Listen Now

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong writer who has written her family and country’s history through deeply personal prisms. She told the story of her family’s beginnings via her grandmother’s story in The Latehomecomer, shared the life of her father in The Song Poet and now writes her mother’s journey in Where Rivers Part. Told in the first person, Where Rivers Part is the beautiful and compelling story of Tswb, who fled Laos to Thailand, eventually fighting her way to Minnesota to give a better future to her children. It is an epic tale of mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, struggle and triumph. Our bookstore this week is a 22-year-old dynamo who has already taken Mendham, NJ by storm…watch out world, it’s Chapter One Books.

Books mentioned in this week's episode:

• Where Rivers Part by Kao Kalia Yang
• The Song Poet by Kao Kalia Yang
• Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang
• A Map into the World by Kao Kalia Yang
• The Shared Room by Kao Kalia Yang
• From the Tops of the Trees by Kao Kalia Yang
• The Most Beautiful Thing by Kao Kalia Yang
• Yang Warriors by Kao Kalia Yng
• The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
• The Round House by Louise Erdrich
• The BFG by Roald Dahl
• Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
• The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices