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‘So many stories I didn’t know’: Kao Kalia Yang started out writing her family’s refugee memoir. Now she’s sharing the journeys of others.

The Minnesota author’s new book, “Somewhere in the Unknown World,” began when she collected her uncle’s story about fleeing Laos. Then she spoke to a Liberian hospital worker, a Karen parent from school, a Jewish singer from Ukraine—and created “a collective refugee memoir.”

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