The Latehomecomer

“Because her people had only been reunited with a written language in the 1950s, in the break of a war without a name, they had not had the opportunity to write their stories down.”

This is Yang’s reason for writing her memoir. Yang’s family constantly tells stories of their past, how they survived war and starvation and refugee camps, but she is afraid that once they die their stories will die with them. Writing this memoir has allowed Yang to immortalize her family’s rich Hmong heritage in ways that would have otherwise been lost. 

“When the murders started, and the last of the men and boys began disappearing, the Hmong knew that the only thing coming for them was death.”

During the Vietnam War, the Americans sought the help of many Hmong boys and men. During this time, the Hmong had American protection and aid. However, once the war ended, the Americans left Laos, and the remaining Hmong were systematically killed by the communist government as vengeance for helping the Americans. With no hope, many Hmong people fled to the jungles to hide from the soldiers.

“My mother holds on to the times when her mother would save the sweetest wild yam, the softest part of a roasted cassava for her, even in the jungle, even in a war that carried no name, even among the dead bodies; my mother felt loved.” 

Food plays an important role in Yang’s memoir, often representing survival, friendship, and celebration. In a world ravaged by war and poverty, the ability to have food is a symbol that people have lived to see another day. For Yang’s mother, this memory of her mother offering her the most delicate morsels of food is a sign that her mother cares deeply about her. It is all the more touching given her harsh surroundings. 

“Before my mother left the clearing for the walk to where my father’s family was camped, her mother gave her gifts—fine embroidery she had spent hours in the hot sun making, little pieces of cloth carefully lined with flowery symbols and connected squares that told the history of the Hmong people, a lost story, a narrative sewn but no longer legible.”

In the midst of war, Yang’s family isn’t able to celebrate Yang’s mother and father’s wedding in traditional Hmong style, with feasts and elaborate gifts. However, being in war-ravaged conditions make it more important to hold on to their traditions and stories to keep the Hmong spirit alive. 

“She just stood beside my father and watched as her mother, an old woman with a water pail on her back, her left hand on her hip, walked away, into the darkness of the Laotian jungle.” 

This is the last time Yang’s mother sees her mother, and she doesn’t even get to say goodbye. This is representative of many Hmong families who were divided during the aftermath of the war. Unable to say goodbye or see their family again, all they have left are memories.

“He knew that they were women from the mountains and that they couldn’t swim; there was nowhere to run.” 

Many Hmong were raised in the mountains, away from water, and therefore had never learned to swim. The soldiers used this to their advantage when they captured the Hmong women and children and sent them to a camp; the camp wasn’t fenced in, but it was surrounded by water. This inability to swim becomes a larger predicament when the Hmong try to flee Laos and enter Thailand. 

“If my family would have crossed the river two months later, they would have been massacred.”

Thailand began denying entry to Hmong refugees, which meant that any refugee attempting to gain access to the country was turned back to Laos. On many occasions, Yang’s family is lucky to be alive while so many other Hmong families lost their lives.

“For many Hmong, their lives on paper began on the day the UN registered them as refugees of war.”

Without a written language of their own, the Hmong have no recorded history. Even in America, Yang realizes that the Hmong are missing from the pages of the history books. 

“Ban Vinai Refugee Camp was a place where kids kept secrets and adults stayed inside themselves.” 

The Ban Vinai Refugee Camp was a holding place for many Hmong who would eventually move back to Laos, to different refugee camps, or to America. For the children, they didn’t realize the dangers of the camps. For the adults, it was a sad, lonely place, where instead of living in the present, they were often looking back at what they once had, or looking forward to what could be.

“People were dying because of illness and disease. People were also dying because of suicide, especially during New Year’s celebrations, perhaps because that was a time for new beginnings; the Hmong people had learned that death marked an opening to new lives.” 

The Hmong are deeply connected to their ancestors and believe that when a person dies their spirit journeys back to the place of their birth to reconnect with their family. For the Hmong, death isn’t the end, it’s a journey back to the beginning. 

“Life in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp was hard for people who saw it clearly, those who remembered the freedom of place, and those who wanted to establish a life.” 

Ban Vinai Refugee Camp wasn’t a place to live a life. It was like a layover, a sort of purgatory. For the adults who had experienced the freedom of life in Laos before the war, the camp was like a prison. But for the younger generations, the camp was an opportunity towards something greater to come. 

