How Do I Begin?

The Hmong American Writers' Circle formed in Fresno to give Hmong writers what every young literature needs, a room of peers, and this anthology is that room made visible. Poems, short stories, and essays, most from California's Central Valley, take up war inheritance, family duty, faith, and the ordinary American business of becoming a self, and the title asks the question every contributor is answering. Quality varies the way it always does in a first-generation anthology, and that unevenness is part of the record; you are watching a literature assemble itself in real time. Alongside the founding journals, this is a primary document of Hmong American writing's emergence, and several of its contributors have gone on to substantial literary careers. For adult readers, creative writing classrooms, and anyone tracking where this literature goes next.