May Lee-Yang, also known as May Lee, is a Hmong American playwright, poet, prose writer, performance artist and community activist in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. She was born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand and moved to Minnesota as a child with her family. She is also the executive director of the non-profit organization Hmong Arts Connection. [1]
Her theater-based works include Confessions of a Lazy Hmong Woman, Sia(b), Ten Reasons Why I'd Be a Bad Porn Star, Stir-Fried Pop Culture, and The Child's House. [2] Her work has been produced through Mu Performing Arts, the Center for Hmong Art and Talent (CHAT), Out North Theater, Kaotic Good Productions, Intermedia Arts, and the Minnesota Fringe Festival as well as toured to various locations around the Midwest.
Her writing has appeared in the Paj Ntaub Voice Hmong literary journal, The Saint Paul Almanac (Arcata Press), Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women (Asian American Women Association), To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets From Pre-Territorial Days to the Present (New Rivers Press), Fiction on a Stick (Milkweed Editions) Unarmed, the Bamboo Among the Oaks anthology (Borealis Press), Water~Stone Literary Review (Hamline University), Sounds In This House: An Anthology from the National Book Foundation Writing Camp (National Book Foundation", and Hmong Movement.
Text by Lee-Yang accompanies light box-mounted photography by Pao Houa Her at Hmongtown Marketplace, Saint Paul, Minnesota. [3]
She was a member of the Hmong and Lao spoken word group, F.I.R.E. (Free Inspiring Rising Elements) and performed regularly at several Minnesota venues including the Fringe Festival, Intermedia Arts, Hmong Fest, Patrick’s Cabaret, the Loft Literary Center, and local universities and colleges.
May Lee-Yang has also been an actress and performed for Pom Siab Hmoob Theatre (currently a part of the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent) in the play, Hmong Tapestry: Voices from the Cloth. Venues for the play included schools, college campuses, conferences, and community sites throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Kansas from 1997 through 2001.
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.
Ka Vang is a Hmong-American writer in the United States. Vang was born on a CIA military base, Long Cheng, Laos, at the end of the Vietnam War, and immigrated to the United States in 1980. A fiction writer, poet, playwright, and former journalist, Vang has devoted much of her professional life to capturing Hmong folktales on paper. She is a recipient of the Archibald Bush Artist Fellowship and several other artistic and leadership awards. She is the author of the children's book, Shoua and the Northern Lights Dragon, a finalist for the 23rd Annual Midwest Book Awards in 2012.
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.
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Dia Cha is a notable Laotian American author and academic who has written books for both children and adults.
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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.
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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.
Elmaz Abinader is an American author, poet, performer, English professor at Mills College and co-founder of the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). She is of Lebanese descent. In 2000, she received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams....
Caridad Svich is a playwright, songwriter/lyricist, translator, and editor who was born in the United States to Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents.
The Center for Hmong Arts and Talent (CHAT) is an arts advocacy group based in Saint Paul, Minnesota's Frogtown neighborhood. Since its inception in 1998, CHAT has transformed into a social justice arts organization that engages with local and national Hmong communities. In addition to providing diverse arts-based programs, CHAT uses innovative strategies to address social issues affecting Hmong Americans.
Katie Ka Vang is a Hmong American performance artist, poet, and playwright. She has created and written several performance pieces and plays, most of which are influenced by her upbringing in Hmong culture. Her productions center around themes of the complexity of culture, community, dis-ease, and diaspora.
Alberto Justiniano is the founder and artistic director of Teatro del Pueblo, a Latinx theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a prominent member of the National Latina/o Commons and the Twin Cities Theaters of Color Coalition. Justiniano assumes a variety of roles in his work, including theater director, playwright, filmmaker, producer, and teacher.
Pao Houa Her is a Hmong-American photographer whose works are primarily centered around the history and lived experiences of the Hmong people. Her's photography consists of greenery and geographic images. She is also a professor at the University of Minnesota and teaches Introduction to Photography.
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