Search results for ""Author Kao Kalia Yang""

Award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang delivers an inspiring tale of resourceful children confronting adversaries in a refugee camp After lunch the Yang warriors prepare for battle. They practice drills, balance rocks on their heads, wield magical swords from fallen branches. Led by ten-year-old Master Me (whose name means “little”), the ten cousins are ready to defend the family at all costs. After a week without fresh vegetables , the warriors embark on a dangerous mission to look for food, leaving the camp’s boundaries, knowing their punishment would be severe if they were caught by the guards. In this inspiring picture book, fierce and determined children confront the hardships of Ban Vinai refugee camp, where the author lived as a child. Yang’s older sister, seven-year-old Dawb, was one of the story’s warriors, and her brave adventure unfolds here with all the suspense and excitement that held her five-year-old sister spellbound many years later. Accompanied by the evocative and rich cultural imagery of debut illustrator Billy Thao, the warriors’ secret mission shows what feats of compassion and courage children can perform, bringing more than foraged greens back to the younger children and to their elders. In this unforgiving place, with little to call their own, these children are the heroes, offering gifts of hope and belonging in a truly unforgettable way.

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This powerful memoir about a Hmong family’s epic journey to safety is a profound “testament to the miraculous strength of women and the indomitable resolve of the human spirit” (Cristina Henríquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans).Born in 1961 in war-torn Laos, Tswb’s childhood was 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 was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were labeled as traitors. Fearing for their lives, Tswb and her family left everything they knew behind and fled their village for the jungle. Perpetually on the run and on the brink of starvation, Tswb eventually crossed paths with the man who would become her future husband. Leaving her own mother behind, she joined his family at a refugee camp, a choice tha

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A poignant picture book about a young Hmong girl born and raised in a refugee camp who imagines what lies beyond the bounds of its borders.

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A family gradually moves forward after the loss of a child—a story for readers of all ages When someone you love dies, you know what doesn’t die? Love. On the hot beach, among colorful umbrellas blooming beneath a bright sun, no one saw a little girl walk into the water. Now, many months later, her bedroom remains empty, her drawers hold her clothes, her pillows and sheets still have her scent, and her mother and father, brothers and sister carry her in their hearts, along with their grief, which takes up so much space. Then one snowy day, the mother and father ask the girl’s older brother, “Would you like a room of your own?” He wants to know, “Whose?” They say, “Your sister’s.”Tenderly, and with refreshing authenticity, beloved Minnesota writer Kao Kalia Yang tells the story of a Hmong American family living with loss and tremendous love. Her direct and poignant words are accompanied by the evocative and expressive drawings of Hmong American artist Xee Reiter. The Shared Room brings a message of comfort and hope to readers young and old.

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An NEA Big Read Selection“This is the best account of the Hmong experience I’ve ever read—powerful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable.”—Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down“A narrative packed with the stuff of life.” —Entertainment WeeklyKao Kalia Yang is the author of The Song Poet and The Latehomecomer, which was a finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award and the Asian American Literary Award, and received the 2009 Minnesota Book Award.

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Native women and women of color poignantly share their pain, revelations, and hope after experiencing the traumas of miscarriage and infant loss What God Is Honored Here? is the first book of its kind—and urgently necessary. This is a literary collection of voices of Indigenous women and women of color who have undergone miscarriage and infant loss, experiences that disproportionately affect women who have often been cast toward the margins in the United States of America. From the story of dashed cultural expectations in an interracial marriage to poems that speak of loss across generations, from harrowing accounts of misdiagnoses, ectopic pregnancies, and late-term stillbirths to the poignant chronicles of miscarriages and mysterious infant deaths, What God Is Honored Here? brings women together to speak to one another about the traumas and tragedies of womanhood. In its heartbreaking beauty, this book offers an integral perspective on how culture and religion, spirit and body, unite in the reproductive lives of women of color and Indigenous women as they bear witness to loss, search for what is not there, and claim for themselves and others their fundamental humanity. Powerfully and with brutal honesty, they write about what it means to reclaim life in the face of death.Editors Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang acknowledge “who we had been could not have prepared us for who we would become in the wake of these words,” yet the writings collected here offer insight, comfort, and, finally, hope for all those who, like the women gathered here, have found grief a lonely place.Contributors: Jennifer Baker, Michelle Borok, Lucille Clifton, Sidney Clifton, Taiyon J. Coleman, Arfah Daud, Rona Fernandez, Sarah Agaton Howes, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Soniah Kamal, Diana Le-Cabrera, Janet Lee-Ortiz, Maria Elena Mahler, Chue Moua, Jami Nakamura Lin, Jen Palmares Meadows, Dania Rajendra, Marcie Rendon, Seema Reza, 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, Kari Smalkoski, Catherine R. Squires, Elsa Valmidiano.

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