Hmong American Books

Living as a young child in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand in the 1980s, Kao Kalia Yang says she "discovered the shapes of stories, how to remember them, and how to tell them." Her memoir, The Latehomecomer, is a heartrending account of those stories, from her parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings--a chronicle of a people who "had not had the opportunity to write their stories down" and whose history is shamefully absent from American accounts of the Vietnam War. The Latehomecomer is also an insightful narrative of Yang's own formation: an émigré becoming an American and a sad, silent child becoming a writer of remarkable wisdom.

The Latehomecomer is a triumph--a testimony to the most beautiful and the most terrible of our humanity. Yang writes with the confidence of one who knows that her family's story is one worth telling. Her story is compelling in its scope of historical events alone. It is a must-read for its lucid portrayal of Hmong immigrants, the lasting effects of the Vietnam War, and the struggles of a people betrayed by our nation's failures during and after that war. But what makes Yang's memoir astonishingly beautiful is the rendering of those events by someone who has been learning from her first years of life how to be a truly gifted storyteller.

This is a stunning book, beautifully written by a courageous, young woman with incredible talent as a writer. The best non-fiction book I've read this year and I read a lot of them. Kalia shares the emotional and physical realities of her family's life in Laos during the secret war and the attempted genocide of her Hmong people, the difficulties of life as a refugee and the camps where they live, and the immigrant experience in adjusting to a very different life in America. Also a fascinating insight into the culture of a group that is overlooked in the immigrant stories and experience in the US.

This book is an adventure story and a brilliant love story. I was very touched and enlightened reading this book. Ms Yang is a very talented writer because she is able to write from her heart without being overly dramatic or sentimental. I live in Thailand and attend the Hmong New Year festival in the mountains each year with my husband. From time to time we meet Hmong people from Minnesota and wonder about them. This book has done a great deal for my understanding the who's, what's, and why's of their lives. With writers like Ms Yang I have greater hope for the world and for families and for literature in general.
Thank you,
Pat Riblet

I found this book to be very moving and readable. I know more now having read it than I knew before. I loved it and would recommend this book to anyone.

I urge you to read this beautiful and moving memoir, The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang, published by Coffee House Press.

This 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.

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.

I am a bit late catching up on my readings. But amazings stories are timeless. I am inspired by David Moore's incredible love and compassion that he took the time to learn about the kids, whose stories would have vanished forever but now they can be read from generations to generations--especially the descendants of the boys and anyone in similar situation. This book is, in a way, Mr. Moore's story...how an incredible person would just take interest in someone (someone that seems to be out of place like fish out of water) and love them in a way that it would change their life (for the good) forever. I wonder how many folds over the love and understanding that the author shown to the "boys" had multiplied through the boys' lives?

Perhaps someday white male eurocentric assumptions will be sufficiently combatted so that we may learn about the incredible suffering of People of Color during the U.S.'s conflicts. I certainly hope so. This is an interesting book, marred only by the emphasis on males, when there are obviously many important voices that need to be heard from the Hmong.

Moore does a wonderful job of writing the stories told to him by the young Hmong refugees, as they fled from Laos at the end of The Vietnam War. The book is written in an easy to read style, yet tugs at your emotions. I have recommended the book for reading at numerous conferences and diversity presentations for anybody wanting to start trying to understand the Hmong. I have also suggested it to some of the Hmong teens born in the US, so they can have an understanding of their parent's sacrifices. Many people are unaware that The Hmong lost 1/3 of their race to help us. Maybe reading this book will help kindle compassion for such loyal allies!

If you are an elememtary or middle scool teacher with a population of Hmong children, or if you are looking for literature that treats a "difficult" subject in a sensitive way this book is for you. It is beautifully illustrated, with pictures of a Hmong story cloth and the story is written by a Hmong woman. It is one of those picture books that makes wonderful reading and viewing for adults as well as children. Top notch!

This is one of my favorite children's books. It tells the story of the Hmong people through the eyes of a child who lived in Laos during the Vietnam War, lost her father, escaped to Thailand and eventually came to America as a refugee. One of my third grade Hmong students declared it "THE BEST BOOK I'VE EVER READ! " I would have to agree.

