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Biography & Autobiography. Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML: 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 lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family's story after her grandmother's death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang's tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard. 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, 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, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice. Together with her sister, Kao Kalia Yang is the founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has recently screened The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com..… (more)
User reviews
The Yang clan originated from the wild and beautiful Laos. When the Vietnam War began in 1963, it didn’t take long for the U.S. to co-opt the manpower of the Hmong in Laos to fight on their side against the Vietnamese. Largely due to this cooperation, the Hmong were seen as an enemy to the Vietnamese troops, and were routinely hunted down and enslaved or murdered during, and even after, the war. Yang’s family at the time of the conflict consisted of her father and her mother, newly married, and her older sister Dawb - Yang herself was not yet born. Yang’s father had 8 brothers and sisters that also had families, including their grandmother – the matriarch of the family. For years the family hid from the violence of the war in the jungle, living hand-to-mouth with no home to call their own. They could not stay hidden forever, and eventually many of them were taken by the combatants. Yang’s mother, grandmother, and older sister gave themselves up to the soldiers in an attempt to save all of their lives. It was by the dark of night that the family was rescued from the camp and they carefully swam their way across the treacherous Mekong River to Thailand.
In Thailand, the family lived briefly in So Kow Toe in Nan Province before being transported to Ban Vinai Refugee Camp where the author was born in 1980. Ban Vinai Refugee Camp was a place of both renewed hope and despair. Yang’s family was blessed with many new lives during their years in the camp, but the family was also destitute. Living in a dirty camp area that was shared with thousands of other refugees, no family owned much and no one still had a real place to call home. For years family members talked of leaving, of going to America or France, but their Grandmother kept them all together for as long as possible. By the time rumors spread that the camp would eventually be closed, the family knew they had to leave and registered to move to America.
The journey to America for Yang’s family was not short. Before they could cross the ocean, the family had to spend six months in Phanat Nikhom Transition Camp to America. The transition camp was just as dirty as Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, but the children were introduced to schooling, the adults learned basic information they required to get by in America and all of them received medical attention and checks to make sure they were physically prepared for the trip. A feeling of dread hung over the family the closer the time came to leave. Not all members of the family were going to the same place. Some were registered to go to Minnesota, some to California, and a few cousins ended up going to France. The emotional heartbreak of separation for the family is one that had happened before, and this would definitely not be the last time.
Author: Kao Kalia Yang
In a few places the writing seems a bit disjointed. One example (page 272) talks about the author's father, his diabetes, and health compared to the author's grandmother, the suggestion of health decline since coming to America. The
While I was jarred by the insertion of 'the book is slow in coming', I also personally appreciated the disjointed thought insertions, because my mind, hence my conversations, sometimes take that turn. As a reader though, I found the insertion jarring to the flow. Throughout the book I kept wondering how Yang could recall so much from such an early age. Memoirs can be touchy in subject and tricky in writing. She was fortunate to have a close relationship with her grandmother, to hear the stories and background of family. They have enriched my life.
As a memoir with revelations of personal loss and adapting to each new environment, Kao Yang opens her heart with either great honesty or naivete - I could not be sure, and it doesn't matter. I was very personally touched by an incident recounted on page 196, when the family was purchasing their first home: "Off the kitchen there was a door leading to an enclosed porch area that my father liked because there was an old pencil sharpener nailed into the wall. The Realtor had said that the sharpener still worked."
Through her family's jungle existence, war experience, crossing the Mekong River, family groups, refugee camps, Hmong traditions and challenges; in making a home in St. Paul, and then attending university, Yang trustingly offers a viewpoint and a journey that few of us could imagine. I wonder still, the measure of what Hmong people have lost and what they have gained...how it balances or when it might balance. On page 118, Yang tells of her father's voice, "...usually deep and even, sounded strange to my ears. In English, his voice lost its strength. The steadiness was gone; it was quiet and hesitant. Did all Hmong people lose the strenth of their voices in English?" I was pleased to read Kao Kalia Yang's account, and that her voice gained, not lost, its strength.
