Originally published as a 3-part series in the Pioneer Press with reporter Laura Yuen (1, 2, 3), this award-winning photo essay profiles one Hmong family risking everything and to start a poultry farm in Arkansas. Yuen wrote:

"Jai Lor and his wife, Choua Moua, have chased a better life before. Decades ago, the couple crossed a raging Mekong River from their native Laos into Thailand. When they arrived in St. Paul, they saw a path to prosperity. Instead, they found dead ends. Opposite shifts at factories kept them apart. They opened a grocery store that went bust. Hopes for their children – that they would go to college to become doctors or lawyers – never came true.

 

He and his wife are following a calling that runs deep in their blood. For centuries, the Hmong have fled their homes in search of safety and freedom, journeying from southern China into Southeast Asia and then the United States.

 

Now, Lor and his wife are on the move again, joining a Hmong migration inside the United States."