1 Hmong Language and Culture Brenda Benita Johns and David Shalom Strecker 727 Martin Luther King Drive West, Apartment 107 W, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45220, USA davidstrecker950@gmail.com Abstract: A collection of essays on various aspects of the language and of the culture of the Hmong of China, Southeast Asia, and the diaspora. Brenda died in January of 2020. I present these essays in her memory. David Strecker, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, December 5, 2020. Preface The essays in this volume are based on our research on the language and the literature, including both traditional oral literature and more recent written literature, of the Hmong of China, Southeast Asia, and the overseas diaspora. We ourselves are African-American (Brenda) and Jewish (David) and our own ethnic identities have affected our approach to Hmong language and culture. Our own ethnic groups, like the Hmong, are part of worldwide diasporas. Our own cultures, like Hmong culture, are full of examples of syncretism, the interweaving and recombination of ideas from the many different cultures with which our cultures have been in contact. Brenda was a religion major as an undergraduate and learned that frequently the best way to understand what people believe is to read their texts and that frequently the best way to understand a text is to read another text. When David was first studying the Hmong language, his teacher, Mim Yaj, said, “If you want to learn about our language and our culture you must read our books.” Jean Mottin’s book on Hmong shamanism has the subtitle “Hmong shamanism seen through texts” (Mottin 1982). Many dictionary makers, including Mary R. Haas (Thai), Herbert C. Purnell (Iu-Mienh), and the editors of the Oxford English dictionary, used text concordances. Richard Bailey used a text concordance for the Early Modern English Dictionary, on which Brenda worked as a research assistant. But many linguists and anthropologists doing research on the Hmong language and on Hmong culture rely primarily on questioning informants and only secondarily, if at all, on texts. Hmong scholars all over the world have written about their language and their culture not only in English, French, and Chinese, but also in Hmong. Folktales, traditional songs, and rituals and ceremonies have been published in Hmong, sometimes accompanied by English, French, or Chinese translations, but often in Hmong only. It should go without saying that linguists and anthropologists doing research on the Hmong language and on Hmong culture should be prepared to read Hmong as well as English, French, and Chinese, but this has not always been the case. One of the things we hope to do in these essays is to address the imbalance. When David was an undergraduate, he took classes on peoples and cultures of South Africa and anthropology of religion with the Zulu anthropologist Mphiwa Mbatha, who talked about the difference between the perspective of anthropologists writing about their own cultures and the perspective of outsiders. This too has influenced our approach to Hmong language and culture, giving us, for example, yet one more reason to read what Hmong writers have written about their culture and their language. One of our goals, but not our only goal, is to debunk the notions, prevalent in the United States in the 1970s when we began learning to read Hmong and began learning about Hmong