There is an article on StarTribune.com about fellow TRA, Bryan Thao Worra and his wife, Ka Vang that is well worth the read.
Maverick artists Ka Vang and Bryan Thao Worra, who share family histories of secrecy and shame, use their writing to agitate for change in the Hmong community.
“We have two totally different approaches to life,” Vang said. “But we arrive at the same destination.”
Over the past eight years Vang and Worra have become an Asian power couple who have challenged Hmong early marriage, teen pregnancy, domestic violence and polygamy — drawing death threats in the process. In a tribal culture that had no word for art, they are among its literary vanguard, using edgy contemporary poetry, plays and stories to document the Hmong experience and heal its ills.
Overall, for what we know, or at least think we know, it’s a pretty good summation of ‘our story so far.’
It’s never easy to try and condense two lives down into any one article, but so far the response has been fairly good, and when we’ve run into the responses that were less ebullient, the remarks were reasonably well-structured.
It’s also a bonus they used my favorite Bryan-quote, even including it in the title. I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that, did you?
I obliquely mentioned it, though I find it intriguing she picked that up out of all the other voluminous things I said…