Somewhere in the Unknown World

Yang turns from her own family to her neighbors. Minnesota has taken in more refugees per capita than any other state, and this book gathers fourteen of their stories, told to Yang and written down by her, from Syria, Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, Laos and elsewhere. It is the one book of hers that is not principally about the Hmong, and it earns its place here precisely for that reason: it shows the Hmong resettlement as one thread in a larger Minnesota story, told by a Hmong writer who had the standing to ask. Yang's restraint is the craft on display, each account given its own shape rather than flattened into a common arc. Useful for readers who want the wider frame around the Hmong American experience, and for classrooms teaching migration through first-person accounts.