Minnesota is a state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" for having more than 14,000 bodies of fresh water covering at least ten acres each; roughly a third of the state is forested; much of the remainder is prairie and farmland. More than 60% of Minnesotans live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the "Twin Cities", the state's main political, economic, and cultural hub and the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Other minor metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and St. Cloud.
Saint Paul is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center of Minnesota's government. The Minnesota State Capitol and the state government offices all sit on a hill close to the city's downtown district. One of the oldest cities in Minnesota, Saint Paul has several historic neighborhoods and landmarks, such as the Summit Avenue Neighborhood, the James J. Hill House, and the Cathedral of Saint Paul. Like the adjacent city of Minneapolis, Saint Paul is known for its cold, snowy winters and humid summers.
Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a metropolitan area in the Upper Midwestern United States centered around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix rivers in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is commonly known as the Twin Cities after the area's two largest cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Minnesotans often refer to the two together simply as "the cities". The area is Minnesota's economic, cultural, and political center.
Hmong Americans are Americans of Hmong ancestry. Many Hmong Americans immigrated to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s. Over half of the Hmong population from Laos left the country, or attempted to leave, in 1975, at the culmination of the Laotian Civil War.
Mai Neng Moua is a Hmong-American writer and a founder of the Paj Ntaub Voice, a Hmong literary magazine. She is also the editor of the first anthology of Hmong American writers, Bamboo Among the Oaks.
The demographics of Minnesota are tracked by the United States Census Bureau, with additional data gathered by the Minnesota State Demographic Center. According to the most recent estimates, Minnesota's population as of 2020 was approximately 5.7 million, making it the 22nd most populous state in the United States. The total fertility rate in Minnesota was roughly 1.87 in 2019, slightly below the replacement rate of 2.1.
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir from Coffee House Press and The Song Poet from Metropolitan Press. Her work has appeared in the Paj Ntaub Voice Hmong literary journal, "Waterstone~Review," and other publications. She is a contributing writer to On Being's Public Theology Reimagined blog. Additionally, Yang wrote the lyric documentary, The Place Where We Were Born. Yang currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Arlington Hills Library is a 1916 Beaux Arts library building designed by Charles A. Hausler. It is one of three Carnegie Libraries in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It served as the Arlington Hills Public Library, a branch of the St. Paul Public Library, from 1917 until its relocation in 2014.
Frogtown is a neighborhood in Saint Paul in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Built around University Avenue, the Thomas-Dale neighborhood is colloquially known as Frogtown. Historically, Frogtown was a subsection of the current Thomas-Dale neighborhood. It is bordered by University Avenue on the south, the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks to the north, Lexington Parkway on the west and Rice Street on the east.
The Hmong Archives, formerly known as Hmong Nationality Archives, is a nonprofit organization located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States with the mission to research, collect, preserve, interpret, and disseminate materials in all formats about or by Hmong.
Peter J. Rachleff is Co-Executive Director of the East Side Freedom Library, and a retired professor of history at Macalester College in the St. Paul, Minnesota specializing in United States labor, immigration and African American history. Rachleff received his B.A. in Sociology at Amherst College in 1973 and M.A. and Ph.D. in history at the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. At Pittsburgh, he studied under foremost labor-historian David Montgomery. He is the author of internationally recognized academic monographs, and contributor to The Nation, International Socialist Review, Dissent, Z Magazine, and Dollars and Sense, among other publications. He is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Minnesota-based Lao American spoken word poet, playwright, and community activist. She was born in 1981 in a refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand. In 2020, she received a National Playwright Residency Program grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Hmong people are a major ethnic group in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. As of 2000, there were 40,707 ethnic Hmong in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The 2010 U.S. Census stated there were 66,000 ethnic Hmong in Minneapolis-St. Paul, giving it the largest urban Hmong population in the world. Grit Grigoleit, author of "Coming Home? The Integration of Hmong Refugees from Wat Tham Krabok, Thailand, into American Society," wrote that the Minneapolis-St. Paul area "acted as the cultural and socio-political center of Hmong life in the U.S."
Mark Edward Pfeifer is the editor of the Hmong Studies Journal, and the director of the Hmong Resource Center Library and the Museum at the Hmong Cultural Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Jay Xiong is an American politician serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2019. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Xiong represents District 67B, which includes parts of Saint Paul in Ramsey County, Minnesota.
Kaohly Her is a Hmong-American politician serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2019. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Her represents District 64A, which includes parts of Saint Paul in Ramsey County, Minnesota.
Chia Youyee Vang is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research and writing deals with the Hmong diaspora, other Southeast Asian diasporas and refugees and on community-building efforts among Hmong people in the United States.
Hmongtown Marketplace is an indoor market focused on Hmong American products and culture in the Frogtown neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hmongtown was the first Hmong-owned and operated market in the United States and is today noted for its cuisine and produce, with the Star Tribune calling the food court "one of the state's top culinary gems."
The Greater East Side is a neighborhood and city district in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in the United States. The community lies in the northeastern corner of the city and is bounded by Larpenteur Avenue on the north, Minnehaha Avenue on the south, McKnight Road on the east, and Johnson Parkway and English Street on the west. It is part of a group of neighborhoods collectively known as the East Side.
