Mai Na Lee

Early life and education

Born in Pha Nok Kok, in the sub-district of Muang Pha, Xieng Khouang, Laos, refugee in 1980 around the age of 11. Her family was first resettled in Wisconsin, and later moved to the Twin Cities in Minnesota to be closer to relatives and resources tailored to Hmong people. Lee is the first Hmong American to earn a doctorate in the field of history. associate professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Fall semester of 2007 was when Lee began as an assistant professor. She was recommended for advancement from assistant to associate professor in 2015. Her courses on Hmong history were among the first to be taught at a university level.

Since 2010 Lee has been a researcher for Hmong Studies Consortium, a collaboration to study Hmong culture between University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, and Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

Lee's teaching and research focus on Hmong in Asia and Hmong Americans through a global and postcolonial lens. Erika Lee for Journal of Asian American Studies lists Mai Na Lee as part of the "first generation of Hmong American scholars". Lee was also "perhaps the first Hmong woman scholar to explore the role of Hmong women as indirect political and economic influencers" according to Kalia Vang.

Mai Na Lee's work challenges the "essentializing narrative" that equates Hmong Americans and Hmong history with the Secret War in Laos. In The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, Lo notes: "Lee also credits this narrow understanding of Hmong history to the success of Jane Hamilton's Tragic Mountains as it helped expose the Secret War to a wider public".

Lee has also criticized the motto "Hmong means free", arguing it "essentializes Hmong identity and echoes colonial attitudes". Although publishing a positive review of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, she similarly critiques the book for "defining a culture by a history of persecution and a resistance to assimilation".

Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom

Lee's 2015 book is Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom: The Quest for Legitimation in French Indochina, 1850-1960 , based on her University of Wisconsin–Madison doctorate thesis "The Dream of the Hmong Kingdom: Resistance, Collaboration, and Legitimacy Under French Colonialism (1893–1955)" . Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom uses oral history and archival material to explain the history of Laotian Hmong leadership beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, focusing on Hmong politics and alternative leaders such as Vue Pa Chay. It argues Hmong leaders used different methods of asserting legitimacy to rule, including the "mandate of heaven", which Lee says is a Hmong political ideology borrowing from historical Han Chinese Confucian concepts. Under the mandate, the right to rule comes from heaven, and a Hmong leader who is able to establish a kingdom must have their power granted by heaven. Additional Hmong historical figures covered in the book include Xiong Mi Chang, Pa Tsi, Blia Yao, French military officer Henri Roux, Ly Foung, and Touby Lyfoung. Alex Hopp for Hmong Studies Journal calls it a "seminal history of the Hmong under French rule". Lee used sources in multiple languages to "stellar effect" according to Christian C. Lentz. "Arguing that Hmong peoples never escaped from the state but rather continuously negotiate with it, historian Mai Na Lee represents the best of these debates and delivers original and lasting insights into highlands peoples often written about but still poorly understood. Her book’s fascinating analysis of Hmong politics and society significantly enriches scholarly understandings of the fraught relations between Hmong peoples, French colonial rule, and the Indochina Wars." Lentz's review for Journal of Vietnamese Studies concludes: "this remarkable history deserves a wide readership." Seb Rumsby finds Lee's dynamic between a messianic and state-backed political broker to be a "useful model". Jean Michaud says coverage of the few known records of Hmong leader Vue Pa Chay is academically rigorous. CHOICE recommends the book for graduate-level and faculty.

While they praised the book, Bradley C. Davis in Journal of Asian Studies found some of the language and translation into English "jarring" and Chia Youyee Vang notes that Lee "refrains from making critical statements about leaders from the Lee clan." "The book’s shortcomings are reflective of and situated within the challenge of doing Hmong oral history as a native researcher and a member of the Lee [Ly] clan" observed Nengher N. Vang for Hmong Studies Journal.

Christopher Goscha of Université du Québec à Montréal compares Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom to Jane Hamilton-Merritt's Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 and recommends they "both be read side by side". While Tragic Mountains focuses on Vang Pao, his clan, and their role in the Vietnam War, Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom follows other families, such as the Lyfoung and the Lobliayao clans, and their roles during French rule.

Works

Books

Chapters

Reviews

Theses

Presentations

Mai Na Lee, H. Jonsson, F. Nibbs, J. R. Hickman & Yonglin Jiang (2011), ‘To Zomia or Not to Zomia? Critical Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives’, Hmong in Comparative Contexts Conference, organized by the Hmong Studies Consortium, University of Wisconsin-Madison/ University of Minnesota, 4 March 2011. University of Minnesota College of Continuing Education Headliners lectures

Appearances