The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father

Kao Kalia Yang

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Finalist:National Book Critics Circle Award -Autobiography (2016)

Winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction

Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN USA Literary Center Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses. He keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes.

Following her award-winning memoir The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father, Bee Yang, the song poet--a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by America's Secret War. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. The songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a St. Paul housing project and on the factory floor, until, with the death of Bee's mother, they leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has burnished a life of poverty for his children, polishing their grim reality so that they might shine.

Book Details

Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Publish Date: May 9th, 2017
Pages: 288
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.10in - 0.90in - 0.57lb
EAN: 9781250131881
Categories: • Asian & Asian American• Memoirs

About the Author

Yang, Kao Kalia: - Kao Kalia Yang is the author of The Song Poet, which received the 2017 Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her previous book, The Latehomecomer, also received the Minnesota Book Award. Her children's books include A Map into the World, which won the Minnesota Book Award, and The Shared Room. Yang, a regular contributor to NPR's On Being, lives in Saint Paul.

Praise for this book

"Remarkable . . . Yang is an exceptional storyteller, one whose work reminds us that big, timeless truths reveal themselves when we pay attention to small, specific details."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Inventive and touching . . . An elegantly written, moving testament to so many aspects of the human experience."--Pioneer Press

"Hauntingly lyrical . . . A memorable and moving immigrant story."--Booklist

"A stellar memoir . . . Yang powerfully demonstrates that much of what society doesn't hold valuable--gifts and talents that don't translate into monetary or educational success--still carry immense value, if only we choose to see it."--Library Journal (starred review)

"Kao Kalia Yang allows us to hear the whispered sorrows and hopes of those transplanted onto foreign soil among strangers. I predict that this mystical and historical memoir--of her Hmong family's suffering in Laos, of the rigors and fears of their life in a refugee camp, of the shock of finding themselves unprepared for city living in Minnesota, and of the pain of discrimination--will become a classic."--Jane Hamilton-Merritt, author of Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992