Kao Kalia Yang

Hmong-American author and memoirist Kao Kalia Yang turns to her own childhood and to her relationship with her grandmother in this poignant autobiographical picture-book. Helping to care for this beloved elder, listening to her stories about her childhood in Laos, and receiving some important wisdom from her, the narrator is given comfort and reassurance, when her family cannot afford to give her braces, by her grandmother's loving smile. Despite poverty and hardship, despite the fact that show more her grandmother has only one tooth left, this smile is the most beautiful thing...

I initially sought out The Most Beautiful Thing because I am an admirer of the illustrator, Vietnamese artist Khoa Le. I have read and enjoyed three of Le's own picture-books - The Cloud Princess, Sun and Moon Sisters and The Boy with the Big Hair - and was delighted to see that she is becoming better known here in the states, and receiving commissions from mainstream American publishers. Needless to say, the artwork here was absolutely gorgeous, with a beautifully deep but subtle color palette, elegantly stylized figures, and an overall composition that was as creative as it was appealing. The story was moving, highlighting how family love, as symbolized by the grandmother's smile, can hold people together during tough times, and bring beauty and joy to all. I was struck by the fact that Kao Kalia and her sister and cousins had to physically care for their grandmother, and found some of these scenes unexpectedly moving. As someone who lived apart from my grandparents as a child, this was not an experience I ever had, but I can understand it now, caring for my elderly mother. Highly recommended, to fellow Khoa Le fans, and to picture-book readers seeking stories about grandparents, immigrant families, poverty, and/or the Hmong-American experience. show less

A6-year-old Hmong child grows up in a refugee camp, unaware of the outside world.

“I live in a cage but I don’t know it,” states the unnamed protagonist, who was born here. The child’s deftly paced narration describes surroundings—“bald hills and dry fields of flying dirt”—shared with “grandmothers with no teeth” and “mothers with babies on their backs.” Armed guards patrol the area smoking cigarettes at night, “moving like fireflies around the edges of our world.” show more Despite the bleak environment, children still use their imaginations to travel beyond their borders “to a place far from here!” These moments of joy break up harsh realities such as arduous living conditions and people fleeing war. Vue’s simple cartoons are textured with splatters of colors and lines set against largely white backdrops; with honesty and sensitivity, the artwork portrays the protagonist’s struggle to understand the concept of war while observing the pain endured by adults in the camp. Moments of lightness temper the heaviness, especially when an auntie insists that the young narrator isn’t “a child of poverty, war or despair”; the child is “hope being born.” When the family finally leaves the camp, the auntie whispers, “Your wings have arrived.” In an author’s note, Yang discusses how, after fleeing Laos, her own family lived in Thailand’s Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, where she was born.

Offers deep emotional insight into the refugee experience. (Picture book. 5-8)

-Kirkus Review show less

The five-star rating I've assigned here is rather 'loaded,' in that WHAT GOD IS HONORED HERE? is a very difficult book to read, filled as it is with wrenchingly sad stories of pregnancies cut short, stillbirths, and even one account of a four month-old victim of SIDS. It is, however, without question an important and necessary addition to the canon of women's studies, as evidenced by its subtitle, WRITINGS ON MISCARRIAGE AND INFANT LOSS BY AND FOR NATIVE WOMEN AND WOMEN OF COLOR. The women show more here range from Native American to Black to Latina to Asian to Filipina to mixed race. But the truth is it doesn't matter what color - or gender - you are, because these accounts of ruined dreams of motherhood and babies lost will simply break your heart. Because all of the narrators here are part of that "club that nobody wants to be a member of."

There are a couple dozen stories here and a few poems, and I strongly suspect the book's primary audience will be women, although this "niche" group of readers is much larger than I would have imagined, because many, many women have experienced the trauma of miscarriage and/or stillbirth. It's just not often talked about openly the way it is here.

I had a very personal reason for wanting to read these stories. I was the fourth of six children, but my mother had at least three miscarriages and one stillbirth that I knew of, but she never talked about them, so I figured - naively - that she'd pretty much forgotten them. She died several years ago at the age of 96, and I found this among her papers, undated, but written at least fifty years after the stillbirth she describes -

"Rocking Chair"

I rocked all my babies in this chair –
even Tommy, who was “born silent.”
Our Timmy Jim was five and already in school.
I so looked forward to having another baby.
When my work was caught up, I would sit in this little black rocker
and sing a lullaby to the new little one.
I have always been thankful and blessed
that little Tommy did get rocked and loved,
because on the day after Christmas he arrived only to leave us.
I had got a book on natural childbirth
and was doing very well, with nothing to put me to sleep,
when suddenly an ether cone was clamped on my face.
Doctor Kilmer knew the baby could never breathe.
When I awoke in the hospital bed,
the nurse very gently told me my baby boy was dead.
I wanted to see him and hold him.
They tried to tell me it was best I not see him at all.
But finally, in a dim light, he was brought to me,
wrapped in a soft blanket with only his sleeping face showing.
And I held him in my arms.
[Daisy C. Bazzett, 1916-2013]

I still cannot read this without weeping. So of course the stories here moved me, often to tears. For example, in Shannon Gibney's "Sianneh," when she is handed her stillborn child -

" ... they hand her to me. I cradle her in my arms and gaze at her, so exhausted. So elated. So destroyed. "

Or Diana Le-Cabrera, rocking her unborn child, in "Massimo's Legacy" -

"I sat in the rocking chair and sang 'Sleep Baby Sleep' to him. I swear I felt him move ... "

Or Rona Fernandez, telling us, in "The Ritual" -

"It's not easy being the mother of a dead child. In fact, it may be the hardest kind of mothering there is."

Indeed. I cannot begin to tell you how moved I was by every story presented here. To borrow a line from Arthur Miller, "Attention must be paid!" My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

In Yang’s middle-grade debut, a Hmong American boy makes sense of his place in the world.

In Part 1, readers meet Malcolm, who, through chapters written from the perspectives of his immediate family and elementary school teachers, grows from a kindergartener to a fifth grader. The youngest child of an older, working-class couple who came to Minnesota as refugees, Malcolm lives with his oldest sister, True, and her husband during the week so he can attend a private school; on weekends, he show more returns to his parents’ prairie home. Although this arrangement was a decision made with love, his family grapples with regrets and hopes. Meanwhile, many of his white teachers treat him differently due to their own biases. In Part 2, 11-year-old Malcolm takes over the narrative, revealing an introspective, sensitive, and lost young person. Malcolm collects family stories in order to “travel from the life I was living” and to connect with his family history. All four of his grandparents were shamans, and the shamans’ spirits are calling to Malcolm. After embarking on a spiritual journey, he finds himself literally immersed in the stories from his family’s history—stories from before he was alive, stories that aren’t without trauma. Lyrical, evocative prose deftly captures Malcolm’s longing for a sense of belonging; Yang has crafted a layered, profoundly moving musing on grief, connection (and lack thereof), and identity.

A true gem. (Fiction. 11-14)

-Kirkus Review show less