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    The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir
    The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir
    The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir

    Written by Kao Kalia Yang

    Narrated by Kao Yang

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States-all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family#8217;s story after her grandmother's death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together through their imprisonment in Laos, their narrow escape into Thailand#8217;s Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, their immigration to St. Paul when Yang was only six years old, and their transition to life in America. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard in their adopted homeland.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateMay 10, 2011
    ISBN9781611744507
    Author

    Kao Kalia Yang

    Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer, teacher and public speaker. Born in the refugee camps of Thailand to a family that escaped the genocide of the Secret War in Laos, she came to America at the age six. Yang holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Her work includes creative nonfiction, poetry, and children's books such as A Map into the World, The Shared Room, and From the Tops of the Trees. Her work has won numerous awards and recognition including multiple Minnesota Book Awards, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor, an ALA Notable Children's Book Award, the 2023 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, Dayton's Literary Peace Prize, and a PEN USA Award in Nonfiction.

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    Reviews for The Latehomecomer

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    • 4/5
      This book taught me much about the Hmong culture and experience following the Vietnam war. Yang’s personal testimony and storytelling were powerful tools to translate her life into an education for the reader.
      I do feel that the latter part of the book, the death of the grandmother, was pulled out in too much detail. As an audiobook, this lasted over an hour and a half in precise detail. While this may have been cathartic for the author, perhaps the detail is not so necessary for the reader to understand. I would have been more interested to learn of her integration into higher education, as her experience in school was not so easy.
      Overall, an education. I appreciate being given it.
    • 4/5
      I receive this in the form of an audio book. The voice was organic and helped me really resonate with the author and her family's struggle as they moved from war-torn Laos, to a refugee camp in Thailand, before reaching the United States of America. While the author was born in a refugee camp, she shares stories from her elders about the family's experiences in Laos and throughout their journey, too. This is a story that is not only one of survival, but it also one of perseverance as they assimilate to the American culture, while also preserving their Hmong culture. This is a story that is will amaze you, move you, and show you how the human spirit will survive regardless of how difficult and painful their situations may be. It is a great book to listen to and one I would encourage others to choose as an audible book, too.
    • 1/5
      I liked the story, but the narration ruined the general impression. She sounds like she is about to burt into tears the whole time. Yes, a lot of the story IS sad, but is it necessary to read it as if you are crying the whole time?
    • 4/5
      Kao Kalia Yang’s personal history began long before her birth. As traced in The Latehomecomer, her history begins with her Grandmother Youa Lee as a young woman, harvesting bamboo shoots in Laos, and continues into the Vietnam War. Before and after her birth, Kalia’s life and the life of those around her was married by tragedy but also filled with love and hope.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.
    • 4/5
      A book so worth reading. I'd forgotten the Hmong role in our history in Vietnam and was taken up with Kao's storytelling. Her memoir is the story of her family's escape from war in Laos and their new beginning here.
    • 5/5
      Memoirist Kao Kalia Yang tells the story of how her parents met in the jungles of Laos, escaped with their families to the camps of Thailand, and finally made their way over to the US to settle in St Paul, MInnesota. I am from the area and have had many interactions with Hmong people, but never really knew much about their history or culture. It was fascinating to read Yang's story, but disappointing how poorly she and her family were treated by people who proudly claim the label "Minnesota Nice".
    • 3/5
      Very interesting book from a rarely heard POV. I am shocked at how little I knew of the Hmong. The writing is workmanlike but fine. My issue is that the narrative is 100% joyless. I understand that life is hard for the Hmong, especially when people seem to have endless numbers of children though they can't afford to raise them in a safe environment, but there is never a moment reported in author's 20+ years (nor in the additional 20 years covered of her grandmother's earlier life) where people are not in active pain. Don't get the audio, the author (who reads) either sounds like she is about to burst into tears or like she is already crying.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this. She does seem to do a better job with the story once she gets to her own life and what she remembers.
    • 4/5
      At first I was not too pleased with the style of writing, but as I read more, I appreciated the author's basic style of presenting information. Some of the details of Hmong life were more than I was interested in, but I was pleased to be educated regarding their customs and history.
    • 4/5
      I was glad to receive this audio book in the drawing. I taught ESL for 27 years. In the late 70's I had many Hmong students.Once I was invited to the observance of a baby Hmong boy's first month of life. The family and guests tied red ribbons around his chubby wrist and wrote down our hopes and wishes for him. That was a privilege and honor. My wish for him was that he become a professor. The beginning of this book is tremendous. Suddenly on the second CD I realized I was hearing "spiral writing"--a concept I had heard of once at a teachers' conference. Robert Kaplan, in his 1996 book, "Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education", claims that Asian writing is different than Western. Asian writing develops in a spiraling line. Kao Yang's book follows this concept. In the beginning she writes of the Hmong fleeing into hiding in the mountains after the Americans left.. She speaks of her grandmother whom she never saw. She speaks of her mother and father meeting. She speaks of their escape across the Mekong River. She speaks of their time in the refugee camp in Thailand. And then she speaks of each of these aspects again and again. Each time she elaborates and builds on the reader's prior understanding until the story is so rich in detail, insight and essence that it is truly powerful. I undertand now that telling the story in a straight line narrative simply wouldn't have a similar impact. What a gift Kao Yang has given to her people and to the world! She has given the Hmong a voice. As a footnote, I do want to buy the written book, if possible. Kao Yang's voice is sweet, feminine and innocent, and adds a touch of authenticity. However she seems to only have three pitches: High, Very High, and Ultra High. I found it very difficult to listen to her at length.
