Inclusive Reads & Conversations with UWGB Libraries in April: Pao Lor
UWGB Libraries’ April discussion With Pao Lor will take place virtually via Microsoft Teams on Wednesday, April 28, 2021, from 12:15 p.m 1:00 p.m.
For the April reading, UWGB Prof. Pao Lor will be reading a chapter from his newly released memoir, Modern Jungles: A Hmong Refugee’s Childhood Story of Survival. You can download a PDF of the excerpts he will be reading this month here.
In Pao’s animistic world in the jungles of Laos, he was to one day become a farmer, fisherman, shaman, wedding negotiator, and tribal clan leader, but all that changed when the United States pulled out of the Secret War in Laos in 1975. Set in the 1970s and 1980s, Pao, a member of an ethnic hill tribe called the Hmong, tells of his unlikeliest journey from his village in Laos and to the US. Pao’s coming-of-age story is about survival, hope, perseverance, and dreams; a powerful brushstroke capturing the Hmong American experience and advances the transcendental reality that when a community is informed about all its everchanging cultural roots and recognizes, embraces, appreciates, and acknowledges all their existence and contributions, a community will change, thrive, and transform; and a homage to individuals, organizations, and communities that welcome and nurture oppressed and persecuted individuals around the world.
Pao Lor holds the Patricia Wood Baer Professorship in Education at UW-Green Bay, where he also chairs the Professional Program in Education. He has been writing about the Hmong American experience for many years.
If you are interested in attending, please sign-up to receive an Outlook calendar invitation for the event with a link to the meeting. UWGB Libraries will send a recording of the event to all who registered if you cannot attend live.
*If you need accommodation to attend this event, please contact Sarah Bakken at bakkens@uwgb.edu or 920-465-2666. All accommodation requests should be made no less than two weeks before the event. We will attempt to fulfill requests made after this date, but cannot guarantee they will be met.
