Translating Experience and the Reading of a Story Cloth

Laotian Hmong artists in Thai refugee camps have developed aform of narrative, pictorial textile art that depicts scenes, stories, and daily activities of traditional Hmong cultural life. These embroidered story cloths, created largelyfor export to the United States, also testify to the combat, destruction, and loss of life that precipitated the exodus of Hmong and other ethnic populationsfrom Laos. Story cloths are key texts that enact concepts of historicity, cultural identification, intercultural communication, and collective action.