The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang
The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang
10 Rating(s)
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The Latehomecomer
A Hmong Family Memoir

Author: Kao Kalia Yang

Narrator: Kao Yang

Unabridged: 9 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/10/2011


Synopsis

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’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’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.

About Kao Kalia Yang

Kao Kalia Yang was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and came to America at the age of six. She is the author of The Latehomecomer, The Song Poet, Yang Warriors, and most recently, Where Rivers Part. She also coedited What God Is Honored Here? and is the author of a collective memoir about refugee lives called Somewhere in the Unknown World. Find out more at KaoKaliaYang.com.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Amy on October 19, 2017

Lovely, moving, highly recommended.......more

Goodreads review by Rock on February 06, 2009

I've been flagellating trying to write a review of this story, I think because I want so badly to relate it to the multitude of political cultural historical events that it skirts, always affected by them but rarely addressing them. That is a credit to Ms. Yang, who establishes herself here as a pow......more

Goodreads review by Shomeret on May 18, 2016

The only book I'd read about the Hmong previously was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Culturesby Anne Fadiman. I felt that Fadiman was portraying the Hmong as a mysterious puzzle to be solved. This is the first book I have read......more

Goodreads review by Rach on November 19, 2009

Halfway through this book I decided that it should be required reading for any non-Hmong person who lives in the Twin Cities/western Wisconsin or in California's central valley--any place where the large numbers of Hmong families have resettled. I later found out it is required reading this year for......more

Goodreads review by NILTON on April 09, 2021

4 stars for the concept. As for the execution, rounded to 3 stars. This book was recommended to me. When that happens, it pains me to be negative about it. I feel that my name will go directly to that black list or that I will be blocked for life. But I can’t and I won’t lie. I rarely read non-fiction......more