WHERE RIVERS PART

A Hmong author explores her mother’s tumultuous life.

In this follow-up to The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet, Yang chronicles the life of her mother, Tswb, who was born to Laotian Hmong parents in the shadow of a war. Before her birth, the U.S. Army recruited Hmong men to fight in the alleged war against communism. When the Americans left, the local Lao government began to persecute Hmong families for their support of enemy troops, forcing many Hmong—including Tswb’s family—to adopt a nomadic life in the jungle, hiding from violent governmental retribution. After years of separation from her home village, Tswb, 16, met and married a handsome man named Npis, after leaving her family in the middle of a chaotic evacuation of their jungle camp. A few days later, she saw her mother and family for one of the last times in her life. Tswb fled with Npis’ family to Thailand and the U.S., while her mother would live in Laos until her burial in Tswb’s brother’s backyard. The lack of family unity is something Tswb mourned for the rest of her life: “It had been twenty-four years since my mother had died…. This was the impasse of my life. To be with my mother. To be away from my husband and my children. Why couldn’t we all be together?” At its best, the book is compassionate, lyrical, tender, and insightful. Unfortunately, the narratorial voice often feels alienated and overwritten, a contrast that the stunningly intimate prologue—which the author wrote from her own perspective—renders particularly stark. Nonetheless, Yang offers an engaging story of escape, redemption, and heartbreak; as in her previous books about Hmong culture, she also effectively highlights an ethnic group that’s rarely represented in American literature.

An occasionally uneven yet spirited and gripping memoir of the enduring bonds of family.