
The Fifth Wife
Soua Lee
Memoirs
Soua Lee is a Hmong American writer whose memoir recounts a childhood that began in a Thai refugee camp and continued in the United States, shaped by family expectation and the distance between an American education and a traditional household. She writes from inside the arrangements she describes rather than about them, which is uncommon: most English-language accounts of Hmong marriage practice are written by outsiders and arrive with a verdict attached.