sage holben 5/15/2010
In this book, Yang tells the family story of her Hmong Grandmother which begins in the jungles of Laos and travel to crowed and strange Vanai Refugee Camp in Thailand and eventually to America and her new homeland. They were told you are going to America as a refugee form a land that no longer wants you. The unforgettable and compelling story is told in a gentle and heartfelt voice which draws you into the sadness and hardships that were endured by the Hmong families. This story tells shares the folklore, the culture and the very difficult stories of the Hmong people. This is not only the story of immigration and the safe haven of America but that of loss and pain and a war that still brings pain today even though the war was over in 1975 for the death warrant that was issued for the Hmong people that fought in “the secret war,” for it was not safe to stay in their homeland or safe to move to a new country.
Thank you again to Librarything and Kao Kalia Yang for allowing me to hear this very private story. I have pictures in my mind that I will not soon forget. I give this an unconditional 5 star review and may be one of the most moving stories I have heard.
At any rate, the book itself was very interesting. I particularly liked the beginning sections when her family was struggling to stay together as they fled Laos and crossed the Mekong River into Vietnam. Ms. Yang does an excellent job of describing the difficulty the Hmong people faced as they were forced to leave one country and then another. Ms. Yang's writing is beautiful and colorful. She can evoke a mood or a place very well.
My criticism comes with the end of the book which amounted to about 1/4 of the entire book. She describes in agonizing detail the death and the ritual of the burial of her grandmother. Although this old lady is referenced many times in the early parts of the book, she is just one of many family members and her death becomes the focus of the last part of the book. It honestly was tedious. I understand that this death impacted all of the family - the fact that she was the matriarch, she had been born so long ago in Laos, and that she had had an amazing life - but the descriptions of the death, the ceremony at her funeral and all of that was too much.
But The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang tells so much more of what it is like to Hmong. It is as if a friend was sitting down with you telling her life story and the story of people that she is from.
The Hmong were an ethnic minority in China but they were pushed out, they were unwanted. They lived in Laos for two hundred years. Their men were used by the CIA in the war against the Pathet Lao, later when the men were killed, boys as young as ten years took over the fight.
Later most escaped from Laos and the family in the audiobook crossed the Mekong River and stayed years in the refugee camps in Thailand. From Thailand this particular family traveled to Minnesota to find their homeland finally and become a strong and resilient part of the fabric of America.
As Kao Kalia Yang related her own story and the story of her family as if she was sitting on the couch with you as a friend carefully and bravely telling it all. You will learn of the starvation, the killing of the Hmong, her treasured relationship with her grandmother, the rituals and foods of the Hmong. You will learn about babies who come from clouds and you will learn about the spirit and joy of finding a dream, nourishing it and it becoming real.
I recommend this book to all who don't know the Hmong and all immigrants to America and descendants of immigrants.
The early part of the book sounds like a myth as the author's meet, become married, and flee to Thailand. They led a hard life. Even though they were able to come to America, their lives were never easy here.
There is so much here about life, families, and the reasons people continue on in spite of immense difficulties. I highly recommend this book.
In the audio book version, the author reads the book herself. Her voice is very soft. You need a quiet environment to hear it well in parts.
"I was reading a series of short stories by Mavis Gallant. I was looking for a way into my work. I came across a short story called "The Latehomecomer." She explained that the word was German and that it was used to described the Jews who had returned late from the internment camps, back to homes that were no longer so. I saw the relevance of it to my work immediately. My grandmother, who died at perhaps ninety-three years old (if the estimates are right) and perhaps older (if she had been right), would be the last one to return to her long-ago home. Her mother, her father, her brothers and sisters had all died long before. She always told me that when she died, she would be leaving me for those who loved her before me. She would be The Latehomecomer. So are the Hmong.
