A Generation Ago

A project celebrating heritage and culture.

This project was inspired by comparing my life as a Hmong-American to my parents and grandparents who were refugees from Laos. During AAPI month, I was reminded of my cultural roots and heritage. This is something I wanted to display for the Hmong-American community because I felt that it is important that we remember the life our parents and grandparents lived merely a generation ago.

This is an artifact in our time for Hmong-Americans because in America we are Westernizing our cultures, beliefs, and lifestyles. As we continue to do so, we must not forget the places we are from, the culture that shaped our community, and the people that live and still live in our places of origin.

Each individual poster includes the Hmong Language and cohesively works together to form the sentence:


“Ib tiam dhau los peb nyob teb chaws los tsuas tsis txhob hnov qab”

Which translates to:

Ib Tiam Dhau Los = A Generation Ago
Peb Nyob Teb Chaws Los Tsuas = We lived in Laos
Tsis Txhob Hnov Qab = Never forget.

“A generation ago we lived in Laos, never forget.”


The posters are composed of scanned imaged from a National Geographic magazine, published in 1974; one of the first times the Hmong people were included in mainstream media.