Kao Kalia Yang

Paj Ntaub, a young Hmong American girl, spends a busy year with her family in their new home, and seeks a way to share the beauty of the world with a grieving neighbor.

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...

"A themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis, collected and told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet"--

"In the 1960s when Kalia's mother, Chue, was born, the US was actively recruiting Hmong Laotians to assist with CIA efforts in Laos's Secret War. By the time Chue was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were perceived as traitorous for their involvement. Notably, from 1964-1973, Laos became victim to the heaviest bombardment by the United States against communist Pathet...

"There are 23 million people, representing more than twenty countries, each with unique languages, histories, and cultures, clumped under one banner: Asian American. Though their experiences are individual, certain commonalities appear. The pressure to perform and the weight of the model minority myth. The proximity to whiteness (for many) and the resulting privileges. The desexualizing, exoticizing, and fetishizing of their bodies. The microaggressions....