By Kadjata Bah
While pursuing STEM and STEM-related majors, some HMoob students are motivated by the idea of giving back to and re-engaging with their communities. This blog continues to follow Sarah, a nursing graduate who endured push-out and racism, inspired by her family’s cultural and spiritual traditions.
“Giving back” is a concept familiar to many marginalized communities, separate from ideas of charity and philanthropy which imply that those who have wealth and resources give to those who do not. Rather, giving back is the act of providing for the community that has provided for you, in the form of money, resources, time, and support. It entails of deep knowledge of one’s community and its needs and finding creative ways to fulfill them, often beyond material possession. Giving back is borne from the resilience of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities who depend on one another for their community’s survival in the face of injustice. As explored by Means et. al (2022) and Salis Reyes (2019), giving back may also serve as a motivator for young people of color pursuing higher education, who wish to use their education and mobility in service to those who raised them.
This idea opposes theories that through the acquisition of higher education, students of color stray further away from their communities, assimilating to aspirations of White middle-class America. In the case of HMoob college students and graduates in STEM and related fields, higher education may actually provide spaces for cultural “re-engagement,” where students can ask deeper questions about their family’s HMoob traditions and practices, explore connections with HMoob peers, and frame their education and future career through the lens of giving back—a lens of service to their families and the HMoob community at large.
This blog follows the academic and personal journey of Sarah, a young HMoob woman who recently graduated from UW-Milwaukee’s Master of Science in Nursing program after facing nursing pushout as an undergraduate. Having grown up in a predominantly White neighborhood and predominantly White schools, Sarah’s most significant motivator for pursuing a career as a registered nurse was her family’s Shaman traditions, which created barriers to quality healthcare.
“I think I’ve just seen so many family members who, you know, since we’re Shaman, you know, want things spiritually, or have other spiritual needs that aren’t being met. Just because, you know, a lot of people don’t believe in that—in the medical system,” said Sarah.
She further emphasized the cross- and intercultural aspects of her aspirations, stating,
“But I think that not only like, you know, with my ethnicity, but many others, there are a lot of people who wish that they had people who understood their needs other than medical.”
Sarah ultimately relied on her cultural and spiritual traditions, found safety and understanding in affinity groups and supportive mentors of color, and prioritized her passion for culturally appropriate care in nursing in the face of racism, institutional barriers, and nursing pushout, often speaking up for herself and others in spaces where silence is expected. This piece will explore how Sarah’s aspirations toward giving back served as a foundation for resilience and hope in her pursuit of a career in nursing.
From cultural alienation to reengagement
Sarah grew up in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley, where the HMoob community was sparse. She remembers having one other HMoob person in her class—a number which eventually increased, but not by much. She was surrounded by family, including her late grandmother, who practiced and exposed Sarah to Shamanism, an integral piece of HMoob culture and traditions. Her school and home lives were split, explaining,
“… I was ashamed at the time, but you know, bringing people over, and we would have like a xwm kab, which is like a shrine. And, you know, people would kind of make fun of it, or, you know, stuff that I was interested in, you know, just Asian-wise, not even HMoob-wise.”
She avoided bringing food around her friends or talking about her family’s culture, learning to hide.
“I think at some point you just kind of learn how to, you know, adapt to your environment. And so, it was just stuff I didn’t really talk about,” she said.
This changed when she began her studies in Milwaukee, which is home to Wisconsin’s largest HMoob community. The city’s diversity came as a culture shock to Sarah, who, for the first time, found herself sharing a city with not only other HMoob people, but also significant Latinx and Black communities. At the time, she admitted, she didn’t quite know how to interact with her new neighbors. Despite her newness to Milwaukee’s diversity, she desired to learn about and understand the cultures and traditions of the people she imagined she would one day care for as a registered nurse. Milwaukee is where, she said,
“I really got to open up with my, you know, cultural identity. And being, you know, more secure in who I was.”
At UWM, Sarah joined the Asian Student Union, HMoob Student Association, and the Filipino Student Association, taking on leadership positions and volunteering with peers she considered to be family. UWM opened the door for Sarah grow out of the shame she felt in her childhood and participate in cultural reengagement with her peers, allowing Sarah to further recontextualize her aspirations in relation to her activities in culturally affirming spaces.
