Mpr News With Kerri Miller

When Kao Kalia Yang’s mother was a child growing up in Laos, she lived a comfortable life. Her father was a prosperous merchant. She was the only Hmong girl in the village to go to school. She felt valued. The war changed all that. Hunted by North Vietnamese soldiers, Yang’s maternal family had to flee into the jungle and live a desperate existence for years. Eventually, her mother met a boy also in hiding, and they married. She was 16. It was an extraordinary chapter in her mother’s remarkable life. Yet when Yang suggested that she record the full story, her mother doubted anyone would care. Related Kao Kalia Yang writes about finding her voice and her mother's journey in two new books For the first time, a Hmong story heads for the opera Kao Kalia Yang started out writing her family’s refugee memoir. Now she’s sharing the journeys of others Thankfully, Yang persisted. Her new book, “Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother”