Ma Yang, a 37-year-old Hmong-American, has been living in a government facility near the Laotian capital of Vientiane since arriving in the Southeast Asian country in the first week of March.

Soon after his suicide in 1989 at the age of 25, Hai Zi’s poems about nature, loneliness, and the fleeting nature of yearning and happiness began inspiring a generation of steadfast, fiercely ...