The Latehomecomer, My Review
Posted on 09 August 2010
I had mentioned a while back that I was reading the book entitled “The Latehomecomer (A Hmong Family Memoir)” by Kao Kalia Yang, a former Hmong refugee from the Ban Vinai Camp of Thailand. I had finished this book while on my way home from MN, I remember I finished this book right before we landed back to Atlanta Georgia, it had taken me a little over a month to finish this book, not because it wasn’t a great book but because I was always too busy to read maybe a few pages a day.
If I have to give rating of this book I would give this book a perfect 10, not because she had written about the Hmong people, my native heritage background but because Kao Kalia had written such a beautiful, heartwarming and touching book that just keep me glued to the book, minus the fact that I was so busy that I can only squeeze only a few pages a day. I thought this book was a roller coaster of beautiful moments and extremely sad moments, it really touched the soul. Kao Kalia not only wrote about the experience her family went through and endure, but she give great history background, the Hmong culture and belief and painted a beautiful and heart wrecking picture of what ALL the HMONG people had to go through during the tragic Vietnam War.
In this book Kao Kalia wrote about the stories of her family, how her mother and father met and married in the jungle of Laos as they tried to flee the bomb that were being dropped on them daily in the mountain of Laos. How her mother and aunts and cousins were captured by the Laos soldiers and how they fled by night while the soldiers were not around which took many days and months of hard planing. In this book she also told the story of when her family finally crossed over the Mekong River onto the Thailand boarder and to the Ban Vinai Refugee Camps and how her childhood was within the fences of the camp. Kao Kalia finally took us in her book to when she first arrived to the United States, St. Paul Minnesota to be precise. She wrote about how the Hmong people were treated at the time when all the Hmong people started arriving to the United States and then onto the story of her many faces in life living in a new world, The Hmong American dreams, and then to the most important part of the story, her grandmother.
This book is catered around the stories she remembers from her childhood and the stories she was told. But the most important part of this book was her grandmother who had raised her family on her own as a single windowed mother and how she fought to keep all her children together.
As I read this book, I not only had fear in my heart, but I cried and I laugh within the pages of this book and then I cry some more and then I laugh some more and then at the end of the book I cried and cried and then cried some more (yes I was crying as I read this book on the Plane on my way home from St. Paul MN). It was such a well written and most beautiful book I had ever read, and most importantly, it wasn’t just written by someone who did lots of research from pages of other documentary or from pictures and stories, but from someone who had gone through the experience and lived the life of what was going on. I thought that was what also made this book so powerful and beautiful, she isn’t writing about a stranger and his or her story, but Kao Kalia wrote about the life experience that she went through which also tie down to many Hmong families. I have to admit, my family went through all this experience, yes it may be slightly different but nonetheless, they all went through this tragic experience, some made it out alive, some where left in the soil of Laos and or Thailand to never see and live the American Dream, and worst of all, some never made it out alive. Many feel victim to the Mekong River as they slowly sank to the bottom of the cold cold river and some where shot dead before reaching a safety zone.
I think everyone should pick up this book and read it, open your mind up and slowly read the pages of this book, it’ll open your eyes up to the life of a Hmong Refugee such as myself.
It is a pity that I do not remember anything from the time when we my family fled Laos and crossed the Mekong River, I do not remember when my family were at the Refugee Camps (but my mom still have some photos, I’ll have to go find them and share them). I do not remember anything in Laos as I was just an infant. I also do not remember anything in the Refugee Camp of Thailand, I was still too young; I was only between 2-4 so everything that had happened had slipped my mind. I’ve heard stories that my parents had shared with me, besides those stories, my memories of Laos and Thailand are like a deep deep dream that I do not remember anything at all. But I do hope that one day I’ll be able to put my foot on the soil of my birth place and maybe that will help me remember a bit of my own history.
Now the question is, what book should I read next??
2 responses to The Latehomecomer, My Review
I love the book too!!! It’s the way the story was told
Great review and sounds like she is a great writer. When the day you set foot on the soil of your birthplace I think it will be like a dream and I hope that you will capture that in photographs to share with us.