The Latehomecomer

The Latehomecomer, a memoir by Kao Kalia Yang, was published in 2008. It won the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award for Nonfiction. Yang was born in Thailand’s Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in 1980 and immigrated to St. Paul, Minnesota when she was six years old. She is a graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University and co-founder of Words Wanted, an organization committed to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. Yang's other well-known works include The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father (2016) and Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir (2020).

In The Latehomecomer (2008), Yang explores what it means to be Hmong woman living in America through remembering her time in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp and compiling the stories of her family. Throughout the memoir, Yang chronicles the lives of her family as they move from place to place, displaced by the aftermath of war, and traces her own movement from the refugee camp to America. While her family members' lives are often marked by starvation, violence, and poverty, their familial bonds give them hope to keep going.