You need to complete the donation checkout below to register for the event successfully. Seating is limited. Proof of registration is required for admission to event.
Registration
About the Event
Friday, November 21, 2025 | 6pm - 9:30pm
Presented by Aeda & Minnesotan Asian American Film Festival
How did Southeast Asian refugees - Cambodians, Laotians (including Hmong and Mien), and Vietnamese – become American? How were they defined? How are they defining themselves?
Southeast Asian refugees, mainly Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian (including Hmong), faced immense cultural and economic challenges in their transition to life in the U.S. after the Vietnam War. Despite initial U.S. government policies aimed at easing their assimilation, they struggled to rebuild their lives and create a foundation for the educational and economic advancement of their children. Looking back fifty years after resettlement, what were the perceptions and myths surrounding Southeast Asians, and did these narratives match their lived experiences across the U.S?
Join us for a panel discussion and film screening event!
We’re diving into the past fifty years since Southeast Asian refugees first arrived and how they have changed the United States. We’ll examine the gap between initial public perceptions and the complex realities of their experiences in the US.
Author Panelists
Chia Youyee Vang, PhD: Professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Christina Hughes, PhD: Assistant Professor, Macalester College
Film screening:
Four films by Quyên Nguyễn-Lê and Joua Lee Grande.
Southeast Asian Journeys - Produced in association with Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Southeast Asian American Journeys explores the stories of five local SEAA refugee communities who, while being shaped by their resettlement journeys, have transformed the landscape of which they are a fundamental part.
The filmmakers will be present to discuss their films.
Threads
Directed by Quyên Nguyễn-Lê
16 minutes, 2025
A sprawling portrait of indigenous Montagnard Dega refugee community in North Carolina, threading intergenerational storytelling and history-making in the aftermath of the Viet Nam War.
TEB CHAW - LAND
Directed by Joua Lee Grande
11 minutes, 2025
Teb Chaw (Land) is an immersive portrait of Hmong refugee farmers transforming local foodways in a diversified Minnesota–home to one of the largest populations of the Hmong diaspora built in the aftermath of the Secret War in Laos.
MUOZ-DIOC MIXTAPE
Directed by Quyên Nguyễn-Lê
14 minutes, 2025
Muoz-doic Mixtape (pronounced: moo-ah thoy) is an offering of intergenerational storytelling from the Mien community of Portland, Oregon: a brief glimpse into the collective work of culture-keeping in the face of historical displacement.
BETWEEN US
Directed by Quyên Nguyễn-Lê
15 minutes, 2025
Between Us follows the multilayered stories of LGBTQIA+ Khmer and Vietnamese cultural workers in southern California as they contemplate the in-betweenness of belonging, healing, and carving out spaces of their own.
meet the authors/panelists
meet the
author/panelists
.jpg)
Christina Hughes
PhD
Assistant Professor, Macalester College
Christina Hughes is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Macalester College with research at the intersection of critical refugee studies, urban studies, and prison-border abolitionist theory. She recently co-edited a special issue in the Journal of Transnational American Studies with Karín Aguilar-San Juan called "Thinking With and Beyond Vietnam: 50 Years After the US Wars in Southeast Asia" that examines the ongoing legacies and afterlives of American military intervention for our political present. Currently, she is in residence at the Stanford Humanities Center as an External Faculty Fellow working on her first book, Bad Refugees: Manufacturing Statelessness at the Margins of the Global North, which considers former French Indochina/Southeast Asia and Orange County, California, as important connected sites from which to critically interrogate the moral economy of refugee deportability. She also co-curated and participated in the show RE/HOMING: WALK-INS WELCOME at XIA Gallery and Cafe in May 2025.
.jpg)
Dr. Chia Youyee Vang
PhD
Professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Dr. Chia Youyee Vang is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is author of four books: Prisoner of Wars: A Hmong Fighter Pilot’s Story of Escaping Death and Confronting Life (2020), Fly Until You Die: An Oral History of Hmong Pilots in the Vietnam War (2019), Hmong America: Reconstructing Community in Diaspora (2010) and Hmong in Minnesota (2008). In addition, she co-edited Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women (2016).
meet the filmmakers
meet the filmmakers
Quyên Nguyễn-Lê
Filmmaker, Director, Producer
Quyên Nguyễn-Lê (they/them) is a queer vietnamese filmmaker born to boat refugee parents where Chumash and Tongva lands meet in Los Ángeles, California. Quyên's film work–spanning between documentary and scripted genres–focuses on the ways histories are deeply felt in the quotidian everyday. quyennl.com
Joua Lee Grande
Culture bearer, storyteller, and community connector
Joua Lee Grande (she/they) is a storyteller and community connector passionate about highlighting under-heard voices. Her documentaries have screened on WORLD Channel, PBS and at film festivals nationally, earning a Daytime Emmy nomination, an Upper Midwest Emmy win, and a CAAMFest Loni Ding Award for Social Justice Documentary Honorable Mention. She has participated in respected national documentary fellowships and is a member of networks such as the Asian American Documentary Network, Brown Girls Doc Mafia and FWD-Doc: Filmmakers with Disabilities and previously worked as a Twin Cities PBS (TPT) Producer-Editor and a WCCO TV 4 News (CBS) Editor. Joua has over a decade of experience in local community work providing direct-service support to families and youth, serving culture bearers with The Waterers and leading community media programs at institutions like SPNN, the Walker Arts Center, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Joua is also a Hmong-American culture bearer, who preserves and educates about Hmong traditions in a modern context. Her initiative Azalu House works to bridge her commitments to storytelling, community-building and social change.
Co-sponsors:
Funder:
This project was made possible in part by the people of Minnesota through a grant funded by an appropriation to the Minnesota Historical Society from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.