MapIntoTheWorld-web

A MAP INTO THE WORLD: SAYING GOODBYE TO BOB

In fall 2019, we released A Map into the World by Kao Kalia Yang. In this heartfelt picture book, Kalia and illustrator Seo Kim tell the story of a young Hmong girl who experiences the cycle of the seasons as well as the cycle of life, welcoming twin baby brothers along with watching her across-the-street neighbor Bob grieve the death of his wife, Ruth. The character of Bob was based on Kalia’s real-life neighbor Bob, an unassuming man in his early 90s who certainly never imagined he’d one day be in the pages of a children’s book.

It is with much sadness I share the following remembrance, in which Kao Kalia Yang says a final goodbye to Bob.

Read more here.

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Bee Yang

Hmong song poetry | kwv txhiaj hmoob

Thaum Hluas Txog Hnub Laus: When the Days of Youth are Gone (Bee Yang, 2014)

This is an album of Hmong song poetry, kwv txhiaj hmoob, composed and sung by Bee Yang, Kao Kalia Yang’s father. The album notes and English translation of one of the songs are by Kao Kalia Yang.

Kwv txhiaj is, in the words of Ralph Ellison on the American Blues, “an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-cosmic lyricism. As a form, the blues [and kwv txhiaj] is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.”

NOTE:  The duration of the songs do not reflect the actual song length.  Please consider ordering the CD for the full songs.  Thank you.

*This CD is available for purchase for $15.  Click below to order:

Bee Yang: Hmong Song Poetry

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