‘I'm one American story’: Minnesota author Kao Kalia Yang resists being ‘the Hmong voice’
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This year marks 50 years of Hmong refugee resettlement and immigration to Minnesota. MPR News will feature Hmong Minnesotans in a variety of careers through the month of May as part of our “ChangeMakers” series. This series highlights Minnesotans from diverse and often underrepresented backgrounds who are making an impact.
This experience is one of the stories Kao Kalia Yang describes in her writing: her memoirs, fiction, opera, public speaking and teaching. Born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand, Yang was 6 years old when she arrived in St. Paul with her parents and older sister.
When she published her memoir “The Latehomecomer” in 2008 — a work she referred to as a love letter to her grandmother — it was the first memoir by a Hmong American to be nationally distributed. The book has since been named an NEA Big Read.
How have you seen work by Hmong Americans change over the years?
It has flowered, and I'm excited, because I think the harvest is still a long ways away. You know, Mai Der Vang, a poet working from California, is doing phenomenal work. And I get emails from young writers all the time. You know, the number one question I get from young Hmong Americans when I meet them is, ‘How did you become a writer? How do you make a living as a writer? And can I become one too?’
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I tell them ‘of course!’ It's incredibly hard to make a living as a writer. It's a push of heart. But if the engine of your heart is strong and you have a community behind you, then the pathways are all possible.
You've done memoir, you've done a libretto for an opera, you've done picture books. What keeps you pushing into all these different genres?
Curiosity. I want to grow. I don't want to get boxed in. You know, coming into literature from where I'm positioned, it's going to be far too easy for people to box me in. And so I'm always pushing myself to grow. And I think it's important as a mother for my children to see me grow in different directions, to see me try for something, and even to see me fall, and then, of course, the crawling, the getting up again, all of that.
I think it's a lesson that my mother did such a good job teaching me. You know, my mother, she was always the person who opened the door when the Meals on Wheels truck came. With the WIC vouchers in her hand, she stood at the grocery stores to make sure that we could get fed. She's an incredible woman, and I think in all of those moments, it was hard for her, because she knew we were looking. She understood it, but she did it anyway with as much grace and dignity as she could muster. I gain courage and inspiration by thinking about these things.
Talk to me about the risk of getting boxed in.
In the beginning, when I was a much younger writer, I think the danger was that I was an example of the great American dream, and I knew how dangerous that was, because there were other equally smart, equally capable people around me in our community who didn't have the same access to opportunities, the same structure and support that I have in my own family. And so I've always been very keen that I'm one American story.
My stories are not just about Hmong people, although I'm centered here and I'm home here, and I'm so lucky that I get to be a writer for a people still growing a body of literature. And so I think it's super exciting to resist the fact that my voice is the Hmong voice, or that I am speaking on behalf of people who can't. I would have very little to write if the people in my life couldn’t speak. So many of them speak in so many different ways. It's about the ways in which we listen, the patience in our hearts that invite these stories into the world or silence them forever.
I have heard that people who write picture books get the best fan mail, so I'm curious: is that the case for you, and are there certain messages that you hold on to?
Yes. But I have to say that just this week alone, I got a card. I was at Winona State University. And when I was there, there were four Hmong girls, and they took the front row, a rare occurrence in a university setting. One of them said, ‘We've never wanted anybody to do more, to do better.’ And as I was speaking, I was looking at them, and when I was done, they were crying, and one of them said to me, ‘It's so hard to be a Hmong woman. Nobody knows that I wake up at night to teach my parents how to work Gmail, and that I wake up again the next day, you know, to go to classes. How are you so happy as one?’
In responding to them, my own tears started flowing. But I came home and there was a card, and I opened it just yesterday, and this one said, ‘I've been waiting for you for four years, and I will wait for you for four more years.’ It's incredibly moving, the scale and the scope of the mail that I get, but children's — oh, elementary schools are the best! Letters and drawings and a lot of “I love you’s.”
What new areas are you exploring as a writer?
This past year, I had my debut middle grade fiction, and then this coming year, I'm working on a young adult memoir, which is new for me, and then adult fiction, which I've not done yet, in long form anyway. And I'm so excited. I feel like I've been waiting a long time, you know?
I do nonfiction because my mother is such a nonfiction person. My dad is a poet. He has a poet's heart. The wings of his heart are always flying everywhere. Fiction, though, allows Kalia, in some ways, to step forward. You know, the kid who read all of those scary books, Stephen King, everything I could get my hands on. The kid who still listens for the ghost stories every time I'm at a Hmong funeral. All of these things that I've collected in my heart. And so I'm excited for fiction. The adult one is called ‘When We Are Ghosts,’ and it takes place in a Hmong funeral home. So three days and three nights, 24 hours a day, a family gathers. The wife of the deceased says that every time she goes up to the coffin, he opens his eyes. Plus, there’s the whole family drama going on around them.