    • 5/5
      On the wall in the room where I am typing this is a wall-hanging by someone who is Hmong. The embroidered blue cloth tells of growing corn, hot peppers and chickens and then selling them at a market. The people in the cloth are wearing traditional Hmong clothing. This tells me that the Hmong are hardworking people and like to be close to nature and know creative ways of how to survive and prosper. 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.
    • 4/5
      I received this audio book as an ER selection. I found that the narrator's voice was a bit off-putting. It was soft and childlike, but in fact it is the author's actual voice so I decided I should try to relax and go with it. She does say in the book that she had difficulty speaking out loud in English after she arrived in Minnesota. She thought her own voice sounded funny so she was silent much of the time. Perhaps she is still growing into her voice.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.
    • 5/5
      I had the privilege of receiving an early reviewer audio of this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The story is written and read by Kao Kalia Yang. I was so pleased to be chosen to review this book as I was a teacher in Monterey during the early eighties and had the amazing and humbling experience of working with children newly off the boat from Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia as they were brought through the Travis intake center to Monterey during the aftermath of Viet Nam War. As the children began to learn the English language I was able to hear firsthand many of the stories of these Hmong families, including the crossing of the Mekong River into Thailand which is a part of Yang’s family story. It was a year of teaching in which I learned much more that I was able to teach. That was the year I truly understood what it was to love America and this story is one that everyone should hear.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.
    • 4/5
      Solid story of one family's flight from Laos, to the refugee camps, and then to the U.S. Well-defined characters allow the reader to understand a tiny bit the psychology of one Asian culture and what happens it it and its people when transplanted to this country.
    • 4/5
      The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family MemoirAuthor: 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 last sentence in the paragraph is 'Four years and the dream of the book is slow in coming.' The next paragraph talks about genocide, death by disease and war, and the acceptance of death. Then, the third talks about the Grandmother and her natural remedies, her strength, and the granddaughter now being literally in the driver's seat.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
    • 4/5
      Kao Kalia Yang’s personal history began long before her birth. As traced in The Latehomecomer, her history begins with her Grandmother Youa Lee as a young woman, harvesting bamboo shoots in Laos, and continues into the Vietnam War. Before and after her birth, Kalia’s life and the life of those around her was married by tragedy but also filled with love and hope.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.
    • 4/5
      Probably like most Americans (at least outside Minnesota's twin cities area, where the Hmong make up a sizeable minority), I have only a dim knowledge of the Hmong people, and don't know much more about the role they played in the Vietnam war, as valued U.S. allies against the Vietcong and North Vietnamese army. I remember reading a novel called The Laotian Fragments, by John Clark Pratt, over twenty years ago, a thinly veiled record of that "secret war" that the U.S. waged covertly out of Laos during the Vietnam conflict. But I can't remember if the Hmong were mentioned in that book, and it is now long out of print. In any case, The Latehomecomer was an eye-opener in many ways. Kao Kalia Yang, who was not yet thirty years old when she wrote the book, does not make any claims to being an historian. Indeed her writing skills are not the best. What Yang set out to accomplish, however, she succeeded in admirably. Her primary goal was to honor her recently departed grandmother, and she did. And along the way she also provides an insider's informal look at the history of a dispossessed people, the Hmong. She knows only what was told her by her grandmother and other older relatives of an enormous extended family - that the Hmong, a peaceful people with no written language, were driven out of China generations ago, and came to settle in the Laotian highlands. There they were recruited by the U.S. forces during the Vietnam war. Once that war was over - lost - the American military advisors simply disappeared, leaving the Hmong to fend for themselves in a now-hostile environment. 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.
    • 5/5
      This is a tremendously moving memoir of a Hmong family's emigration and settlement in the US, told by its second oldest daughter. The family shows overwhelming courage, loyalty and honor as it navigates the Mekong river, Thai refugee camps, US airports and St. Paul MN housing projects. Kao Kalia Yang is quite accomplished, and the reader sees her accomplishment as the natural expression of her family's values, once she is given access to American education. If you still want to believe in the American dream, this is a wonderful book to read.
    • 5/5
      Latehomecomer is a truly wonderful book. It is the story of the Hmong experience, of the author's family, and of a grandmother who wove them together. Ms. Yang writes with great passion and an eye for the humor in the activities of young children. Kao Kalia Yang puts a human face on an episode in a war no one wants to remember, but that no one should forget. Read this book.
    • 5/5
      I urge you to read this beautiful and moving memoir. It is the story of a Hmong family whose amazing journey goes from the war-torn jungles of Laos, to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand, and then to St. Paul, Minnesota. Written by the second daughter born to Chue Moua and Bee Yang, Kao Kalia writes about more than the family history; she writes about what it means to be Hmong. In an interview by Annie Choi, Kao Kalia says about the title of the book: "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.