Hmong Milestones is an excellent introduction to the various roles the Hmong played in Vietnam War. Omoto's work is a necessary overview and resource for anyone, both seasoned experts and casual readers, interested in one of the darkest chapters of American history.

Excellent book for the young adult reader. As a teacher of mulitcultural studies, I highly recommend this book as required reading. The author puts the Hmong experiences in America into perspective. One cannot but have a great respect for these individuals and all that they accomplished.

A truly outstanding introduction to the politics of the period. Although this is not a recent work, it's interest lies in what it tells us about the general attitudes of the political establishment of the time quite apart from the Appeasement debate.

Donnelly's work is based on years of work among Hmong immigrants in Seattle, and covers women's lives in terms of economic role and family role and position. Through analysis of two needlework cooperatives' history (and dissolution), and through the analysis of several marriage ceremonies (and stories of the subsequent marriages' success or failure), Donnelly shows how women's actions are grounded in Hmong cultural values and options, even as they make use of the cultural options and interpretations of American society. While traditional Hmong society could be characterized as male-centered-marriage negotiations, for example, were arranged by the male elders of the clans involved, even if the young men had taken the initiative to find their brides-the transplanting of thousands of Hmong to the U.S. has led to the development of more egalitarian and romantic notions of marriage, and to the possibility of greater assertiveness on the part of Hmong women. Yet Donnelly is able to point to folktales in which women do act assertively, so a model for this kind of behavior is available within the Hmong tradition. All cultures contain such seeming contradictions, Donnelly asserts, and indeed, the presence of alternative models of behavior within a traditional culture gives that culture "resiliency that may let that culture survive even traumatic shifts of circumstance." (191) Thus, even with changing circumstances, language, economic opportunities, education, and religion, Hmong culture contains within it the possibility of continued Hmong cultural identity in the U.S. This is an excellent example of enlightening and sensitive ethnography.

This is a kid's book but it gives a brief informative overview of the situation of the Vietnam War and it's far reaching effects such as and the displacement of the Hmong people. It has lots of colorful photos and profiles a few individual cases. This is a good book for adults who are unfamiliar with the Hmong people. Mace Goldfarb is a pediatrician who was a volunteer at the Ban Vinai Refugee camp in Thailand in 1979. Goldfarb indicates that he is also the son of displaced persons.

The author is a journalist rather than a sociologist, but her book is the best I have read among several about the Hmong in America. These highlanders from Laos were fierce guerrilla warriors in a secret CIA army during the Vietnam War. After the War they were marked for persecution -- or extirpation -- by the Communists and many of them fled the country. Today more than 100,000 live in the US. The Hmong are much admired by American soldiers and CIA agents and their unique animistic culture and efforts to adjust to radically different American life has interested many authors.

The author delves deeply into the life of several Hmong living in California, including studying the language and learning the intricate stitchery used by Hmong women to make their native costumes. She visits Laos with one of them and meets the Hmong in their natural environment. She inserts herself in the story as a painstaking and thorough observer presenting an objective, affectionate, unsentimental portrait of a people she genuinely likes and admires. Her chapter on Hmong history is outstanding: lucid, well-written, and fascinating in its speculations about the origin of the Hmong and their long struggle with more powerful neighbors. She gives throughout a very clear picture of the Hmong's attachment to family and clan -- a collective nature foreign to most Americans.

The Hmong the author describes include, among many, a Americanized young woman who works in a government office, a traditional female shaman, a Hmong gang member, and a former military and political leader. She captures them all with style and grace.

Smallchief

Well-written, gripping, thoughtful, thorough investigation into the tragic and seemingly unavoidable events in the life of a sick young girl and her loving family. Everyone wanted the best, but it all went terribly wrong. A compelling example of why we all need to keep learning from each other.

As the title implies, this book offers an alternative perspective of epilepsy, or seizures, as seen through the lens of the Hmong people. It also provides a fresh view of Western so-called civilization itself, and most particularly Western medicine.

