The Latehomecomer selected as 09-10 WSU Common Book

Winona State's Common Book Project announces its selection for 2009-10: Kao Kalia Yang’s The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir. The Common Book Project brings together a large community of readers in the discussion of a single work. 

The Latehomecomer details Yang’s own family’s journey, beginning with their life in Laos during the Vietnam War and their escape into Thailand’s Ban Vinai Refugee Camp.  From there, where Yang was born, they immigrated to St. Paul when Yang was six years old.  The memoir also recounts  Yang’s own experiences with American life as she and her family found themselves newcomers in a strange land. 

Kao Kalia Yang is a graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University.  Together with her sister, she is the founder of Words Wanted, an agency dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services.  The Latehomecomer is her first book.

Yang’s memoir provides especially rich opportunities for interdisciplinary study.  It addresses concerns of the Vietnam War, Hmong diaspora and immigration, political science, education, cross-cultural communication, language and writing, and oral history and historiography.  The book will be adopted in a range of classes as well as in many sections of first-year composition.

“The Latehomecomer is a wonderful tribute to a culture that is an important part of our own WSU community,” says English professor Debra Cumberland, who nominated its selection.  “It is a beautifully written, lyrical work, one from which students would learn about an important part of history and about the Hmong community.”

Yang will visit WSU in October, 2009, and again during spring semester of 2010.  The Latehomecomer is published by Coffee House Press and currently available from WSU Bookstore, The Book Shelf, and other booksellers.  More information about the book is available from the author’s website, http://www.kaokaliayang.com, and from Coffee House Press at http://www.coffeehousepress.org/thelatehomecomer.asp. 

Additionally, a packet of teaching and contextual materials for prospective adopters will be available by midsummer.  Faculty adopters should simply list the book (ISBN 978-1-56689-208-7) on their book request form through the WSU Bookstore.  For more information about the project, please contact Dr. J Paul Johnson at pjohnson@winona.edu.

Last Modified: Thursday, April 23, 2009 16:23