ORDWAY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS | Up Next: The Latehomecomer
“I fell from the clouds into my grandmother’s hands.”
Kao Kalia Yang, The Latehomecomer
The Ordway Presents
Literature to Life stage presentation of
The Latehomecomer
By Kao Kalia Yang
Performed by Gaosong Heu
Adapted by Aurea Tomeski & Elise Thoron
Directed by Elise Thoron
Based on the novel The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang, © 2008, published by Coffee House Press
Told with the immediacy of the author as a young girl, born in the Ban Vinai Refugee camp in Thailand, Kao Kalia arrives in the United States when she is six. The story follows her journey from a quiet, reticent student struggling to speak English while facing racial discrimination, to a self-empowered young woman claiming her voice to tell the untold story of her people. In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand, finally emigrating to America; but lacking a written language of their own. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death – the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others – The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to her remarkable grandmother whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard.
