- Danil Phrakousonh, interview by Katy A. Clune, Morganton, NC, September 20, 2014; “Race, North Carolina, 2000,” U.S. Census Bureau, prepared by Social Explorer, http://www.socialexplorer.com/tables/C2000/R10932136?ReportId=R10932136, accessed April 12, 2015; In 2010, there were a recorded 205,335 Asian Americans living in North Carolina. Of this, 10,433 were Hmong, compared with 5,566 Lao. “QuickFacts Beta, North Carolina,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/RHI425213/00,37, accessed April 12, 2015; Scholarship on Lao immigrants to the United States is extremely limited. Much of the literature deals with the Hmong, not Buddhist, Lao. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman (New York: The Noonday Press, 1997), is likely the most influential account of one Hmong family’s experience in California. There is essentially no research on Lao in North Carolina. This essay is in conversation with Barbara Lau’s “The Temple Provides the Way: Cambodian Identity and Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina” (Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000).
- “East and Southeast Asia: Laos,” Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/la.html, accessed April 12, 2015; Grant Evans, ed., Laos: Culture and Society (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999), 26; Bernard B. Fall, Anatomy of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis 1960–1961 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969), 24, 23.
- Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You, 130, 131.
- Martin Stuart-Fox, Laos: Politics, Economics, and Society (London: Frances Pinter Publishers, 1986), 53.
- Nearly 20,000 of the country’s best and brightest were sent to these notorious labor camps. Judy Rantala, Laos Caught in the Web: The Vietnam War Years (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2004), 178; Toon Phapphayboun, interview by Katy A. Clune, Vientiane, Laos, July 28, 2014.
- Noubath Siluangkhot, interview by Katy A. Clune, with translation by Toon Phapphayboun, Morganton, North Carolina, March 10, 2014.
- Tom Hanchett, “A Salad Bowl City: The Food Geography of Charlotte, North Carolina,” in The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South, eds. John T. Edge, Elizabeth Engelhardt, and Ted Ownby (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013), 169–170; Labor historian Leon Fink provides an excellent account of the Mayan population in Morganton in The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Fink, Maya of Morganton, 8.
- Toon’s parents Khamsi and Noubath help manage the Lao Family Association of Morganton, a social aid group with membership of roughly forty families, or eighty individuals, stretching from Morganton to Hickory to High Point. Khamsi Bounkhong Siluangkhot, interview by Katy A. Clune, Morganton, North Carolina, September 21, 2014.
- Monica Janowski and Fiona Kerlogue, eds., Kinship and Food in Southeast Asia (Copenhagen: Nias Press, 2007), 230; Noubath Siluangkhot, interview by Katy A. Clune, with translation by Toon Phapphayboun, Morganton, North Carolina, May 11, 2014.
- Toon said this during a meal together in Ban Sikai, Vientiane, Laos on July 13, 2014.
- Daraphone Phrakousonh, interview by Katy A. Clune, Morganton, North Carolina, March 10, 2014; Daraphone Phrakousonh, phone interview by Katy A. Clune, May 19, 2015.
- Daraphone Phrakousonh, March 10, 2014.
- Nancie McDermott, interview by Katy A. Clune, Raleigh, North Carolina, April 18, 2014; Chef and owner of Farmer’s Daughter Preserves April McGreger says that fermentation is the foundation of southern food: “It cannot be overstated.” April McGreger, email to author, March 22, 2015.
- Noubath Siluangkhot and Toon Phapphayboun, March 10, 2014.
- Toon Phapphayboun, April 12, 2014; According to Theravada Buddhism, older respected men will assemble near the front altar and assist the monks in coordinating the ceremony, while women, children, and other men gather just behind.
- Donald K. Swearer, The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 61.
- Khamsi Bounkhong Siluangkhot, interview by Katy A. Clune, Morganton, North Carolina, May 11, 2014.
- Ibid.
- According to Lao Buddhism, monks are required to stay at one temple for three months during Buddhist Lent each year. Beyond this, they can travel to other temples. At least three, even better four, monks are needed to best conduct ceremonies and associated chanting rituals. The Morganton temple leadership frequently invites visiting monks to stay for a period. In doing so, the guest monks contribute to the spiritual development of resident monk Somchit Sengdavone and elevate the sacredness of Wat Lao Sayaphoum. Martin Stuart-Fox and Somsanouk Mixay, Festivals of Laos (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2010), 59; Khamsi Bounkhong Siluangkhot, September 21, 2014.
- Airsikhay Ammalathithada, interview by Katy A. Clune, Morganton, North Carolina, September 21, 2014; Khamsi Bounkhong Siluangkhot, May 11, 2014.
- Ghassan Hage, “Migration, Food, Memory, and Home-Building,” in Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, eds. Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 418.
