By Audrey Fong
While Kao Kalia Yang’s debut memoir, The Latehomecomer, details her family’s escape from Laos and their eventual arrival as refugees in Minnesota, the memoir largely serves as a love letter to her pog, her paternal grandmother.
However, Yang’s maternal grandmother “was a stranger to” Yang, a woman whose presence was limited to cassette tapes, in which she told Yang the same thing each time, “Me Kablia, I am your niam tais, your mother’s mother. Although you don’t know me, I love you.” However, with her paternal grandmother so present in her life, Yang didn’t necessarily long for her maternal grandmother’s presence: “I thought it was enough—to have one powerful grandmother.” It wasn’t until giving birth that Yang realized that “what I had been missing my whole life, the power of my niam tais’s love, contained by a war waged before I was born, a war that severed not only my relationship to her but my own mother’s.”
Here begins Yang’s third memoir, Where Rivers Part. Told from the perspective of Yang’s mother, Tswb Muas, Where Rivers Part details Tswb’s birth in 1961 Laos; her childhood and young adulthood living amongst America’s Secret War and Laos’ genocidal attacks on the Hmong; and her life in Minnesota.
For fans of Yang’s two previous memoirs, The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet, much of Where Rivers Part will feel familiar—particularly the parts from Tswb’s marriage to Yang’s father, Npis, and onwards. That being said, there is still much that is new, especially the focus on the maternal line, the difficulties of marriage, Tswb’s family, and Tswb’ role as a mother, bringing to mind Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, which similarly explores motherhood, spurred by the arrival of the author’s first child.
What interested me the most about Where Rivers Part was the comparison of the relationships between Npis’ family and Tswb’s family. When Tswb marries into Npis’ family at a young age, she becomes enveloped into his family, both emotionally and physically (she lives surrounded by his extended family). She loses her name and is referred to as Npis’ niam (Npis’ wife) or as her children’s mom in the future. Additionally, due to the war, eventually Tswb is unable to visit her family (Tswb’s family stays in Laos while Npis’ family seeks refuge in Thailand) as it becomes increasingly unsafe. Because of this, Tswb never sees her mother in person again, hence the cassette tape exchange.
Years after the war, Tswb exchanges letters with her brother, Soob Muas. These letters are brief, with him mostly telling her that the family is safe, that they miss her, and that she should not worry about them. Of these letters, Tswb says:
Even after all these years, my family remain strangers to Npis. He only cares for them because he cares for me. This is different than my relationship to his family. I know each person individually, have shared moments, good and bad, daily experiences that have forged their own bonds separate from my relation to Npis or his to them. This disparate situation is yet one more travesty from the war. I cannot blame him for the opportunities that were not present in his life any more than I can blame myself, and yet is it not a situation without injury.
Often, in our K-12 education, we learn of war as a selection of “fun facts.” For example, my AP U.S. history class drilled into my head that the War of 1812 marked the end of the Federalist Party. While these events may mark critical turns in history, very rarely do we explore how these moments impact society, culture, and the personal. This is what makes memoirs like Where Rivers Part critical.
Of America’s Secret War and the Hmong’s people participation in it, I learned nothing in my K-12 education, only briefly touching upon it in an undergrad class on the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until Suni Lee won several medals at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics that much of mainstream America learned the Sparknotes version of this history—the Vietnam War was hard; the U.S. recruited the Hmong; upon losing the war, the Hmong were viewed as traitors by Laos and Vietnam, leading to their persecution; and while some made it to the U.S. as refugees, they still faced discrimination because few knew of their service during the war.
That being said, Where Rivers Part fleshes out this history through the lives of those who experienced it. Each refugee’s journey is different, even when it’s within the same family as shown by Yang’s three memoirs. For example, while all three memoirs are about Yang’s own family, her father’s experience is different from her mother’s. The most notable difference is that for the most part, Npis is still in contact with his family, the majority of them living in the U.S. Meanwhile, Tswb never sees her mother in person again and only reunites with her siblings decades later in Laos. This cleavage of family is a major “travesty from the war.” It reminds the reader of the human cost to war and fleshes out our understanding beyond the snippets, or “fun facts,” that are taught in K-12 classes. Not only was Tswb separated from her family, but also her husband never had the chance to build relationships with her family and Yang missed out on “the power of my niam tais’s love,” speaking to how war’s impact radiates outwards.
Like Yang’s previous memoirs, Where Rivers Part is a well-documented read that combines the historical with the personal. What stuns me the most after reading all three is how much there is to document. One would think that three separate memoirs on one family’s escape from Laos to the U.S. would be repetitive. However, through the shifting of perspectives, Yang is able to show the many ways that war impacts her family and how diverse the refugee experience is.
Audrey Fong is your stereotypical Southern Californian. She loves the beach, drinks more boba than the doctor recommends, and has an Insta-famous dog. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.