The Latehomecomer

Start here. Kao Kalia Yang was born in the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand and came to the United States at six, and she wrote the book Hmong readers hand to anyone who asks who the Hmong are. It is a family memoir built around her grandmother, moving from wartime Laos through the camps to Minnesota with a patience that lets grief and humor sit side by side. The Hmong experience was recorded for decades mostly by outsiders; this book answers that quietly, by telling one family whole, from the inside. It asks nothing of the reader but attention, which makes it the right first book for students, teachers, and anyone who arrived at Hmong history through Fadiman and wants the view from within.