This year is looking to be author Kao Kalia Yang’s busiest year so far with the planned release of four new books.
I sat down with Yang at her childhood library in St. Paul, the East Side Freedom Library, to talk with her about the new books, including “Where Rivers Part,” a story of her mother’s life. It’s the third and final installment of her family memoirs, she said. In our conversation about her family’s last memoir, we dived into the writing process, motherhood, and her hopes for the future.
Yang and I also talked about some of our shared experiences as Hmong women who grew up on St. Paul’s East Side. We both grew up deeply embedded in the Hmong community, and our childhood homes were less than ten minutes apart, so we were familiar with the same streets, Hmong grocery stores, and restaurants.
The more we talked, the more I realized how much we had in common. Experiencing that with another Hmong woman who loves writing as much as I do was rare and special.
Her 2008 book, “The Latehomecomer,” the first of her family memoirs, changed what I imagined was possible for someone like myself. I remember meeting Yang in college as I waited in line for her to sign my copy of the book, feeling so excited to tell her, “I’m from the East Side, just like you.”
She signed her name and added “for the east side.”
Yang has published a memoir about her father’s life in Laos and a memoir about her family fleeing Laos after the Vietnam War, their time in a Thai refugee camp, and their immigration to Minnesota when she was a young child. She has also published five children’s books. Last year, the Minnesota Opera debuted an opera based on her memoir, “The Song Poet,” which is believed to be the first Hmong story ever adapted for the opera.
“Where Rivers Part” is scheduled for release on March 19 by Atria Books.
She also has three other children’s books covering topics such as self-discovery and resilience, coming out this year. “The Rock in My Throat,” is scheduled for release on March 5, “Caged” is scheduled for release on May 28, and “The Diamond Explorer,” Yang’s first book for middle-grade readers, is scheduled for release on September 17.
I was eager to ask about her new books and hear more about what she’s been up to. We discussed a range of topics, including how she wrote her mother’s story in a first-person narrative, the murder of Hmong artist and activist Tou Ger Xiong this past December, and the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, who worked for St. Paul Public Schools, by St. Anthony police in 2016.
The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.
This idea of you writing your next book about your mother’s life, when did that first come to you?
After I wrote “The Song Poet,” I knew that I wanted to write my mother’s story. But I knew that I wasn’t ready. I knew that I needed to have fallen in love first, and in some capacity, that if I was lucky enough to have children, that I needed to be a mother first before I could even begin to understand the mechanisms in my mother’s life.
My mom is not a very talkative woman. I know that when the world looks at my mother, they see this tiny woman with red hands, who walks with a limp because she spent so much of life standing on hard concrete along the assembly lines for factories in Minnesota. I wanted to put into the world a woman like my mother, recognizing that this world is filled with women like my mother. But I also knew that I wanted to wait until I was at a point of my life where I was really, truly, ready.
Do you remember when you asked your mother if you could write a book about her life? Was she open to it?
My mom was definitely open to it. I think especially during the [COVID] pandemic year, there was a lot of time. Our bubbles were small. Every Saturday, we’d go to mom and dad’s house, and we talked a lot.
The story of my mother’s life is filled with so many stories. And everyday she tells me a new one, I’m like, “Oh God, no. The book has to end.”
My mother’s a unique woman, because in her village she was one of the only girls and the first one to be educated. Her father was a prosperous merchant, so he could afford to do without her labor. So, ever since she was a little girl, she had a love for books and an appreciation for stories.
related sTORIES
Tell me a bit about your mother. How old is she? Where does she live now? Is she retired?
Mom was born in 1961. Like many of our parents who lived through the war, mom and dad are much older than their age would suggest. Their bodies have taken a hit, not only from the war and the aftermath with poverty in America. They’ve had hard jobs in America.
My mom was let go from her job because she was a file clerk in the basement vault of a bank. She pushed heavy, heavy mortgage files in carts and applied for 13 different promotions to get out of the vault. But each time, they said, “We found a better fit.”
Because of pushing the heavy carts, she got a work injury and got shoulder surgery. After that, she couldn’t keep up with the quotas, so they gave her job to someone else. She was not ready to retire, and I think it brought her to a dark place of depression, which I write about in the book.
With so many great stories from conversations with your mother, how did you map out the actual timeline and what stories you were going to include?
The beginning was so organic to me. I got all the way through until we got to America. How do you differentiate the American? Right after me, my mom had all those miscarriages. It was just me and my older sister for the longest time.