Nursing pushout and the significance of supportive mentorship
Her academics contrasted sharply, where she often found herself one of few students of color, Asian students, and even fewer HMoob students. In the nursing program, Sarah was frequently made aware of the glaring disparities in treatment of students of color and cultural ignorance among her classmates. She recounted a study abroad trip to Thailand, where her classmates mocked Thai food and culture.
“I think Thai and HMoob culture are very similar,” she said, continuing, “I was kind of worried because I was like, these are future nurses, you know.”
Sarah took this trip shortly after being pushed out from the nursing program. Her grandmother passed away in the fall of what should have been her final year in the program. She struggled through her courses required for the program’s completion. When she failed Organic Chemistry, her academic advisor told her,
“Maybe nursing isn’t for you, you know. You should look into other career options.”
When she failed a second time following the death of another family member, Sarah was told that perhaps the program made a mistake in giving her a second chance.
Sarah’s trip to Thailand strengthened her dreams of being a nurse, despite her setbacks and being told repeatedly that it was not the path for her. The professor who led her trip became a source of support, telling Sarah,
“Don’t ever let anyone tell you who you can be and who you can’t be, and what you can do and what you can’t do. If you want to be a nurse, you can be a nurse. … Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Upon her return, her mentor, who was a Black woman, said,
“People of color should stick together … I will support you.”
With their help and the help of several other faculty who made Sarah feel seen culturally, spiritually, and academically, including a HMoob scholar and academic, Sarah finished her undergraduate degree in biological sciences in the following year and was accepted to UWM’s Direct Entry Master of Nursing, ready to begin a new leg of her journey of becoming a nurse.
Experiencing and combating racism with practice
Sarah’s graduate cohort was small, so racial tensions were particularly pronounced. She spent most of her time with the Black students in her cohort, being the only Asian American student in the program. She felt singled out in her academics, and experienced bias from her instructors. Sarah was always one to speak up in the face of insensitive comments and assumptions but brushed off microaggressions that she herself experienced. Institutionally, she never believed anything would be done if her treatment was reported. For Sarah, racism and microaggressions were a “business thing”—just another part of the job that must be endured to achieve one’s goals.
After all, Sarah’s goal of providing culturally responsive care for her family and community was what allowed her to persevere. In one particular example after a registered nurse suggested simply teaching patients with language barriers English, Sarah expressed,
“I’m afraid for my parents if this is what you think it is, you know,” picturing her parents in their care.
Sarah imagines herself in their place as a bridge, a willing listener, and a more compassionate provider of care, using her family as a framework. At the same clinical sites she was once ignored and mistaken for another Asian woman by her instructors, she was also able to meet and engage with HMoob patients and families, who have historically faced barriers to healthcare.
The emergence of anti-racist cultural servingness
Throughout her undergraduate and graduate education, Sarah was forced to navigate hostile spaces and institutions that were not designed with HMoob students—who Sarah described as ‘a minority in a minority’—in mind. In those environments, her HMoob identity and aspirations toward giving back provided guidance, while her mentors provided her with support and solidarity when she was made to feel invisible.
Sarah is now in the process of preparing for the NCLEX, an exam required to become a registered nurse. On the other side of the exam, she hopes to begin her practice in pediatrics, or neurology, or perhaps even travel nursing, while she’s still young. Wherever she lands, she will bring her curiosity for other cultures and her deep respect for her own.
“You want to be able to push forward and learn from it, and you don’t want to be one of those people who can’t see the other side and just refuse to see the other side because you haven’t grown up with it,” she said. “If you don’t see change, be the change, right?”
Works cited
Means, D. R., Stanton, J. D., Mekonnen, B., Oni, O., Breeden, R. L., Babatola, O., … & Marshall, B. (2022). A deeper calling: The aspirations and persistence of black undergraduate students in science at a predominantly White institution. The Review of Higher Education, 46(2), 151-180.
Salis Reyes, N. A. (2019). “What am I doing to be a good ancestor?”: An Indigenized phenomenology of giving back among Native college graduates. American Educational Research Journal, 56(3), 603-637.