Between Return and Resistance: Rap as a Means of Access to Engagement and Empowerment Among French Hmong Youth

Abstract

This article aims to discuss how diasporic Hmong youth express nostalgia and resistance through rap music, transmit collective memory, encourage young people to question social and political structures, and engage in public life. Based on fieldwork in France, this article explores how French Hmong rap artists convert their nostalgia, experience and in-betweenness into the sound space. This article also demonstrates how French Hmong rap artists construct an alternative discourse in which young people are able to show solidarity. As a result, this article provides some insights into navigating the popular culture of an underrepresented community and its belonging, nostalgia and resistance.

Visualized Trauma, Sensitized Resilience: Urban Art among the French Hmong Community

“…Forty years after the resettlement in France, the second generation of Hmong refugees is grown up and is using various strategies to negotiate its ethnic identity and cultural heritage. Artists express their opinions, feelings and visions through a variety of artistic creations (Shi 2022). Some urban art visualizes the traumatic experiences of the Hmong and calls upon the audience's reflection.…”

“…They do not have access to directly address their pain and trauma in the current 'color-blind' society. Thus, members of the young generation of Laotian Hmong descendants seek alternative ways to express their frustration and anger (Shi 2022). Urban art enables Hmong youth to raise awareness in their visual voices, and call for resistance against structural violence.…”