Queer Refugeeism: Constructions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Hmong Diaspora
Queer Refugeeism: Constructions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Hmong Diaspora A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Kong Pheng Pha IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jigna Desai, Co-Advisor Erika Lee, Co-Advisor August 2017 © Kong Pheng Pha 2017 Acknowledgments As I reflect on this long-drawn-out and arduous journey towards the completion of my Ph.D. degree, I cannot help but feel bittersweet and downhearted all at once. It was never my plans to attend graduate school, and I had only learned about what a Ph.D. really was right before graduating from college. I am able to be where I am now through a combination of luck, perseverance, guidance, mentorship, encouragement, friendships, and love from others. Graduate school so far has been one of the most challenging times of my life, especially as I struggled to make time for my friends, family, and loved ones with a busy schedule. I was always writing and reading at random and unusual times: night, day, midnight, and mid-day. I was financially—and at times emotionally— unstable, during college and my early days of graduate school, and relied on the assistance of my parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, and mentors for all kinds of support and care. However, the cruelest and most painful thing of all was being a working-class, queer scholar of color going through the tortuous feelings of isolation, self-doubt, anger, fear, shame, selfishness, restlessness, and uselessness that came with being in a perpetual cycle of graduate school and writing a seemingly unending dissertation.
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