The Latehomecomer
by Kao Kalia Yang
Adult selection 2010 |
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Biography ... Reviews ... Summary .... Discussion Questions
Author bio
Together, my father and my mother and I planted treasures for me to find in the world. In the wamth of their hold, I saw how the sky was open for everyone. My life has been a series of stops on the way to finding. The sky captivates me. I stop to look. I like how the light from cars streak the wet pavement in the early dark of a rainy morning. I am swept by the lyric ideas of love. I am caught in the demands of daily life. Then: I see a spark of something on the horizon, an emotion grows inside of me, and the idea of an eruption surfaces on my consciousness, scares me, and then I set to writing.
For me, writing is desperate and it is fraught with passion. Passion that makes my fingers shake because its moving faster than my mind, tangled in heart, and caught in everyone else I adore. I do not dance, but I believe I know how some people are free in dance when I am covered in words and bathing in the currents of meaning. There is a tune playing in my bones and my muscles. The molecules of air around me make room, and my world expands in ways that I only realize after the act is done.
I love what I am doing in the world. I am working to enable magic in our lives. This is honorable to me and although it is and can never be perfect, there are moments when I feel its warmth and its danger and I am singed by its possibility. Then: I live so I can do more of what I love. |
Video interview with
Kao Kalia Yang
Twin Cities Daily Planet has an interview with Yang online here.
The publisher, Coffe House Press, also has a video about the book.
Yang's website |
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Reviews of The Latehomecomer
Hmong Times:
“Yang’s love and devotion to her family and the Hmong people shines on every page. . . . A necessary read about the human experience.”
Hmong Today:
“[Yang will] be the first Hmong female author . . . finally putting Hmong stories on the shelves alongside stories from the rest of the world.”
Library Journal (starred review):
“A natural storyteller. Yang chronicles her family’s journey and draws the reader into the Hmong culture.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune:
“[The Latehomecomer] is the love story of [Yang’s] parents, a gripping tale of adventure and escape, a history lesson of the Hmong people dating to their years in China, a tribute to Yang's beloved grandmother and a window into Hmong funeral customs. . . . Thanks to Yang, the grandmother will not be forgotten. And neither will this book.”
Minnesota Literature:
“At times both tragic and inspiring, The Latehomecomer honors Yang’s grandmother and gives a voice to a seemingly silent population living among us.”
Minnesota State Senator Mee Moua:
“The Latehomecomer is a wonderful journey into the very personal experiences of its author, and it is also a story about so many of us. Reading this book is about experiencing the Hmong American transformation.”
Lee Pao Xiong, Director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University:
“A powerful book documenting the refugee experience that I believe, one day, my children will read to their children.”
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Summary from coffeehousepress
In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America, but their history remains largely unknown. Driven to share her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, Kao Kalia Yang’s memoir is a tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together.
Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity in Laos, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp.
When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America. She evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language, and also gives voice to the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community.
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Discussion Questions from the publisher
1. According to Hmong folklore, babies live in the sky, flying among the clouds until they see a family that they would like to be born into and decide to come down to earth: “They teach us that we have chosen our lives. That the people who we would become we had inside of us from the beginning, and the people whose worlds we share, whose memories we hold strong inside of us, we have always known.” (p. xiii). How does this story shape Yang’s perspective on life? Is there a story from your childhood that continues to affect how you see your place in the world?
2. From a very young age, Yang’s parents teach her about what it means to be Hmong: “As a baby learning to talk, her mother and father often asked, ‘What are you?’ and the right answer was always, ‘I am Hmong.’ It wasn’t a name or a gender, it was a people.” (p. 1). Why is it so important to Yang’s parents that they teach their children about identity? How would you answer the question, “What are you?”
3. Yang’s parents, Chue Moua and Bee Yang, meet in the jungles of Laos as the Hmong are fleeing the communist soldiers. Chue Moua makes the difficult decision to marry, even though it means leaving her family behind: “Did I love him? Did he love me? It is the kind of decision that only young people can make in a war of no tomorrows. At that moment, I think neither of us saw the future.” (p. 15). What do their experiences teach Yang’s parents about love, and how does their relationship change after they are separated by the war?
4. In a dangerous and harrowing escape, Yang’s family swims across the Mekong River into Thailand as the Pathet Lao soldiers pursue them. Chue Moua is heartbroken that she has to bury her family photos beside the river before attempting the crossing. She carries two gifts from her mother: an embroidered story cloth and a heavy silver necklace that she loses in the rapids. Why are these objects so important to Chue Moua? If you were forced to leave your home, what would you carry with you?
5. Growing up in Thailand’s Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, Yang enjoys her childhood, but is also aware of the sadness and desperation felt by her fellow Hmong refugees: “The Hmong were people who had just escaped death; we were fenced in and the thoughts of adults could only run out to the past. There was no work to do in the present, no land to wander over, nowhere to run. We were stuck in a country that did not want us.” (p. 65). As a small child, how does Yang experience and react to the hardships of daily life in the camp? How do parents determine how much to share with their children and how much to shield from them?
6. Yang’s grandmother, a respected healer and shaman in the camp, becomes upset when Bee Yang decides to move his family to America: “For my father or any of her sons to leave her, she said, was to tell her that her life had been useless. She said she would rather die.” (p. 79). Why does Yang’s grandmother resist her son’s decision to leave the camp? What is at stake for each of them? How does immigrating to America change the role Yang’s grandmother plays in her family and community?
7. After arriving in Minnesota, Yang’s family struggles to adjust to life in a new and unfamiliar culture: “On the streets, sometimes people yelled for us to go home. Next to waves of hello, we received the middle finger.” (p. 133). How does Yang’s family react to this hostility? What role should Americans play in helping the Hmong—and other refugees, including Iraqis, Afghanis, and Kurds—who have been our steadfast allies in overseas conflicts, but find themselves unable to return to their countries?
8. Although Yang fell in love with writing from almost the moment she came to the United States, she was too shy to speak English at school. Even so, she quickly realized that speaking English was essential to her family’s survival in St. Paul. At the grocery store with her father, Yang summons the courage to ask a clerk for help in finding diapers: “I shook my head to support my words. I couldn’t trust myself in English; my mother and father could barely trust me.” (p. 169). Have you ever needed to communicate with someone, but did not know how? What role can literature play in increasing understanding between people?
9. Yang describes her grandmother’s funeral, a three-day-long ceremony in which a guide teaches her grandmother’s soul how to journey over oceans, rivers, and mountains back to Laos: “I didn’t want to hold my grandmother in place; it was her time to go, and I would wish her a fine journey. But I felt her leaving in the air I swallowed, big gulps, hopeless attempts to fill the empty space.” (p. 253). What spiritual journeys do we all attempt in life and in death? How do our rites of celebration and mourning help us on these journeys?
10. What did you know about Hmong culture and history before you read this book? Did the book change your understanding of the Hmong experience, or the experience of other immigrant groups living in your community? Did it change your understanding of “home?”
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Photo by Der Yang, courtesy Coffee House Press
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