![]() Bee was born during the Laotian civil war and grew to adulthood during the French occupation and the Vietnam War “more and more men in uniforms entered our lives,” he remembered, and Hmong men and boys were recruited to aid the Americans. ![]() Yang and her siblings grew up surrounded by them: “my father sings his songs, grows them into long, stretching stanzas of four or five…raps, jazzes, and sings the blues when he dwells in the landscape of traditional Hmong song poetry.” Bee gave up singing after his mother died, in 2003, but as an adult, the author discovered the one cassette he had recorded and was struck by the songs’ “humor, irony, astute cultural and political criticism.” Yang’s evocative, often moving memoir, told from Bee’s perspective, reveals a life of struggle, hardship, deep love, and strong family ties. A daughter tells her father’s story in his own voice.Īward-winning memoirist Yang ( The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, 2008) focuses on her father, Bee Yang, who transformed his experiences and family’s history into songs. ![]()
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