Author Cao Calia Yang resists being “Humun’s Voice”

This year, 50 years of resettlement of refugees and immigration to Minnesota. In 1975, after the Vietnam War and after the Communists Laos took over, many people had to escape from their homelands. HMong families have been resettled as refugees around the world, including in Minnesota.

This experience is one of the stories described by Cao Calia Yang in her writing: her notes, imagination, opera, general speeches and teaching. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Yang was six years old when she arrived in Saint -Paul with her parents and older sister.

When she published her memoirs “The Latehomeomer” in 2008 – a work she referred to as a love message to her grandmother – the first memoirs by an American HMong were distributed at the national level. The book has since been named after Nea Big Read.

How did you see work by Americans changing over the years?

I flourished, and I am excited, because I think the harvest is still far away. As you know, Mai Der Fang, the poet who works from California, is doing a tremendous work. I receive emails from the young writers all the time. As you know, the first question that I get from young Americans when I met them is, “How did you become a writer? How do you gain a living as a writer? Can I become one too?

I tell them, “Of course!” It is extremely difficult to win a living as a writer. It is a batch of heart. But if your heart engine is strong and you have a society behind you, all tracks are possible.

I have completed notes, I have made Libretto for Opera, I have done photo books. What makes you pay all these different types?

curiousity. I want to grow. I don’t want to get a besieged. As you know, I got to literature where I am in a situation, it will be very easy for people to tie me. So I always pushed myself to grow. And I think it is important as a mother to see my children grow in different directions, to see me try something, and even see me falling, and then, of course, crawling, waking up again, all of that.

I think he studied my mother, a good tutorial work. As you know, my mother was always the person who opened the door when Truck came meals on wheels. With WIC vouchers in her hand, she stood in grocery stores to make sure we could nourish. She is an incredible woman, and I think at all these moments, it was difficult for her, because she knew that we were looking. She understood it, but she did so anyway with grace and dignity as much as she could. Earn courage and inspiration by thinking about these things.

Talk to me about the risk of getting besieged.

Initially, when I was a younger writer, I think the danger is that I was an example of the great American dream, and I knew how dangerous it was, because there were other smart people on the equality of around us in our society and who did not have the same access to opportunities, the same structure and support that I have in my family. So I was always keen that I am one American story.

My stories do not only revolve around people, although I focus here while I am at home here, and I am so lucky that I still have a writer for a people who are still growing a group of literature. So I think it is very exciting to resist the truth of my voice the Hamong Voice, or I am talking on the people who cannot. I will only have a very little to write if my life in my life is not able to speak. Many of them speak in several different ways. It comes to the ways we listen to, and patience in our hearts that call these stories to the world or silence them forever.

I have heard that people who write video books get the best fans, so I am curious: Is this the case for you, and are there certain messages that you stick to?

Yes. But I must say this this week alone, I got a card. I was at Winona State University. When I was there, there were four girls from Humong, and they took the front row, which is rare in a university environment. One of them said: “We never wanted anyone to do more, and to do what is better.” And while I was talking, I was looking at them, and when I finished, they were crying, and someone told me, “It is very difficult for Humung’s woman. No one knows that I wake up at night to teach my father how to work Gmail, and that I wake up again the next day, as you know, to go to the classroom. How are you very happy?

In response to them, my tears began to flow. But I went home and there was a card, and I only opened it yesterday, and she said, “I was waiting for you for four years, and I will wait for you for another four years.” It is incredibly moving, scale and mail scale that I get, but primary schools – oh, are the best! Messages, drawings and a lot of “I love you”.

What are the new areas that you explore as a writer?

Last year, I had the first imagination of the middle row, then next year, I am working on a young adult memoirs, which is new to me, then the adult imagination, which I have not yet done, in a long way anyway. I am very excited. I feel I was waiting for a long time, did you know?

I do the thread because my mother is a non -standard person. My father is a poet. He has a poet’s heart. His heart wings always fly everywhere. Imagination, though, allows Calia, in some respects, to move forward. As you know, the child who read all these scary books, Stephen King, all I can get. A child who still listens to ghost stories every time I am at the HMONG funeral. All these things I collected in my heart. So I am enthusiastic about the imagination. The adult is called “when we are ghosts”, and it is done at the funeral home. So three days and three nights, 24 hours a day, gather a family. The deceased’s wife says that every time she ascends to the coffin, he opens his eyes. In addition, there is a whole family drama that revolves around them.