The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father

by Kao Kalia Yang

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250131881
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	05/09/2017
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	154,343
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Kao Kalia Yang is the author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, which was a finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award and the Asian American Literary Award, and received the 2009 Minnesota Book Award. Her work has been published in Longreads and the Virginia Quarterly. Yang, who has taught at Columbia University and Concordia University-St. Paul, among other places, lives in Minnesota.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS


Album Notes

SIDE A: BIRTH OF A SONG POET—BEE YANG
Track 1: Birth of a Song Poet
Track 2: A Fatherless Boyhood
Track 3: Brothers and Sisters
Track 4: Love Song
Track 5: Cry of Machines

SIDE B: SONG FOR MY CHILDREN—KAO KALIA YANG
Track 6: Doctors and Lawyers
Track 7: The Son Must Rise
Track 8: Song of Separation
Track 9: Dreams and Nightmares
Track 10: Return to Laos (Duet)

Album Notes
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

01/11/2016
In this beautifully-written memoir, Yang (The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir) tells the story of her father, a poet who composed kwv txhiaj in his native Hmong. These songs, she says, taught her how the human heart operates, shielded her from poverty, and showed her windows where she had only ever seen walls. Yang pitches the story as a narrative of how a song poet came to be, from his childhood in Laos, to his flight to America as young adult, to his life there as the father of many. Surprisingly, however, she hardly provides any songs at all, or shows any interest in them after the book’s introductory pitch. There’s no mention of songs created by the child in Laos who might have first experimented with words as he played with his brother, nor by the father who might have used his songs to teach his children what it means to be an immigrant and factory worker. That aside, the story is engrossing as a straight-up narrative of this spirited man’s life. The daughter’s love for her father is described in words as gorgeous as those that (she assures us) the song poet often spoke. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 06/01/2016
Yang's second stellar memoir (after the The Latehomecomer) takes readers back to the mountains of Laos, to her father's birth and childhood, through the French occupation, and finally to the turbulent war that led to the family fleeing through the jungle to a refugee camp in Thailand and ultimately landing in the American city of St. Paul. Yang writes first in the voice of her father; the second part reveals her own perspective, that of a woman learning to find words in both the language of her Hmong heritage and of her adopted country. These two points of view balance each other and the result captures the raw emotions of grief, joy, fear, and love. VERDICT Yang powerfully demonstrates that much of what society doesn't hold valuable—talents that don't translate into monetary or educational success—still carry immense value. [See Memoir, 2/17/16; ow.ly/Tet6300b88f.]—RD

Library Journal

When an author narrates her own work, especially memoir, there's always the danger of disappointing the listener who hopes for enhanced intimacy with the story. Not so with Kao Kalia Yang's moving performance, a tribute to her father, the Hmong song poet Bee Yang. In telling her father's story, Yang offers penetrating insight into the Hmong experience, beginning in Laos before the Vietnam War and moving through refugee resettlement and present-day life in the U.S. Yang's high-pitched, accented voice brims with affection for her subject. At times, her pacing is rushed, and her articulation compromised, but these moments are easily overlooked. Yang's tender narration underscores the lyricism and love that mark this story. When her voice lowers and cracks, listeners will feel the same lump in their own throats. A.S. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

MAY 2017 - AudioFile

2016-02-15
A daughter tells her father's story in his own voice. Award-winning memoirist Yang (The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, 2008) focuses on her father, Bee Yang, who transformed his experiences and family's history into songs. Yang and her siblings grew up surrounded by them: "my father sings his songs, grows them into long, stretching stanzas of four or five…raps, jazzes, and sings the blues when he dwells in the landscape of traditional Hmong song poetry." Bee gave up singing after his mother died, in 2003, but as an adult, the author discovered the one cassette he had recorded and was struck by the songs' "humor, irony, astute cultural and political criticism." Yang's evocative, often moving memoir, told from Bee's perspective, reveals a life of struggle, hardship, deep love, and strong family ties. Bee was born during the Laotian civil war and grew to adulthood during the French occupation and the Vietnam War; "more and more men in uniforms entered our lives," he remembered, and Hmong men and boys were recruited to aid the Americans. In 1975, when the Americans left Laos and the communists took over, "genocide was declared against the Hmong for helping the Americans." Yang recounts in harrowing detail the persecution Bee and his community suffered. By 1980, Bee, his young wife, and baby daughter ended up in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, in Thailand, where their second daughter, the author, was born. During the eight years the family lived there, Bee was forced by Thai soldiers to transport opium "from one uniformed guard to the next," a mission he hated but carried out with "fear and shame." At last, they came to America, where Bee took arduous factory work to support his growing family. Although he encountered prejudice and exploitation, he never lost hope for his children's futures. Yang's gentle prose captures her father's sufferings and joys and serves as a loving celebration of his spirit.

Kirkus Reviews