(CNN) Right now in this country we are talking regularly about immigrants, refugees and patriotism. And for many of citizens of the United States, these words conjure very specific images and cause them to retreat to very familiar talking points. This Sunday on "United Shades of America," I meet with several members of a community who challenge all preconceived notions of those words. I head to St. Paul, Minnesota, to visit Hmong-Americans -- whose histories are directly tied into the United States of America's but are rarely discussed. The story of the Hmong is incredibly complicated and nuanced. It involves elements of the stories of immigrants, refugees and patriotism while not neatly fitting into any of those categories.

W. Kamau Bell

Some of my favorite episodes are the ones where I go in with little to no information, then I spend the whole time having my mind blown. This is one of those.

But I shouldn't be having my mind blown. We should all already know how the Hmong story intersects with America's story: through the Vietnam War. And if there is one era of our history that we love talking about, it's the Vietnam War era. That war has taken upon so much of our national imagination that there is even a Vietnam War movie era. When I was growing up it seemed like every third movie was about the Vietnam War: "Apocalypse Now," "Platoon," "Hamburger Hill," "Born on the Fourth of July," "First Blood," "The Deer Hunter," "Good Morning, Vietnam" and "Full Metal Jacket" just to name a few.

The existence of so many Vietnam War-era films give the impression that we have fully investigated the topic. But as usual with American history, when we think we're talking about something a lot we are usually only talking about a small part of it, and from a very specific perspective. And primarily it is the perspective that serves whoever is in charge of the dominant narrative. See, to Earth, Superman is a hero (granted one who had no choice about coming to Earth). To Krypton he's a dude who moved out of the neighborhood when things got hard. Sellout.

When you talk about the Vietnam War from the perspective of the Hmong people, then you have to talk about The Secret War. The Secret War was a CIA-backed war in the country of Laos. During the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited Hmong General Vang Pao to enlist his people to fight against the Laotian and North Vietnamese military. The Hmong fought and suffered losses of 30,000-40,000 of their people in the war.