Book Descriptions
for Dia's Story Cloth by Dia Cha, Chue Cha, and Nhia Thao Cha
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
From a refugee camp in Thailand, Dia Cha's aunt and uncle, Chue and Nhia Thao Cha, sent her the story cloth that is the inspiration and the centerpiece for this important 11 1/4 x 8 1/2" book about the Hmong. The cloth they stitched depicts the history of the Hmong, whose culture reaches back thousands of years to China, and stretches from Asia to North America, where over 100,000 Hmong have settled in the years since the Vietnam War (including many in Wisconsin). Hmong means "free people," Dia writes in her introduction. "This story cloth will tell you about our life." In the text, Dia simply and skillfully threads her own story into that of the Hmong people as she tells about life farming with her family as a child in Laos, and then the violent upheaval of the Vietnam War that saw the death or displacement of thousands of Hmong in Southeast Asia. Dia's Story Cloth includes a discussion of Hmong history, culture and artistic traditions by the Curator of Ethnology at the Denver Museum of Natural History. (Ages 8-11)
CCBC Choices 1996. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1996. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
For centuries, needlework has been part of Hmong culture. But it has only been since the war in Vietnam and Laos, which displaced many Hmong, that the new, narrative form of 'story cloths' has emerged, a bridge between past and present. Dia Cha and her family experienced this displacement. Born in Laos, Dia fled with her family to Thailand as a child, spending four years in a refugee camp before arriving in the U.S. Her story is shared by many Hmong Americans. As told through the story cloth stitched by her aunt and uncle, the Hmong people's search for freedom began long ago in China. Dia's Story Cloth explores many aspects of the Hmong experience from peace and war in Asia to new beginnings in America.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.