We come to America, my mom starts working in a factory, and there’s a slew of children. That part, organizationally, was the hardest. What could I let each child reveal about who my mother had become, and how her life had changed, or where it was going?
A part of my mother telling me this story is I think there are stories she wants my siblings to know. My mom, she’s a very smart woman, she would tell me her message to each of us. That’s how I organized it. And then, there’s the end. What happens when she returns to meet her brothers and sisters? I knew the beginning and the end, the middle was the hard part in terms of craft. But I never map out my stories because that limits me. I go wherever the story’s pulling me.
How were you able to write the book in first-person? Do you feel like when you’re writing it, you’re seeing it in her eyes? Or do you feel like there’s still a part of you that’s narrating it?
There are things that I knew already, which I think really helped in terms of situating myself in her world. But for me, it was so important that the world entered my mother’s story via her eyes, via her gaze.
I did as much research as I could and emotionally, I was there with her each step. When my mother tells her stories, I cry with her. I don’t tell her to stop crying, which is interesting, because normally I would say, “Don’t cry. I love you so much.” But I knew she needed to cry, and all I could do was cry with her. It was really emotional for me. I wanted the world to see it through her eyes.
What was it like writing this book about your own mother, as a mother yourself? How did that affect you?
I have all these journals. I’ve kept them ever since I was a little kid. I have boxes and boxes of journals. I’ve always said to my husband, “If anything should happen to me before you, you have to burn these journals.”
There’s so much of me in the world already; these things are mine.
My daughter, who’s 10, says to me, “One day, when you’re gone, I’m gonna have to laminate them so they don’t melt away.”
I’m like, “No, that’s not what I want.”
That experience gets me thinking about my responsibility as a memoirist and as a writer. The book is creative nonfiction—it’s an area I’m trained to do. But I wanted to make a book that would be of service to my mother, where my mother could read and be close to the people who love her again. I want the book to be a gift to my mom.
We laughed and we cried. In the end, I write about how one day, my mother, as an old woman who returns to the jungles of Laos and how her mother will be waiting for her, because she walked away with my dad. I can’t translate it to her because it’s too emotional, but I tell her to read it yourself. She has the book right beside her bed. She tells me that she reads the same pages again and again.
Was there anything your mother shared that you felt like you understood better because you’re a mother now? What did that mean to you, making those connections as mothers?
My mom had six miscarriages after me. So, I knew miscarriages happen. But when I got pregnant for the very first time, I didn’t think it would happen. And then, at 19 weeks, my baby died inside of me. I had to deliver a dead baby into the world. I was so scared.
My mother was the first one to hold my dead baby, and my mom wasn’t scared. Then I was curious and it gave me the courage to say, ‘Can I see him, too? Can I hold him, too?’
Kao Kalia Yang
It was the first time that I was pregnant, and the baby would be dead, and I didn’t know what the baby would look like. My mother was the first one to hold my dead baby, and my mom wasn’t scared. Then I was curious and it gave me the courage to say, “Can I see him, too? Can I hold him, too?”
When I had my live daughter, my mom was also there. Seeing how my mother loves my children, I now know what’s missing in my life. I’ve never seen my grandma as a grandma, the way I’m seeing my mother as a grandma. But also, my mom always said a newborn baby’s feet feels like a bird.
When I was a kid, I had parakeets that I loved but I wasn’t good at raising them so they died. The moment I held my daughter’s feet and I could feel her pulse in her feet, I knew exactly what my mother was talking about. My own journey has taught me so much about my mom’s journey.
I want to ask you about what I think is going to be a really big theme in this book: The role of motherhood and in the context of traditional Hmong culture. We see oftentimes that Hmong women are married young, and the idea of belonging to the husband and his family, and no longer a part of the family you were raised in.
In America, there’s also boxes for mothers, like women all want to be mothers, or mothers are always the caretakers. What can you share about how the role of motherhood is highlighted in your book through your mother’s eyes, and your own?
I never thought, “I’m gonna be a mother someday.” I took care of babies so young. Mom and dad were working, and I had to take care of my younger siblings. It’s a lot of work. I was still so young myself. I got married at around 30, and my husband wanted kids. But in my head, it didn’t click.
I’m very tiny, I’m not the image of your American mother. Images of mothers do not look like us. I couldn’t envision it. Suddenly, I knew I wanted that. My mother, because she had so many miscarriages, she didn’t want to terminate one of her own. But when my parents had [my brother] Maxwell, he was a surprise. They were older.
