Kao Kalia Yang, author of Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life
Memoir & Creative Nonfiction Category, sponsored by Bradshaw Celebration of Life Centers
Each week leading up to the 37th annual Minnesota Book Awards, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
What inspired you to write this book – or inspired you while writing it?
Love. I wrote The Latehomecomer because my grandmother had died and feared she’d be forgotten. I wrote The Song Poet because my father had sacrificed his art for a life for my siblings and me in America. I wrote Where Rivers Part because I understand how important my mother’s voice and her stories were to the life and work I do and I wanted her to know it. I love these people and their stories, and how their stories have enabled my own, and how together we are creating a space for all of us to be together forever in a world where that is not possible. The beauty of books has always been for me its capacity to hold the seemingly impossible, the remarkable truths of being human, of being in love with each other’s ideas, words, and worldviews.
What is one detail you wanted to include in this book, but couldn’t find a place for?
My grandfather kept a little bald grass hill. On this hill, he tied his beloved horses to the roots of trees long gone. There, they grazed from season to season.
I loved this fact. This image. A vast jungle. Mountains in the background. A small hill where an old man sat with his young daughter, looking at Hmong horses grazing, talking away the long days.
Tell us about someone (whose name isn’t on the cover!) who proved instrumental to the creation of this book.
Tswb Muas/Chue Moua. My mother. The reason why this book exists. She stands on the cover, a red umbrella, holding back the fierce rays of the sun, but her name is not on it. It lives within the pages and in my heart.
Please tell us something about yourself that is not widely known. (It doesn’t have to be about the book in question – or even about your writing at all!)
I love nature. I love flowers. I love trees. I love the natural spaces in our lives. In nature, I can breathe more freely, think further thoughts, just be in awe of the beautiful world, no need to correct, to edit, to organize, to do a thing, but be.
Share your thoughts about the role and value of libraries.
Libraries have always felt like a gift to me. An offering…handed down from others who’ve lived and worked to enable that there is some document of the ways in which humans have become, how we see ourselves and others, most importantly: how we cherish and hold sacred the ways in which we make meaning, gather information, and poke at the possibilities beyond.
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of A Map into the World, From the Tops of the Trees, The Song Poet, and Where Rivers Part. Much of Yang’s work is inspired by the people in her life, individuals who have gifted her with the strength of their stories. She is a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner.