Collection 1: "The Latehomecomer" by Kao Kalia Yang

Together, we had scoured the city looking for a suitable home.

We had looked all summer long, driving up and down the avenues, the corridors, the smaller streets, and the busy thoroughfares of St. Paul.

On days of fruitless hunting, my father would drive us past the mansions on Summit Avenue for inspiration.

Dawb and I posed creative arguments for why owning such behemoths would never work for our family.

Also off the kitchen there was a small room with just enough space for a washing and drying machine and the requisite heavy-duty sink.

Dawb was already attending Harding High School, an inner-city school where nearly fifty percent of the student body was multicultural—many of whom were Hmong.

I knew that the parameters of our life would continue, but I pushed against the skin that contained me.

It did not resonate in my family that high school was a time to be young or to be old or that it was a time to sneak peeks into different worlds.

I was lost, perpetually biting my lower lip: I didn’t speak well or easily, and the link between what we were learning from books and living in life was harder for my mind to grasp.

I wrote that we’ll never know if Romeo and Juliet really loved because they never had the chance. I asserted that love only happened in life, not in literature, because life is more complex.

As soon as I wrote the essay, I started worrying about it—what if she didn’t like it, what if she didn’t agree, what if I had it all wrong. That was my first understanding of how writing worked, how it mattered to the writer, personally and profoundly.

They had changed their work schedules entirely to the graveyard shift (the nominal increase in their wages was necessary to maintain the new house).

Beyond all the spoken wishes, a dream had even come true: eight years into America and we owned a house of our own. I wanted to recap this journey with Grandma.

In American history we learned of the Vietnam War. We read about guerrilla warfare and the Vietcong. The Ho Chi Minh Trail and communism and democracy and Americans and Vietnamese.

In American history we learned of the Vietnam War. We read about guerrilla warfare and the Vietcong. The Ho Chi Minh Trail and communism and democracy and Americans and Vietnamese.

An exodus from California began.

The camps in Thailand had closed. Hmong people there were repatriated, sometimes without knowledge, back into Laos.

My father chided my impatient heart.

My mom and dad rushed to my side, and I remember seeing myself twisting and turning, all out of color and out of breath, but still moving with nervous life. My father tried to hold me and I could hear my mom’s voice panicking and Dawb running for the phone, and then I felt expiration come.

All this time, I had been feeling like I was pushing against my skin: was it possible that I was pushing against my very own heart? The idea was a little preposterous. I didn’t really believe it, but it nudged at me.

Grandma grew despondent.

Her uneven gait came closer.