“Grandma’s heart hurt. She could not watch him walk away from her, not because of death or illness, but because he yearned for a life that she could not help him make.”

The Hmong ancestors and elders had a significant impact on the lives of the younger generations. Yang’s grandma felt responsible that she couldn’t make a better life for her younger children, and regretted that they had to endure the ravages of a war-torn land. She regrets that her children had to leave the land where they were born to seek a life for their children.

“When we were still in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, men and women who believed in God visited and tried to get Hmong people to share in their belief. My family was not interested because we already had our own belief in our ancestors and the spirits of the land and the Buddha, but many of the children grew curious.” 

While some Hmong were converted to Christianity by missionaries while in the refugee camps, most Hmong held steadfast to theirbelief in the spirits of their ancestors and Buddhism. This is true of Yang’s family.

“That first year, and for many years after, my parents spent a lot of time yearning to be strangers. I felt it then, and I feel it now. It is hardly ever enough to simply be alive.” 

Yang is describing how many Hmong adults felt after moving to America. Although they were finally safe in America, they still felt like strangers in a strange land. Instead of assimilating into the culture, many Americans met the Hmong with hostility and violence. In this way, Yang’s parents thought it best to blend into the background, to remain strangers to a country that wasn’t that welcoming. 

“In our food and in the stories, our home emphasized America in different Hmong ways.” 

Although Yang’s family still tells traditional Hmong stories, they now emphasize American values. This is seen when Yang’s dad tells her a story that is meant to encourage her to do well in school. Also, Yang’s mother, who is working the nightshift, begins making Yang and Dawb peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, an easy America meal that has replaced their traditional foods.

“My grandma did not try to be American. She spoke only Hmong.” 

Unlike the younger generations in Yang’s family, Yang’s grandma refuses to assimilate to American culture. She misses her homeland of Laos because that’s where she and all her family had lived together. In America, she lives separate from her children and grandchildren, which makes her resentful of the American way of life.

“Then, we hadn’t met enough Vietnamese to know the dangers of generalization, to see beyond the narrative of loss.”

Yang and Dawb often play a game where they are killed by Vietnamese soldiers. Yang is recognizing that not all Vietnamese were bad to the Hmong, and that it is dangerous to generalize about groups of people.

“At the end of rainbows you can find anything. A rainbow is really a dragon coming out to drink.” 

Instead of the traditional Anglo-American story, where there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Yang describes the phenomenon of the rainbow using Hmong myth. This is important because it illustrates how Yang’s views of the world are informed by her Hmong heritage. 

“They would never understand why American people talked about how expensive babies were and how poor people shouldn’t have so many. How was it that such smart people couldn’t understand that the best way to live life was to give life.” 

This is a commentary about value differences between more assimilated Americans and the Hmong. While many American couples choose to have few children and seem to look down on poor people who have multiple children, the Hmong understand that having many children is a blessing. Hope for their children helped the Hmong to survive the war, and having many children is seen as a fortuitous as it gives the Hmong something to live for.

“There I had done well in my classes; I discovered a formula I thought quite sacred: do the homework, go to class every day, and when in class, follow the teacher with your eyes.” 

Yang had trouble learning to speak English because she wasn’t confident in her voice. As a result, in her early educational years she didn’t do well in school. However, after being in the American school system for a while, she realizes that if you follow the rules and do what the teachers want, you can succeed. 

“But we were refugees in this country, not citizens. It was not our home, only an asylum. All this came crashing down.” 

This quote comes right after the welfare program ended, and for the first time Yang’s family realizes that, although America provided them safety, they have not been welcomed as citizens. For the Hmong people who were unable to speak or write English, they couldn’t pass the citizenship test and could face deportation. 

“She carried everything with her, unable to trust the safety of place.” 

This refers to Grandma Yang who intimately knew the impermanence of place. Because she had traveled from place to place her entire life, she had learned to take her whole life with her.  

“But I think she never told us how they died because in her old age, she was more concerned that we knew how she had lived, more than how her family had died.”

Since the Hmong had no written language of their own, and Grandma Yang never learned to write English, she knew how important it was to tell the story of her loved ones. For it was only by telling their stories that they would live on through the memory of those still alive.