The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir

I am married to a Hmong and I am American so I read all the literature I can find on his culture and this was one of the best. It gave a clear understanding and realistic picture of life in a Hmong family and the hardships they had to endure as a culture. The Hmong story is a fasinating story from the hills of China to the secret war in Vietnam to the refugee camps in Thailand and finally to America, a country which abandoned them in Vietnam, yet they fiercely love and defend to all. I highly recommend this book to those curious about this wonderful culture.

Living as a young child in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand in the 1980s, Kao Kalia Yang says she "discovered the shapes of stories, how to remember them, and how to tell them." Her memoir, The Latehomecomer, is a heartrending account of those stories, from her parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings--a chronicle of a people who "had not had the opportunity to write their stories down" and whose history is shamefully absent from American accounts of the Vietnam War. The Latehomecomer is also an insightful narrative of Yang's own formation: an émigré becoming an American and a sad, silent child becoming a writer of remarkable wisdom. The Latehomecomer is a triumph--a testimony to the most beautiful and the most terrible of our humanity. Yang writes with the confidence of one who knows that her family's story is one worth telling. Her story is compelling in its scope of historical events alone. It is a must-read for its lucid portrayal of Hmong immigrants, the lasting effects of the Vietnam War, and the struggles of a people betrayed by our nation's failures during and after that war. But what makes Yang's memoir astonishingly beautiful is the rendering of those events by someone who has been learning from her first years of life how to be a truly gifted storyteller.

What a beautiful book. Although the emotional experience may be felt among many Hmongs who endured the Secret War and migration era, each detail and descriptor of the author's experience is raw, fresh, and beautiful. One of a kind and completely respectful and true to the Hmong. I would recommend this book for everybody and especially those who had forgotten or suppressed the Hmong in them. Great preservation of Hmong culture and experience post Secret War for future generations.

I would like to thank the author for writing such a lyrically beautiful book about our human experiences. This is a necessary reading for those of us who care about each other--through this book, we learn about cultural beliefs of the Hmong, their political experience, and spiritual beings. This book will find its place next to the great literature of this country and will be read for generations to come. It is truly a gift.

I had the privilege of reading a pre-publication manuscript of this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Kao Kalia Yang tells the story of her family--which in Hmong culture extends far beyond one's nuclear family. From the jungles of Laos, where her family lived before she was born, across the dangerous Mekong River, into Thailand's Ban Vinai refugee camp, and ultimately here to the United States, Yang tells us of the alliance her Hmong people made with the US, the dangers they experienced as a result of America's withdrawal from Southeast Asia, their harrowing flight from the only country they had ever known, and the indignities suffered and hopes and dreams shared while living an uncertain life in a refugee camp. At the center of this unforgettable tale is Yang's grandmother, who struggles to keep her family together in the camp, but must ultimately surrender to the inevitability of their parting. Through Yang and her family we are connected to the challenges, pains, joys, and triumphs of the refugee/immigrant experience and the love and dedication of a family unlike any we have met before, yet as familiar and comfortable as any we are likely to know. We are drawn into Yang's seductive prose, the poignancy of her family's and her own circumstances, and the hope that their suffering, including that of her grandmother, who ultimately comes to America, will somehow be redeemed in this new country that in many ways necessitated their flight from Laos. This irresistable and moving debut--and its author--deserve a wide and appreciative audience.