I doubt there's any American today who doesn't harbor at least some ambivalence about how medicine's practiced in the United States, and I'm not just talking bills and insurance. Foua and Nao Kao Lee didn't trust the doctors who tended to their baby daughter Lia when she began to have seizures; they worried about doing damage to their baby's soul. In the Hmong culture, sickness is a signal of disturbance to the soul, and healing is a matter of tending to that soul. When did you last see an American doctor do that?

Even had the doctors who cared for Lia known of this tenet of the Lees' belief system, they probably wouldn't have given it consideration. As things were, they knew little about their patient's family: not only did the Lees not understand English, but the Hmong culture is so far from that of anything remotely American, the doctors hadn't the ears to hear, eyes to see, or consciousness to absorb any of it. To them, as to many Americans, the Hmong are a "Stone Age" people, ignorant and superstitious.

Certainly Hmong rituals and healing ceremonies are strange and arcane--but no stranger than those of the Catholic or Jewish faith: all utilize symbols, whether it's wine standing in for the blood of Jesus, drops of wine spilled onto a plate for Egyptian plagues, or a wooden bench transformed into a winged horse carrying a healer in search of a sick person's soul. Why is it that the good citizens of the United States laugh only at the latter?

Writer Anne Fadiman decided to look at American medicine through the prism of Lia Lee's sad story. She discovered, and conveyed to readers, the richness of Hmong culture, devoid of sentimentality. Fadiman is careful not to imbue the Hmong with the kind of romanticism that European Americans tend to hold about Native Americans: she does not evade the fact that they can be extremely difficult. By allowing them full humanity, she brings them vividly to life the same way a novelist does her characters--though non-fiction, thi book is as compelling as a great novel.

The Hmong came to America in the 1980s courtesy of war in Southeast Asia. They'd been living in the mountains of Laos, to which they'd migrated from China. The Hmong never assimilate into the culture of the country they inhabit, and have suffered persecution for centuries. Much like the Roma or the Jews, they're a migratory tribe without a homeland--but I doubt they ever felt quite as displaced as they did when they got to the United States. Because they helped the CIA in Laos, the Hmong were promised they'd be welcome in the U.S.--but when the troops left, they jetted only generals and hotshots out of the country, leaving the rest of the populace to fend for themselves. With the Laotian army hunting them down as enemies of the state, Hmong families set off on foot, carrying whatever they could manage. Many, particularly the old and the young, died along the way. Most possessions were shed, too heavy to carry, on the days-long journey. When they arrived in Thailand they were placed in refugee camps, where they waited to be rescued by the Americans. Those who were finally brought to America were `resettled' all over the map, without regard for family cohesion or transferability of survival skills: in Detroit, Minneapolis, Utah, Vermont--the Hmong were distributed all over the country so as to not unduly `burden' any one locality.

The Hmong tend to have large broods of 12 or 13 children, who they deeply adore, and they view disability as a consequence of some parental transgression, for which they atone by treating children with disabilities extra lovingly. They're used to living near relatives, who they see frequently, if not daily. The diaspora of the Hmong represented unspeakable hardship--which they resolved with what they call their `second resettlement.'One family would pack up a hastily purchased jalopy and drive off, looking for a spit of land hospitable to growing vegetables and the herbs necessary for healing rituals. They'd end up where all pioneers do, in California, and send news to relatives in Detroit or Chicago or Billings, Montana. Eventually, pockets of Hmong were clustered in a few locations around the country. Of these, Merced, California, where the Lee family settled, is one of the largest.

About one in every six residents of Merced, formerly an all-white rural area, is now Hmong. Here their culture and community thrived, parallel to the dominant culture, assimilating as little as possible. One way they did have to assimilate is medically: since 80% receive some form of government assistance, social services closely monitor them. American social workers do not have a high level of tolerance for cultural difference, and many Hmong practices, like gardening on the living room floor, or animal sacrifice, put parents in danger of losing their children to foster care--an unthinkable consequence that did occur, for a period of time, to Lia Lee.

The Hmong had heard about Western medicine even before arriving on these shores. They approved of antibiotics--swallow a pill and get well in a week--but not of much else. Surgery was anathema, since cutting the flesh or removing organs risks the flight of the soul. When their daughter Lia fell into the hands of the medical establishment, the Lees suffered deep agony over every procedure, from IV insertion to spinal taps.