Dad suggested, in one conversation, “Maybe you don’t have this baby,” and this hurt my mother profoundly. All of our lives were her choice. In “The Song Poet,” I wrote about how when I was born, my sister Dawb being a crybaby, so my dad used to let Dawb suck his nipple. Where have you ever seen that in a book about men, but Hmong men in particular, and men of color?
It’s so important to me, in my portrayals of the mothers and fathers in my life, to do it well and be accurate, even if it challenges mainstream stereotypes.
The Secret War took away so many of the men. I came from very strong women. My mother was the one to pick up toys at the Salvation Army for us. It was my mom who handled paying the bills. At the food shelf, it was always my mom. My dad’s heart couldn’t handle it.
That courage and that strength of motherhood is something I really wanted to communicate with “Where Rivers Part.” In many ways, it’s a deeply feminist book.
Since you’ve written “The Latehomecomer,” there have been so many more Hmong authors who have written books across multiple genres. But I still feel like even though we’ve been in the United States for about 50 years, I have to explain who we are.
The stories you’ve shared are so personal to you, how do you see Hmong stories and authors evolving?
We’re a small people in a big world. And we’re an ethnic minority with no country. So often, when we meet anyone, the question is, “Where are you from?” I encounter that all the time as well.
But in terms of knowing, I see a very long road. I don’t think in 10 years people will know. Because we’ve been here for so long, and I have to believe that every generation that ever lived tried to tell the world who we were in the ways that were possible.
When you see a Hmong person, and they say they’re Hmong, and you’re Hmong, you know something that the world doesn’t know.
Kao Kalia Yang
With the tragic passing of Tou Ger Xiong, a fellow Carleton graduate like myself, Hmong is in the news for a moment, but then they’ll go away again. I think we have so much work to do.
At the same time, I do not question our talent as a community. I do not question our passion or our commitment to each other. I think we’re changing and evolving like everybody else. But we’re an incredible experiment. How many people are still intact as a people without a homeland?
When you see a Hmong person, and they say they’re Hmong, and you’re Hmong, you know something that the world doesn’t know.
What was that process like to have written the book and go back to your mother to make sure everything was accurate? And did she disagree with you on anything that you didn’t want to change?
For me, it’s not whether she approves of everything, it’s whether I’m accurate or not. My mom was like, “Why do people want to know how we wash our hair in the jungles? That’s stupid.” But I wanted to put it in. I think it’s important and people actually want to know how the Hmong stay clean in the jungles of Laos.
And then there are things for me that I think I write about that we both really resonate deeply on. You know, the book ends on a ghost story in the last segment of the book. It’s one of my mom’s favorite stories.
A lot of these decisions are my own as an artist. And she’s like, “Why would you include that in there?” and I said, “Because the stories came back to you in Laos, and it’s one of your favorite stories” that my mother tells me the way her mother told her.
We’ve talked a lot about your book on your mother’s life, but you also have three children’s books coming out this year. Can you highlight what they’re about?
In many ways, when I think of all my childrens’ books, there’s an adult book and then there’s a childrens’ book companion. For my father’s book, “The Song Poet,” the “Front the Tops of the Trees” is a story about my dad and me climbing the trees in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp.
“The Rock in My Throat” is very much the companion title to “Where Rivers Part.” It’s about my inability to talk with selective mutism that I lived. But it’s very much because people never listened to my mom in America. Then, we have “Where Rivers Part” and there’s a ticketed event at The Parkway Theater in Minneapolis.
Then on May 28, 2024, “Caged” comes out. “Caged” is a fictional book set in a refugee camp based largely on my experiences, but allows me certain freedoms to fly. It’s a book about children, dreaming, and imagining a life away from the camps. It’s very much a book about the freedom of a child’s imagination, even when it is being literally fenced in.
“The Diamond Explorer” is a middle-grade debut fiction. It’s inspired by my baby brother, but it’s fictional. This character who I’ve grown to love—Malcolm, born on the Minnesota prairie, destined to become a shaman. But he doesn’t know it.
All he knows is that people close to him are dying. This book [“The Diamond Explorer”] is also largely inspired by my children’s school. They go to a St. Paul public school. And the police murdered Philando Castile. I wanted to put all of that into fiction, and so I did. That one comes out sometime this fall.
