Exceptionally Good Book!

       Hmong American writer, Kao Kalia Yang led, off with The Late Homecomer, which was the story of her family and much about her grandmother. Then she wrote The Song Poet, a biography of her father. Now, a mother herself, she has written a biography of her mother, Where Rivers Part: A Story Of MY Mother's Life. It's exceptionally good!

       "Born in 1961 in Laos, Tswb has a childhood marked by the violence of America's Secret War and the CIA recruitment of the Hmong and other ethnic minorities into the lost cause. By the time Tswb is a teenager, the US has vacated Laos, and  the country has erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who are considered traitors. Fearing for their lives, Tswb and her family leave behind everything and flee into the jungle."  Quoted from the book's dusk jacket.

       Yang has written the book in her mother's voice and it is filled with incisive observations about humans and their interactions.  Here's an example as Tswb remembers her father. "Father had raised himself and five younger brothers into manhood. On this journey he had learned, among other thing, to be careful in his speech, slow in his feelings, and steady in the places where others might shake." P. 15. 

      In her life of flight in the jungle Tswb marries as a teenager, leaving her clan for her husbands. She gives birth to her first child, a daughter. After years on the run the clan escapes across the Mekong River to Thailand. After spending a decade in a Thai refugee camp, where their second daughter who is the author of the biography is born, they move to St. Paul, MN.

      Tswb is the mother of 8 children, whose births were interspersed with 7 miscarriages. Her life is a story of tragic adventure. However, as interesting as that is, what make it profound is her reflections on motherhood. It was a significant educational experience about motherhood for me. It includes her thoughts about her mother, mother-in-law and care for her own children. She deserves her currently peaceful life in a house on a hill. The entire story is one of endured racism.

     Her children have excelled; graduating from Carleton, Stanford, Columbia and several with advanced degrees. The profundity of her reflections indicate her brilliance. 

     READ IT! READ IT! READ IT!

Takk for alt,

Al

PS Factoid: The US dropped more ordnance on Laos, a country about the size of Minnesota, in 7 years of secret bombing than was dropped on Germany in WWII.