Description
The idea that we choose to leave the sky, a happy place where we fly among the clouds, to come down to earth, having seen the course of human lives, has captivated me since I first read Kalia’s beautiful telling of this Hmong teaching. It is especially poignant as an introduction to her memoir, The Latehomecomer, about her family’s journey from Laos to a Thai refuge camp before coming to the United States. My hope is that I have captured the individual “voices” of the souls flying among the clouds, listening to be called, as well as the tenderness of the call.
Text
Before babies are born they live in the sky where
they fly among the clouds. The sky is a happy place
and calling babies down to earth is not an easy
thing to do. From the sky, babies can see the course
of human lives.
This is what the Hmong children of my generation
are told by our mothers and fathers, by our
grandmothers and grandfathers.
They teach us that we have chosen our lives.
That the people who we would become we had
inside of us from the beginning, and the people
whose worlds we share, whose memories we hold
strong inside of us, we have always known.
From the sky, I would come again.
From “The Latehomecomer,” by Kao Kalia Yang.
Used with permission of Coffee House Press.
Copyright 2008, 2017 Kao Kalia Yang
Program Notes
The idea that we choose to leave the sky, a happy place where we fly among the clouds, to come down to earth, having seen the course of human lives, has captivated me since I first read Kalia’s beautiful telling of this Hmong teaching. It is especially poignant as an introduction to her memoir, The Latehomecomer, about her family’s journey from Laos to a Thai refuge camp before coming to the United States. My hope is that I have captured the individual “voices” of the souls flying among the clouds, listening to be called, as well as the tenderness of the call.
