The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir

I'm not sure I've ever read a book that had a stronger, more cohesive sense of family than this one. Yang's memoir of her extended family's passage from Laos, where the Hmong, a tight-knit ethnic minority driven out of China two centuries before, had been allies of the Americans during the Vietnam War, to refugee camps in Thailand, and then to difficult resettlement in Minnesota and California, is less the story of her family becoming American than of her family remaining her family no matter what the circumstances. It's finely observed, horrifyingly dramatic, and a powerful expression of a consciousness both singular and communal.