The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father

In this track, Bee speaks of his love for his wife, Chue. He admits that he sang “love songs before [he] learned how to love” and this section serves as a record of his love for Chue, “the moments in which love bloomed in [his] heart” (94). Bee’s recollection of such moments outlines their history together.

Six months after their marriage, the soldiers hunting them separate them. Chue is pregnant, and Hmong communists capture she and the other women. However, Bee and Chue reunite cross into Thailand together with their first child, Dawb. Bee, Chue, and the rest of the family find shelter in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, where their second daughter, Kalia, is born. While in Thailand, Chue has a series of miscarriages, and Chue insists they must go to America. America will provide “a chance to educate and raise [their] children so they might one day find good work” (102).

After they emigrate, Bee describes the hard work and poverty they endure in the United States and the ways that hard work and poverty first separated them, then draw them closer together. They finally have a son, and Bee worries that he will not be a good father. Through all of this, Bee repeats his love for Chue.