The Fifth Wife

Mai Cee is born in a refugee camp, brought to the United States young, and grows up a perfectionist inside a household with firm expectations about what a Hmong daughter does. The memoir follows the collision between the university education she is working toward and the marriage arrangements her family understands as her future. Soua Lee writes from inside the arrangement rather than about it, which is rarer than it sounds; most accounts of Hmong marriage practice in English are written by outsiders and arrive with a verdict attached. This is a self-published book and reads like one in places, but the account is first-hand and there is very little else like it in print. For adult readers, and for anyone who found the sensationalized version in the news and wants the interior one.