The Latehomecomer

After Yang’s father’s oldest brother, Nhia, leaves for America, Yang’s father decides it’s time for he and his family to leave as well. With the Hmong still being murdered in Laos and with no hope of a future in Thailand, moving to America is the only option that offers the Hmong refugees a fresh start. However, Yang’s grandma can’t stand the idea of her sons moving to America—especially not Yang’s dad, her youngest.

In an effort to get Yang’s father to stay, she tries to talk him into marrying another woman in the camp. By this point, Yang’s mother has had six miscarriages, and it doesn’t seem like she will ever be able to give Yang’s father a boy. Hoping to appease his mother, Yang’s father borrows a motorcycle and drives to the other side of the camp. He tries to flirt with other women, but he never goes through with anything. Instead, he commits to moving to America with his wife and two daughters.

Yang, her sister, and her parents say goodbye to her grandma and leave the Ban Vinai.  

Instead of going straight to America, Yang and her family arrive at Phanat Nikhom, a camp that prepares refugees for entry into America. The camp is enclosed by a barbed wire fence, guarded by armed soldiers, and smells like the toilets of Ban Vinai. The long, one-room building that Yang and her family occupy doesn’t have doors, and they are forced to sleep on plastic mats beside strangers.

In Phanat Nikhom, Yang attends a school inside a one-room building. While Dawb is a good student, Yang keeps falling asleep because she has trouble sleeping at night. As a result, Yang is sent to a daycare instead of the school, since both her mother and father are busy taking classes during the day, where they learn how to cook American foods and say simple English phrases.

Yang’s grandma shows up to the camp a month later. It is clear that her grandma is unhappy about the transition. Years later, her grandma recounts her time at the camp by saying, “In Phanat Nikhom, my children became busy, and there was no walking for me to do. It was a place to practice being in America…where if you are old and you don’t have a car, you are like a man or a woman in a wheelchair with weak arms” (102). Every time Yang falls asleep in class, she is forced to leave class. During this time, she and her grandma often buykhao pad, Thai fried rice, from a Thai woman on the other side of the fence.

One of Yang’s uncles becomes sick and is taken to the clinic. This is the clinic where Yang and her sister receive a plethora of shots in preparation for America, so Yang is not fond of the clinic. While visiting her uncle, she stares at an old woman who is dying. Later, after her uncle gets better, the old woman dies. Yang’s cousins dare her to spy on the old woman’s body in the funeral hut. Yang does it, but as she is leaving the hut she trips and falls. All of her life she has been told that if you trip in the presence of a dead body, that body will steal your spirit. After the fall, Yang is convinced that she sees the old woman standing in the doorway at night. She recalls how the dead woman “stood in the shadows. Her hair merged into the night; the whites of her eyes were steady. She stood in the dark looking at me” (108). This is how Yang develops a fear of the dark.

In order to be cleared for America, each family must pass a physical exam. Everyone in Yang’s family passes except for Dawb. Knowing Dawb will probably never pass, Yang’s father has Yang go back to take the physical in Dawb’s place. She passes, and after eight years of living in refugee camps, Yang’s family finally leaves on a plane to America.