Memoirs

Lub Neej

Memoir is where Hmong American literature found its first wide readership, and it remains the shelf that explains the community best: wartime Laos, the Thai camps, and the long work of rebuilding in America, told by the people who lived it. These are family books as much as war books, often written by a second generation recording parents and grandparents before the stories go quiet. If you are new, begin with Kao Kalia Yang's The Latehomecomer, then let each memoir lead you deeper into the history shelf beside it.