Though there are slightly more than six million Hmong worldwide, relatively few Americans know much about them. The Hmong people, who steadfastly retained many of their cultural traditions though they settled extensively in China, were forced to become perpetual migrants and montagnards, due to relentless persecution by the Chinese, who considered all but Chinese culture uncivilized.

Most Hmong today live in China, Laos, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma, and are all descendants (it is speculated) of Hmong who originally migrated from central Siberia.

Following the Second World War, the Hmong of northern Vietnam and Laos allied themselves with the French, and later the U.S., to fight against the Vietnamese communists. Nearly a third of the Laotian Hmong perished in combat or died from starvation and disease caused by war. After the communist takeover, thousands more Hmong died in concentration camps, perished in rebellions, or were killed trying to escape to Thailand. Of those who did escape, more than eighty thousand resettled in the U.S.

If Americans have a concept of the existence of the Hmong people at all, they think of them as victims. Many have a certain degree of sympathy for them, but few understand the Hmong as a unique race with a rich heritage. Indeed, the involvement of the Hmong in the Laotian war was only a single incident in the long saga of the Hmong as a people.

Hmong: History of a People is a detailed rediscovery of this saga, following Hmong history and tradition from their early settlements in China, up to and including much of their contribution to the war in Vietnam. It is a book of struggle, prowess, and magic, and it reiterates the importance of cultural memory for any race, and specifically the importance of that memory for the Hmong.