I am often surprised when I talk to people from other parts of the U.S. who don't know about Hmong-Americans. The Hmong were mountain people living in Laos. During the Vietnam war, they were recruited by our CIA to wage a Secret War against the communist forces in Laos (a fact that was long-denied by the U.S.) When the Americans departed in 1975, the Communist government of Laos waged genocide on the Hmong people. Thousands were massacred, while others fled into the jungles of Laos to hide or to make their long way to the Mekong River, to cross to Thailand and life in a refugee camp. In the mid-eighties Thailand no longer wanted to be host to thousands of Hmong refugees, and many of them came to the U.S., settling primarily in southern California, central and southern Wisconsin, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. In the mid-nineties when Clinton "ended welfare as we know it", there was another large Hmong migration from California to Minnesota, which had kinder policies toward people in poverty.The Latehomecomer was written by Kao Kalia Yang, a young woman who was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand in 1980 and came to Minnesota with her parents and sister when she was 6 years old. They were eventually joined by many aunts and uncles, as well as her beloved paternal grandmother. She tells a story of hard work and abject poverty, the parents working long hours in mostly menial, low-paying jobs, always with the goal of their children getting ahead through education, but not losing their essential Hmong-ness. This is also very much a love story for Yang's grandmother, a woman whose strength and fortitude kept her family together through unimaginably trying circumstances.
Madison has a sizable Hmong community and I have had a handful of Hmong students over the years, but I still know very little about the culture and would like to know more. The Latehomecomer was a beautifully written and fascinating book, and certainly provides food for thought as a teacher. It was also interesting to compare it with the only other book about the Hmong I've read: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.
I highly recommend The Latehomecomer. The author, Kao Kalia Yang, has also produced a documentary about Hmong American refugees, The Place Where We Were Born.
