Where Rivers Part

October 1, 2023

Recalling Yang's The Latehomecomer, an NEA Big Read, Where Rivers Part follows Yang's Hmong mother, who fled Laos with her family, separated from them (forever) to marry while in a refugee camp, and with her husband eventually brought their children to the United States, where the parents enrolled in high school at age 30 while still working to support the family. Prepub Alert.

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December 15, 2023
A Hmong author explores her mother's tumultuous life. In this follow-up to The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet, Yang chronicles the life of her mother, Tswb, who was born to Laotian Hmong parents in the shadow of a war. Before her birth, the U.S. Army recruited Hmong men to fight in the alleged war against communism. When the Americans left, the local Lao government began to persecute Hmong families for their support of enemy troops, forcing many Hmong--including Tswb's family--to adopt a nomadic life in the jungle, hiding from violent governmental retribution. After years of separation from her home village, Tswb, 16, met and married a handsome man named Npis, after leaving her family in the middle of a chaotic evacuation of their jungle camp. A few days later, she saw her mother and family for one of the last times in her life. Tswb fled with Npis' family to Thailand and the U.S., while her mother would live in Laos until her burial in Tswb's brother's backyard. The lack of family unity is something Tswb mourned for the rest of her life: "It had been twenty-four years since my mother had died.... This was the impasse of my life. To be with my mother. To be away from my husband and my children. Why couldn't we all be together?" At its best, the book is compassionate, lyrical, tender, and insightful. Unfortunately, the narratorial voice often feels alienated and overwritten, a contrast that the stunningly intimate prologue--which the author wrote from her own perspective--renders particularly stark. Nonetheless, Yang offers an engaging story of escape, redemption, and heartbreak; as in her previous books about Hmong culture, she also effectively highlights an ethnic group that's rarely represented in American literature. An occasionally uneven yet spirited and gripping memoir of the enduring bonds of family.

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February 1, 2024
Yang follows up the memoir of her father, The Song Poet (2016), with this lyrical immersion in the life of her mother, Tswb. Beginning the story in Laos, she delves into the tragedies of Tswb's childhood, how her parents met while fleeing violence during the Vietnam War era, and their eventual marriage, life in a refugee camp, and emigration to the U.S. The themes of hard work and perseverance are emphasized with the separation between her mother and the family, especially her grandmother, explored in all its emotional intensity. The author's decision to write from a first-person perspective as her mother is effective, thought it can also be the source of narrative confusion, especially since the prologue is first-person from the author's point of view and she later appears in the tale as a child. Also, Yang assumes that readers will be knowledgeable about the history of the Laotian Civil War and persecution of the Hmong people, both of which had a devastating effect on her family. Haunting and painfully relevant, Where Rivers Part continues this writer's powerful family story.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 15, 2024
“I wanted to claim the legacy of the woman I came from,” Yang (Somewhere in the Unknown World) writes in the introduction to this gripping and compassionate account of her mother’s escape from war-torn Laos. Her mother, Tswb, was born to a Hmong family in Laos in 1961. In 1975, after the end of the Vietnam War, communist forces began hunting down Hmong families because some had been recruited by the CIA to fight alongside American forces during the war. A teenage Tswb and her family first sought safety in Laotian jungles, then in Thai refugee camps. By 1980, Tswb had resettled in Bangkok, where Yang was born. In its second half, the narrative shifts to Minnesota, where Yang and her parents relocated in 1987. Living in a housing project, working in factories, and attending school at night, Tswb felt “rendered invisible” by her inability to provide more than the basic necessities for Yang and her five siblings. When Tswb’s mother died in Laos circa 2020, Tswb returned to reconnect with the land and people she left behind. Yang writes much of the account from Tswb’s perspective, giving tender voice to her struggles with the competing demands of family duty and personal fulfillment. The results are illuminating, uplifting, and difficult to forget. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.