Kalia Yang was born in 1980 in the Bin Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand. He parents and extended family lived there together after several years of hiding. After seven years in the camp they immigrated to St. Paul, MN. She documents feelings as well as events surrounding their adjustments. ( )

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. ( )

one of the most moving books I have ever read

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. ( )