The Latehomecomer

A Hmong Family Memoir...

We had the pleasure to meet Kao Kalia Yang at the 2010 Building Bridges Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College while our daughter Cassandra was an undergrad there.  As we listened to her read from her memoir The Latehomecomer I knew I would enjoy it.  Her story is at once foreign and familiar; who among us spent their childhood in a refugee camp, who has not loved their grandmother?  With a gentle, insistent voice that is as much poetry as prose she tells a story similar to those I've heard from my Hmong friends and colleagues.  If you'd like to become better acquainted with our Hmong neighbors here in the Upper Midwest, or want to see the New American experience through the eyes of a six year old, or simply wish to read an elegantly written, heartfelt memoir, The Latehomecomer is for you.