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Play helps us learn about immigrant farmers in the U.S.

Immigrating to a new country, facing a new culture, language and climate, establishing roots and becoming part of that country’s agricultural industry are daunting, but people from distant places come to America, face these challenges and succeed. The Chicago Farmers learned about relatively recent immigrants to the United States and how they met those challenges and how they fared with farming through a performance of the play “Vang” during TCF’s May meeting.

Performed by Matt Foss and Cora Vander Broek, the dramatic presentation is a moving account of true stories of Hmong, Mexican, Sudanese, and Dutch immigrants’ struggles in the United States as they work to establish themselves in farming communities in Iowa. Based on the collaborative efforts of Poet Laureate of Iowa Mary Swander, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Dennis Chamberlin, and Matt, recipient of a Kennedy Center award and an acting and theatre professor at the University of Idaho, Vang, which means garden or farm in Hmong, brings four immigration stories to life and gives us a glimpse of what brings people to the United States and what happens once they have arrived.

Matt and Cora assume the roles of photographer Dennis and writer Mary as well as the immigrants. They speak the immigrants’ words through actual interviews that Mary conducted and transcribed. Pictures taken by Dennis of the people whose stories are being told appear on a screen throughout the performance. Cora previously appeared at TCF’s May 2015 meeting when she performed the one woman play, “Map of My Kingdom,” which focused on the transference of farmland from one generation to the next.

We learn in “Vang” that a Hmong couple flees the oppressive communist regime of Vietnam for America after a two-year period in Thailand. The couple sets out for America to become farmers. The man notes, “Plant makes you feel good.” The man and woman sustain themselves by working in hotels and eventually open a tailor shop in Iowa, but they also farm. While language is a challenge, the Hmong couple is successful and today is “the toast of the farmers’ market in Des Moines,” according to Matt.

Joseph, who is seven feet tall, escapes from Ethiopia in 1998 and the brutality of the Muslims who are terrorizing Christians. “Mary” and “Dennis” relate his detainments, the need to eat garbage to sustain himself and his arrival in a UN camp. In the winter of 1999, Joseph is relocated to Des Moines, Iowa, where he works in a meat packing plant and eventually begins to farm. Along the way, Joseph also earned a PH.D. from Iowa State University and now teaches at the school.

Benny and Ramona are immigrants from Mexico. They arrive in Iowa in winter and Benny works in a meat packing plant where he stays for 10 years. Through their many experiences, Benny and Ramona become great resources and support for their fellow Mexicans who immigrate to Iowa.

Jahn and Doreen are from the Netherlands and they come to Iowa to begin a dairy operation through a program seeking Dutch farmers who will immigrate to Iowa. They are one of the 12 Dutch families arrived in Brooklyn, Iowa, to farm, but only two or three remain today, said Matt.

“We have found that the second and third generations of these immigrant families tend to leave the farms and head for the cities. There is always the issue about which child will succeed the parents in farming the land,” related Matt following the play. “There are not a lot of formal agriculture programs for these new immigrants, but the Midwest appears to be in the vanguard of attracting immigrants for farming. The lack of availability of land is the biggest obstacle. The newest wave of immigrants coming to Iowa is from Myanmar. They come to work in the meat packing plants.”