Fadiman explores the interactions between the Lees and their daughter's medical caretakers in exhaustive detail. Whenever Lia suffers a setback, the Lees blame the doctors and their methods. The doctors accuse the Lees of "noncompliance" when they fail to properly dose Lia with three different kinds of anti-convulsants at the various times of day prescribed, not realizing that the Hmong don't even use clocks. Fadiman presents a balanced picture, blaming neither the family nor the hospital, but cultural barriers, for what goes wrong--and eventually things do go terribly wrong. By the age of four Lia is brain dead. The hospital hooks her up to feeding tubes, expecting her to die within days, but the Lees insist on taking her home, where they disconnect every tube and treat Lia as a favored family member. They take turns carrying her around on their backs; like a mama bird, Foua pre-chews her daughter's food and feeds it to her orally; they sacrifice pigs in healing ceremonies; and Lia sleeps with her parents every night. To the astonishment of the medical community, Lia does not die, and by the end of the book, years after being declared brain dead, she's still alive. As I write this, Lia Lee is still alive and lovingly cared for by her mother and siblings. Her medical condition has not changed. Her father, Nao Kao Lee, died in January of 2003.

This book enriched, and possibly changed, my life. I can't recommend it too highly.

A fascinating case study of a Hmong family's profoundly frustrating encounter with a county medical center in rural California. The book is very well written, and gave me fresh insight into what it really means for us to be a "nation of immigrants." My only frustration was with the organization of the book. As it jumped backed and forth between the micro and the macro, and between the recent and more distant past, the narrative lost some of its momentum. But that said, it is one of those rare books that has made me look at the world in a new way, and for that reason, I highly recommend it.

This was an outstanding book. You may need to be a social anthropologist at heart to really love it, but the book was so enlightening on so many different levels. The background and customs of the Hmong are fascinating, and their clash with western culture is eye opening. I learned so much, not just about the Hmong, but about my own beliefs.

If anyone's been patient enough to read all hundred-plus reviews up to this point, they already know what this book is about, how well-written it was, how well researched, and how terribly humane.

All I can add is that, though I read (well, start, at any rate) about a hundred books a year, and have been doing so for about three decades now, this is the single best book I've ever read.

My criteria for a great book are that it is well written, interesting and thought provoking. Lillian Faderman meets all these criteria in I Begin My Life All Over. Faderman takes the reader on journey that is, in many ways, typical of the immigrant experience, especially those into twentieth and twenty-first century America. Through interviews with Hmong immigrants, she discusses the cultural changes that occur when moving from persecution into main stream America. Being the son of immigrants, I can see how the trends that she unearths have played out in my family. It also puts the current struggle of immigrants from Latin America into a more humane and non-political light.

This is an awesome book that tells the true and heart-wrenching stories of fear, desperation, and resilience that so many Hmong people endured as they were forced from their homeland due to the Vietnam War. Many Hmong immigrants that relocated to the U.S. found a "culture shock" awaiting them, as assimilation made it a difficult adjustment to the lifestyle they once lived. This book is a good read and recommended to anyone who is interested in learning about the immigrant experience or ethnic and minority groups in America.

This book is a great way for people to see how Hmong people see their life coming to America, and life before they came here. While reading the book I learned a lot, even though I am Hmong. The writers go into really deep details how living was and also how hard it was to adjust to America. Faderman also talks about how it was to be an immigrant, too. She compares most of the stuff Hmong people went through to her life as a child.

This book really gives you an understanding of being Hmong. You'll learn how they lived before they came over to the United States. Then it'll talk about how hard it was to change their lives to live in the U.S. Who thought that someone would explain how Hmong people came here and how they lived? After reading this book, you'll be able to open your mind to other cultures. They did a great job of opening Hmong people to the whole world.

