A selective mute in the English speaking world for much of her early life, Kalia’s unintended speaking career started in 2008 with the publication of her first book The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir. Since then, Kalia has spoken at hundreds of book groups, faith institutions, keynoted national conferences, presented for diverse organizations, and lectured at colleges and universities across the country. Kalia speaks with great intimacy, perspective, and grace on refugee and immigrant experiences, issues in literacy and education, race, class, and gender.
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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:
