Reviews

The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang

aj_mooney's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

A beautifully poignant story about family, love, and loss. I am ashamed at how much I did not know about the Hmong people or their history, but Kao Kalia Yang does a spectacular job of sharing her culture with readers while also documenting the stories of her family. I love a memoir that is read by the author, and Yang's soothing voice swept me away to the mountains of Laos, the hills of Thailand, and the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Grief, and Child death

Moderate: Genocide

setherson7's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

An insightful perspective on the Hmong experience as refugees and their adaptability to life in MN, USA.

lmsluis's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring sad medium-paced

4.25

quigonchuy's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

It's a beautifully written memoir that doubles as a history lesson through the eyes of a single Hmong family starting from the Vietnam war through to the passing of the family matriarch here in the US. It's also a testament to the failure of the American media and the education in the US (though it is not framed like this, this is just my commentary) that it is not common knowledge that the US recruited almost an entire group of people (2/3 of Hmong men) to fight a shadow war in Laos on behalf of the US and the repercussions of that. 

barbie_fett's review

informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

katzmetz's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

anajoy's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

coming from someone who has read exactly one memoir in their life, this is the best memoir i’ve read. 

i read this memoir for class and i have to say that i am very glad that i did. i feel like it’s objectively so weird to rate a memoir because it feels vaguely like i am putting a rating on this person’s life, so i am basing my rating on the writing alone. with that being said, the writing was absolutely beautiful; the way that yang manages to capture emotions in her writing is so masterfully done like omg girl you are a Genius.

allysonwbrunette's review against another edition

5.0

I don’t know that I would have been drawn specifically to this book on my own, but this is the 2020 Fox Cities Reads selection and I was able to borrow a community copy to read in advance of Kao Kalia Yang’s coming to the Fox Cities Book Festival this spring. The story line follows the multi-generational story of Kao’s grandmother, parents and siblings as they fleed from Vietnam, spent years in Thailand refugee camps and eventually resettled in California and Minnesota as refugees in the United States in the 1990s. Hmong culture is very present in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but I don’t know a great deal about it. This book presented a beautifully accessible narrative of Kao’s family history, Hmong folklore and a unique perspective on a displaced people seeking to find their new cultural and physical home in this world.

colleengeedrumm's review against another edition

5.0

I heard her heartbeat answer my hug.

Love, for me, is the reason why we remember our lives in stories, with characters and places, vivid and true. It is easy to talk of the contents of a book. It is far harder to forget the love on encounters between the pages of lives. - the author

anarchalmcdonalds's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

family memoir, starting with her parents in laos, their journey to vietnam refugee camps, her birth and early childhood in the camps, their migration to Minnesota, life in Minnesota, culminating with the death of her grandmother. beautiful prose, beautifully told. audiobook reading is full of raw emotion. heavy, moving, full of love. honestly it is embarrassing how little i knew about hmong history, growing up around a big hmong community. this book does an excellent job of telling that history, from the perspective of this family.