Lillian Faderman, author of I Begin My Life All Over, claims to be telling her readers that the social world is a very harsh and difficult aspect of life, and is not as easy to live with as some may think. The social world can especially be cruel if an individual can not communicate with others due to language differences. When someone is all alone in a new place, with no indication of what to do or not do, where to go or not go, it becomes very intimidating and scary. Imagine being in a country not your own, entirely unfamiliar from language to culture, even the government is different, and are unable to speak to anyone, or know what street lights are and their meaning; this is a little bit of how Hmong immigrants felt when at last in America.
Hmong immigrants are who Faderman primarily relates this claim of the social world to. In several places throughout her book, she speaks of her own memories of her family's immigration. Her mother was a Jewish immigrant herself and had many hard times with the changes America held for her and her family. Faderman recalls the trials of language barriers, knowledge of how life in America works such as education, job seeking, and many more issues of the social world that her mother endured. In these ways, the author not only portrays the social world as a harsh and difficult aspect of life for Hmong immigrants, but can relate these difficulties to her very own life, showing how immigrants from different walks of life deal with similar issues as they come to America.
The claim of the social world being so harsh and difficult, especially for immigrants, is reasoned by the research of other books about the Hmong culture, as well as the personal stories. Each and every one of the people who shared their personal stories told of how coming to America or even having parents who did, was a struggle, not knowing how streets worked with street lights, how to cross the street, or even how to get around from one place to the next. All of these factors in the social world were different for the Hmong immigrants as well as Faderman's mother's experience as a Jewish immigrant. The cultures are so very different, one does not even know where to begin when in America, a strange land. These few reasons are that which make the claim true.
When relating Faderman's claim to those personal stories, including her own memories, as well as the other background information given about Hmong people, these reasons for stating such a claim are relevant. I think that although some data or case study information, if accessible, would have been a great addition to these personal experiences, the reasons to this claim of a harsh and difficult social world were backed up effectively within each person's story.
Faderman co-wrote this book with a Hmong immigrant by the name Ghia Xiong, who helped to tell her very own story, and gave other Hmong immigrants the comfort to be interviewed for this book. The majority of this book is focused around personal stories of many different Hmong immigrants, young and old, of their experiences with growing up in America and immigrating to America. Every single person who was interviewed and told their story for this book, commented in one way or another about how tough the social world changes were for them and their family. Older Hmong people could tell of their immigration and coming to America, where the young could tell of how tough their parents had it and relied on them for any literacy or education, since they were very much more Americanized than their elders. Faderman uses books on the Hmong immigration and culture as other creditable sources of information for her book to enhance and make clearer the personal stories of struggle and achievement.
The information from these book sources is always at the beginning of each `chapter' or section. Faderman uses these facts to enlighten the reader about the topic that will be talked about by Hmong immigrants' stories and to `set up' the mood for better understanding these stories. I think that this evidence is convincing and relevant even though nothing is shown as being a direct quote from a source. The information that is given prior to personal stories is always backed up by what the Hmong person says in their excerpt. The two areas always seem to match up in factual information, making it all relevant in my mind.
Faderman does not offer or refute alternative explanations that I can see. The entire book seems to be straight forward and all flow together without any conflicting ideas by the author or other personal stories. I find that one story will make sense of the others and so on. Each Hmong had some difficult experiences getting used to the social world in America, even many did not get used to anything, but would depend on their offspring to become educated and help them make it in the world.
This book was very well written and easy to follow. The argument given was clear throughout the entire text as being how the social world was and still is a harsh and difficult aspect of life, especially in the cases of being an immigrant. I believe this was a good and thought provoking claim that was constantly supported by the stories of Hmong immigrants as well as Faderman's references to her own life as a child with her mother struggling and her helping her mother make it through. I don't see any aspect of this claim as a weakness, only data and case studies would have made a nice addition. The book and it's claim are strong throughout and constantly supported over and over by the content therein.

This is an astonishing book. The author, working with a Hmong colleague, collected many moving oral histories. She then wove them together into an astonishing tour-de-force.

This book provides a voice to Hmong people, telling their stories in their own words. At the same time, Faderman places the Hmong experience in the larger context of the experience of leaving one's home to come to the United States as an immigrant. Using the particular experiences of her Hmong informants, as well as her own history growing up as the child of an immgrant, she sheds light on the general topic of what it means to be an immigrant in this country.

For most US residents, there is immigration somewhere in our histories; this book speaks to how our families were profoundly affected by the dislocation and courage of these immgrants, whether they are ourselves, our parents, or lurking in the more distant past.

I can't imagine a better book on this topic.