Love During Wartime
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"Love During Wartime" by Kao Kalia Yang (April 2008) tells the story of how the author's parents, both Hmong, met in the jungles of Laos while fleeing soldiers who were trying to kill them. Separated and reunited, the couple eventually escaped across the Mekong River into Thailand, with little else besides their 5-week-old baby girl, Dawb, who was on the verge of death.
Yang's new book, The Latehomecomer (April 2008, Coffee House Press), gives a more detailed picture of their escape and subsequent life in a Thai refugee camp and then Minnesota. For an update on Kalia, her sister and their parents, read on.
Wondertime: Your parents fled their country with just your sister and the clothes on their backs. Today your sister is an attorney, and you are a writer with a new book about your parents' escape. They must be very proud of you.
I'm proud of them. They should be proud of all they've done to get to here. Everything I try to do is built on the life that they have enabled. The places I may go my father has never seen, he says, and he's the one who took me to the top of the trees to show me a world beyond the fence.
Wondertime: Yes, we say in the story that your father carried you into the trees to show you the world beyond the squalid refugee camp where you were living. Does he still do that?
He's older now. His version of climbing trees now is driving us around in the car, all of us—two boys and three more girls, so there are seven of us now — squished together in the back, showing us all of America, he says.
Wondertime: Did you know that your sister almost died when she was an infant?
I never knew until I saw photos and newspaper clippings from that time. There are these children who are barely children anymore, they are just skin and bones, with their eyes closed. You can't tell if they're girls or boys. My mom started crying when she saw the photos. She said, "That's what your sister looked like."
Wondertime: Had you heard the story of how your parents met, and their flight?
I heard about the crossing. But I didn't start feeling it until I got older, when I realized more and more what it was that they were trying to impress into my consciousness.
Wondertime: What were they trying to tell you?
That I came from somewhere, and coming wasn't easy. And that my life is such a privilege and that living is always a privilege. It took us so long just to hold our lives together. So now we want to live every moment like it would mean something, and as a kid you're not ready to take the responsibility. When I fall apart and think that I can't, my mom and dad tell me that I can. I have to learn how to hold my heart patiently because life is going to happen whether I'm ready for it or not.
Wondertime: Have you been to Laos?
In 2001 I took a boat across the Mekong River. I was at the stretch where my parents had crossed. The river was so wide, and it wasn't even the rainy season! I've never been very rooted in history, but standing in that river, I felt like I was a part of history.
Wondertime: Did you look for your mom's photographs, which she'd buried before they swam across?
I tried. There were so many patches of bamboo and I didn't know where to begin. I could feel my heart breaking. I thought, maybe it's like a movie, you would walk and stumble upon something. I was looking at the ground the whole time.
Wondertime: Was there any chance of getting your mother's necklace back, which she'd lost in the crossing?
No. I don't know how many treasures are buried in the bottom of the Mekong River or along its sides.
Wondertime: Are your mom and dad role models for you today?
I don't know a stronger woman. My mom has carpal tunnel and she files papers in a bank all day long, and she stands up to do this and she is so scared of being one minute late. She shows me that at the end of the day, you get up and you do the same thing again, because you believe in the future and the lives you're enabling. And whenever I feel so poor, whenever I feel so defeated, my dad has something beautiful to say about the world. He'll tell me about the way he can look at the moon from his window, and this is the first time since Laos or Thailand that he's looked at the moon and he's not cold, he's not hungry. In my teenage years, I said, "I didn't choose this life!" And my dad would say, "Yes, you chose this life, because you chose us. You saw that we had nothing, but you chose us anyway. We're living this life together, and we're going to make the best of it." They live this very hard life, but every day they tell me that it wasn't a mistake. They're tremendous role models. Dad says that we've never been poor, because to be poor is to be without choice. To be rich in the world is to have choice. If all of wisdom and all of wealth is the freedom to decide, then I'm a very rich girl.
Wondertime: Maybe your book will open up the door for a future Hmong child.
I hope so. I hope that a kid will say, "Is there a book on somebody like me?" and see my book on the shelf and think that it is their book too. That's my hope and that is my dream. No matter how many more books I write, my heart is all over this one.
For more information about the Hmong in the U.S., read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). It tells the story of the culture clash that ensues when a 3-month-old Hmong girl, whose family had recently emigrated to California, is diagnosed with epilepsy. Visit spiritcatchesyou.com.
For more information about the Hmong in general and why they are refugees, go to hmongnet.org.
