Memoirs Are Powerful Currency for This Hmong American Writer

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Stories are precious currency for Kao Kalia Yang, a Hmong American writer.

Yang was born in the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Laotian civil war. Growing up, she often found hope in the stories her grandmother recounted about life in Laos before the war — stories about highland villages where soaring birds cut silhouettes against the jagged mountainside and about family members she had never met.

These memories opened up the world for Yang, cementing a geographic and cultural identity beyond the bamboo huts of the camp.

“I had been trained in the form of the story at the feet of my elders,” she said in a recent interview. “It was just a matter of translation.”

Yang’s family was one of many who fled Laos after 1975, when the communist government took power. During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. recruited the Hmong to join its fight against communism in Laos in a campaign now known as the “secret war.”

After America withdrew, the Hmong were persecuted for their involvement with the U.S., and many, including her family, fled to the jungles of Laos before escaping as refugees to Thailand and eventually being resettled in countries around the world.