Book Notes | ‘Where Rivers Part’
UMRA’s Book Club members learned a great deal about Hmong traditions, traumas, and relationships from acclaimed St. Paul author Kao Kalia Yang’s Where Rivers Part (2024). A tribute to her mother, this lyrical and complex book won the 2025 Minnesota Book Award in the memoir category. It is the third part of a trilogy, following The Latehomecomer (2005) and The Song Poet (2016).
Yang described her mother Tswb’s tumultuous childhood in a Laotian mountain village near a beautiful citrus forest beside two rivers. At age 16, during the chaos of America’s “Secret War” in Laos that tore apart the country, Tswb abruptly ran away with her husband and never saw her own mother again. She is forever haunted by this abrupt parting. After hiding in the jungle for two years, Tswb escaped war-torn Laos with her husband and infant, barely surviving.
Years of deprivation followed in Thailand’s dangerous Ban Vinai refugee camp, where Kalia was born in 1980. The family was eventually granted refugee status and came to Minnesota in 1987. Tswb subsequently experienced entirely different hardships of racism and poverty, as well as physical and mental health challenges.
Some UMRA Book Club members were confused by the book’s first-person voice, the many Hmong names, and the complex chronology in multiple countries and locations. Overall, most members were positive; they were moved and at times overwhelmed by the struggles and courage of the author’s mother.
Particularly timely
Yang’s Where Rivers Part is particularly timely because it is 50 years since the Hmong people first came to Minnesota; and in November 2025, St. Paul elected a Hmong-American mayor, Kaohly Her, the first woman and the first Asian-American to hold the position.
Today’s nearly 100,000 Hmong-American Minnesotans have a rich history dating back centuries in Asia and, now, a half-century in Minnesota. By telling intimate family stories, Yang has lovingly and eloquently chronicled the trauma and endurance of her mother and, by extension, the Hmong people.
Perhaps this book will help us live beside our Hmong neighbors with increased empathy and understanding.
—Linda Lindeke, Book Club I
'Where Rivers Part' by Kao Kalia Yang
Fri, Feb 20, 2026, 2pm
UMRA's Book Club I will discuss Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother's Life by Kao Kalia Yang when it meets via Zoom on Friday, February 20. Linda Lindeke will lead the discussion.
Published in 2024, the book is described as a mesmerizing and hauntingly beautiful memoir about a Hmong family’s epic journey to safety. It is told from the perspective of the author’s incredible mother who helped her family escape, from a Thai refugee camp to Minnesota, against all odds.
As reported by Axios Twin Cities, the St. Paul author was the star of the 2025 Minnesota Book Awards, winning for three titles that honor her Hmong heritage.
Yang's first memoir (of five), The Late Homecomer, was published in 2009.
Email Pat Tollefson at [email protected] to learn more about the UMRA Book Club.
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