The Latehomecomer

Literature to Life’s Signature Performance of The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang
Performed by Jasmine Vang
Adapted by Aurea Tomeski & Elise Thoron
Directed by Aurea Tomeski
Based on the novel The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang, © 2008, published by Coffee House Press

In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand, finally emigrating to America; but lacking a written language of their own. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death – the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others – The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to her remarkable grandmother whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard.

The Story in Performance: Told with the immediacy of the author as a young girl, born in the Ban Vinai Refugee camp in Thailand, Kao Kalia arrives in the United States when she is six. The story follows her journey from a quiet, reticent student struggling to speak English while facing racial discrimination, to a self-empowered young woman claiming her voice to tell the untold story of her people.

The performance tells a universal story of immigration, through the specific lens of this ancient culture inextricably bound to the history of the war in Vietnam.