A mesmerizing and hauntingly beautiful memoir about a Hmong family’s epic journey to safety that shines a much-needed light on Laos’s Secret War, told from the perspective of the author’s incredible mother who survived, and helped her family escape, against all odds.
Born in 1960s Laos, Chue’s childhood was shadowed by the United States’s recruitment of Hmong Laotians to assist with CIA efforts in Laos’s Secret War. By the time Chue was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were labeled as traitors. Fearing for their lives, Chue and her family left everything they knew behind and fled their village for the jungle.
Perpetually on the run and on the brink of starvation, Chue eventually crossed paths with the man who would become her future husband. Leaving her own mother behind, she joined his family at a refugee camp, a choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Eventually becoming a mother herself, Chue raised her daughters in a state of constant fear and hunger until they were able to emigrate to the United States, where the determined couple enrolled in high school even though they were both nearly thirty, and worked grueling jobs to provide for their children.
Now, her daughter, Kao Kalia Yang, reveals her mother’s astonishing saga with tenderness and unvarnished clarity, giving voice to the countless resilient refugees who are often overlooked as one of the essential foundations of this country. Evocative, stirring, and unforgettable, Where the Rivers Part is destined to become a classic in the vein of The Wild Swans by Jung Chang and A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande.
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