, and legislative efforts have constructed Hmong Americans as hyperheterosexual and ungovernable subjects.

Critically examining how Hmong Americans are positioned within racial, gendered, and sexual discourses of liberalism, Pha explores the lived experiences of queer Hmong Americans, whose existence and activism challenge mainstream and ethnonationalist constructions of subjectivity. Addressing Hmong American gender and sexual politics through feminist, queer, and social justice lenses, Pha offers a critical framework for understanding how race and sexuality intersect in shaping the lives of minoritized refugee communities in the United States and beyond.