"The Hmong have been searching for a home for a long time, since we left China, then the mountains of Laos and the camps of Thailand, for the planes to America and the rest of the world. If my citizenship papers are true, if indeed I am now a naturalized American, if my brothers and sisters, born in America, and so many of their friends are indeed American, then perhaps, at long last, we are home. It is a homecoming that has been a long time in the coming. So long, perhaps, that our visions have blurred, and although we are looking at it, we are no longer seeing it clearly: the reality of home. The Latehomecomer captures the desire to believe that we, human beings, find what we are looking for in the world, even if we can't see it, or know it-even if it no longer looks as it had in our memories."
Not only is this a story of one Hmong family experience, it is a universal story of the homeless Hmong people, told with the original, compelling and haunting voice of Kao Kalia. She uses the English language, her language from age 6 when she moved to St. Paul, to convey the struggles, hopes, dreams and lore of her family and culture. Her writing is fluid, and she has a way of putting ideas and sentences together that convey a unique view of the world. Her inner narrative is woven seamlessly through the framework of the story, giving the reader a sense not only of what happened to her Hmong family - and many others- but what it means to seek peace after war, to seek security, to seek a home.
If you have any interest in knowing more about the proud and loving Hmong culture, if you have any interest in reading a moving and unique memoir, if you have any interest in reading a book by a talented new writer, you will want to read The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang.
Yang tells her own family's story of being forced to hide for years in the jungle like animals, living hand-to-mouth, constantly moving, on the run from ruthless communist forces. Finally, running for their very lives, they get out of Laos. Her description of her father's desperate night swim across the Mekong River to Thailand, towing his family - wife, mother and baby - behind him is proof positive of their perilous situation. It was in a refugee camp in Thailand where the author was born in 1980. The family lived in that camp for several years, leaving when the Thai government refused to support them anymore and threatened to repatriate them to Laos, which would undoubtedly have meant death. Afforded refugee status as veteran allies by the U.S. government, the Yang family was part of a wave of Hmong emigrants to the U.S. in the mid-80s, mostly to California or Minnesota. The Yangs ended up in St. Paul, where they struggled for years, first on welfare, and then with the parents working two menial jobs while trying to raise several children in a succession of housing projects and, finally, a run-down two-bedroom mold-ridden house that probably no one else would have, but they finally had a home of their own. The author, the second-oldest child, tells of her struggles to learn English, always an outsider. She also tells of how her parents did their best to instill values and emphasize the importance of family in all of their children. The temptations of gangs and deliquency were rife throughout the Hmong community in the Twin Cities, but Kalia and Dawb, her older sister, respected their parents too much to disobey them.
I had some trouble with this book initially, wondering why the writing wasn't a bit better. But as I progressed through the narrative, which is full of examples of Hmong history, myths and folktales, all learned at the knee of Yang's beloved grandmother, I gradually learned that Yang spoke no English at all for the first seven or eight years of her life. Then, although her understanding became better, her speaking skills came very slowly - so much so that her teachers thought her slow. ("I was lost, perpetually biting my lower lip; I didn't speak well or easily ...") But then in high school, she finally found that one teacher - an English teacher - who recognized the quiet intellect Yang's quietness hid. The teacher saw it in a 9th grade essay Yang wrote for an assignment about the concept of love in Romeo and Juliet.
"After many false beginnings, I wrote about what mattered to me. I wrote about the love I felt I knew: Love is the reason why my mother and father stick together in a hard life when they might each have an easier one apart; love is the reason why you choose a life with someone, and you don't turn back although your heart cries sometimes and your children see you cry and you wish out loud that things were easier. Love is getting up each day and fighting the same fight only to sleep that night in the same bed beside the same person because long ago, when you were younger and you did not see so clearly, you had chosen them. I wrote that we'll never know if Romeo and Juliet really loved each other because they never had the chance."
Hey, this is pretty powerful stuff from a fifteen year-old immigrant girl. If her teacher hadn't seen something special there, then her teacher would have been a complete idiot.
This is not a "great" book. But it is a very powerful one, and honestly told. Kalia Yang wanted to honor her grandmother and her parents in writing The Latehomecomer. She did, and they can be proud of her. Kalia Yang, I take my hat off to you.