This immigrant community learns how to live here from one of its own who has been here longer. DP
An immigrant guides his people on America's ways Hmong immigrant bridges two cultures.
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff
The Boston Globe: BROCKTON -- When there is trouble in a Hmong marriage, it is Ter Yang's job to tell a husband that here in America, paying $10,000 for a wife does not mean he owns her, as he might a car.
When a Hmong family arrives fresh from a refugee camp in Thailand, Yang will call on them bearing lemongrass, health insurance applications, and the news that they must send the girls to school along with the boys.
Yang, 55, helps his community thread a way between Hmong tradition and American culture -- deciphering doctors' orders, calming skittish job applicants, smoothing conflicts. He is the unofficial mayor of the Hmong community in Massachusetts, leading the Hmong here just as his father led the ethnic minority in Laos decades ago.
''He's like the mayor, or the village leader," said Ann Whittaker, a nun with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth who works with the 1,000 or so ethnic Hmong who she says live in Brockton. ''If you want anything done, you have to go through Ter."
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