Gran Torino is considered the first mainstream American film to prominently feature Hmong Americans in its story and casting. However, the film—written and directed by white Americans—has been criticized for inaccurate depictions of Hmong culture.
An ethnic group with roots in Southwestern China, the Hmong (when pronounced in English, the H is silent) are historically a mountain-dwelling, farming people. Persecution in China led to significant migration to Thailand, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam in the 1800s. During the Vietnam War, many Hmong living in Laos sided with American CIA operatives. After the fall of Saigon and the US withdrawal in 1975, Hmong people were violently targeted by victorious Communist forces. Ninety percent of Hmong who escaped to refugee camps in Thailand were resettled in the US. This period marked the first wave of significant Hmong migration to the United States.
Although resettlement agencies sought to distribute Hmong across the US, a wish to be reunited with family and community led in the 1980s to concentrations of the Hmong-American population settling in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The 1990s saw another shift in the Hmong-American population to the Midwest and South. In Minnesota, St. Paul and Minneapolis saw significant increases in Hmong residents, replacing Fresno, California as the site of the largest demographic concentration. Reasons for the shift have been attributed to lower cost of living and greater job opportunities, since many Hmong in California found work farming, as they many had done in Southeast Asia.
Hmong households traditionally are large, with an average in the early 2000s of six people per household, compared to a national average of 2.5 per home. Hmong communities in the US tend to be close-knit, with community leaders working on keeping young men from joining gangs among other campaigns. According to a US Census Bureau survey in 2019, there are 327,000 Hmong Americans in the country.
