The Yangs achieve the American Dream

The son of a prosperous merchant, Huj Koob ”Howard” Yang suffered culture shock when he immigrated to Garden Grove in 1980 and took menial jobs to support his family. ”In Laos, you work at your own pace and your hard work shows by how much food you have on your table,” says 22-year-old Hong Yang, the third eldest of Yang’s eight children. The younger Yang speaks for his father, who is not comfortable with English. ”In America, you work by the hour, people are telling you what to do and you are not being paid a lot.” The Yangs are Hmong, an ethnic group that collaborated with the U.S. military against communism during the Vietnam War. When the United States withdrew, thousands of Hmong were placed in Thailand refugee camps and later settled in America.