Fresno Hmong women share stories, 20-year friendship with elementary school principal

Mai Nhia Yang started it all.

She was a curiously bright second-grader who used to disappear from her classroom at Ewing Elementary School in Fresno when the work got too boring. She would leave to go check on her younger brother or just take random walks around campus.

It was on of those “walks” she first met Dot Powell, who was principal of the school at the time.

Neither had any idea that first meeting would lead to a weekly gathering of nine girls like Yang — all daughters of Hmong refugees — or that it would inspire a 20-year friendship and be the centerpiece of Powell’s latest book, “The Sunday Van Club, Where a Faith Journey Leads.”

“As a kid you just do a lot of things impulsively,” Yang says of her first tentative interaction with Powell, which quickly became daily visits to the principal’s office. It was Yang who asked Powell if she could invite a second girl into the group.

“It kind of snowballed into this really big influence for us,” Yang says.

That influence is at the heart of “The Sunday Van Club,” which is out now and available at The Book Barn and Majesty’s Bible and Gifts or online at Amazon and Barnes and Nobles.

The book follows the group’s weekly exploits with Powell, who would gather the girls up in her mini van.

It became a clubhouse of sorts.

There were birthday parties and trips, to a Fresno tea house or Woodward Park, where the girls had a water balloon fight and were chased by mad geese. The girls took Powell to the Hmong New Year’s Celebration and other family and cultural events.

Powell always took the girls to Sunday church services.

“We built such a friendship; it was worth telling people about,” Powell says.

In one sense, “The Sunday Van Club” is a scrapbook, much like the one Powell’s grandmother used to keep. It’s laid out horizontally and filled with pictures that Powell had taken over the years, along with those submitted by the women and their families. There are photos of the girls at school at Ewing, and on their trips, but also as teenagers and adults — in formal dresses and graduation caps or posing now with children of their own.

Over the years, Powell collected a box of mementos; notes and letters from the children during their off time at school. Some of those are reprinted in the book, as well.

But this is also a history book and tells the story of Hmong in America, in Fresno, and at Ewing Elementary, which Powell says had the district’s largest population of Hmong students at the time. Powell lays some of that history out in a prologue, but lets the women’s stories do the bulk of the work.

The history of Hmong refugees in America

Each member of the group gets a dedicated chapter and was able to choose the story to be told.

For some, it was a revelatory glimpse at cultural and familial history that even they didn’t know, Powell says.

“It’s a reflection of the struggle people do have,” says Pa Houa Vang, who was in third grade when she joined the group at Ewing.

“It will ring true with a lot people,” Vang says, including the younger generation of Hmong students, like her younger brother, who have a different relationship to the Hmong culture.

The nine stories represent the journey of first-generation Americans struggling to find their place.

A guidebook for mentorship

They also represent how one person can affect the lives of people in their community. Powell started the Sunday girls club just after her retirement — the following Sunday, in fact — and says she never had a plan for the group, other than being there for each member.

Even when Powell was away on vacations, she made sure to send postcards to them.

That consistency made the difference, Vang says.

“She’s been with us pretty much all of our lives,” she says.

The girls see Powell as a mentor, but also as a second mother — or maybe grandmother at this point, Powell jokes. When she couldn’t be there for the group — she was hospitalized for a time following a brain aneurysm — the women came to her. The group still keeps in touch and tries to get together every Christmas. They’ll start planning this year’s meeting soon, they say.

So this isn’t a book to read and put on a shelf, Powell says.

“It needs to be shared,” Powell says.

“If you’re interested in being a mentor, it’s a very clear statement.”