The Latehomecomer Analysis

380 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Hmong IN VIETNAM WAR

Kao Kalia Yang’s The Latehomecomer is a story of one Hmong family’s first hand experience on their trip from the mountains of Laos to a new life in America. It depicts the hardships they faced in their quest to freedom in many instances, showing the reader the realities the Hmong faced during and after the Vietnam War. Yang’s novel displays her family’s story, showing throughout her book the concept that you have to love what you already have, and that love cannot be changed. “In my heart, I knew that he couldn’t love me more—even if I were a boy. I understood that changing into a boy would not alter the way I loved him either. Still, when I saw my cousins lift heavy bags of rice into their homes, and when I saw my father shoulder the burden

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of The Latehomecomer

    1010 Words  | 3 Pages

    At the end of The Latehomecomer, Yang concludes with the promise she had made to her grandmother: “I told her we will not become the birds or the bees. We will become Hmong, and we will build a strong home that we will never leave and can always return to. We will not be lost and looking our whole lives through.” (Yang, 263) Throughout this story, her grandmother was the bond that held the whole family together through all the ordeals. She was the source of pride of being a Hmong, and the courage to find her

    Read More

  • Effective Use of Pathos and Connotative Language

    925 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Hawaiian culture is known throughout the western world for their extravagant luaus, beautiful islands, and a language that comes nowhere near being pronounceable to anyone but a Hawaiian. Whenever someone wants to “get away” their first thought is to sit on the beach in Hawai’i with a Mai tai in their hand and watch the sun go down. Haunani-Kay Trask is a native Hawaiian educated on the mainland because it was believed to provide a better education. She questioned the stories of her heritage she heard as a child when she began learning of her ancestors in books at school. Confused by which story was correct, she returned to Hawai’i and discovered that the books of the mainland schools had been all wrong and her heritage was correctly told through the language and teachings of her own people. With her use of pathos and connotative language, Trask does a fine job of defending her argument that the western world destroyed her vibrant Hawaiian culture.

    Read More

  • The Story Of Do In Kwon And Hee Kyung Lee

    678 Words  | 2 Pages

    Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.

    Read More

  • A Place To Stand, By Jimmy Santiago Baa

    1429 Words  | 3 Pages

    Despite all the trouble that his parents put him through, he still had love for them both. His mother never came back for him and his siblings but he did not despite her regardless of her abandonment. He grew up on his own but still respected his parents and always wanted to keep in touch with them even if it never happened. He did not want to grow up in the same environment as them. He wanted a happy home but it never seemed to be granted to

    Read More

  • Autobiographies Made by the Waiting Wives by Donna Moreau

    906 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the stories of 5 womens lives throughout the time period of the Vietnam War, Moreau helps the reader to grasp the way they are feeling by interpreting the voices of the other family members. (Moreau, 35) She uses words and phrases to express the need they need for their fathers and how life at home isn’t the same without them there. One can picture the emptiness and loneliness they feel inside. Also writing the autobiographies in first person point of view, lets the reader know every feeling, every movement and expresses the empty hole in their stomachs having to take care of an entire family alone (Hales). What Moreau was trying to grasp with this concept, is to make the reader feel and almost experience what it would be like if it were them in one of the wives position. Although only a few actually got to experience this feeling, we should all understand what it’s like to be in a situation like that and have our sympathy for them. Letters were written very few times, but when the time came to be able to write, th...

    Read More

  • Cultural Healing in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

    2481 Words  | 5 Pages

    Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American from New Mexico and is part of the Laguna tribe.  She received a MacArthur "genius" award and was considered one of the 135 most significant women writers ever.  Her home state has named her a living cultural treasure.  (Jaskoski, 1)  Her well-known novel Ceremony follows a half-breed named Tayo through his realization and healing process that he desperately needs when he returns from the horrors of World War II.  This is a process that takes him back to the history of his culture.

    Read More

  • A Literary Analysis Of 'A Story' By Li-Young Lee

    1200 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and

    Read More

  • Hmong vs. American Marriages

    577 Words  | 2 Pages

    the Hmong culture the man has to pay a price for his wife. The man’s side of the family

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Grandma's Tales By Andrew Lam

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    While many people around the world look to America and see a better life waiting for them and the American Dream waiting to be lived, often times this dream never comes to fruition, even if they do reach America. Such is the case in the short story Grandma’s Tales, by Andrew Lam in which a recently deceased Vietnamese grandmother becomes reborn as a much younger and improved version of herself ready to live life to the fullest. This rebirth symbolizes the life that she wishes she lived, however due to constant conflict and famine in Vietnam, and her deteriorating health in America, was never able to do so. Instead of mourning this fact, in her final days the grandmother chooses to live her life through her granddaughters,

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast My Sonnys Blues And My Papa's Blues

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is no greater bond then a boy and his father, the significant importance of having a father through your young life can help mold you to who you want to become without having emotional distraught or the fear of being neglected. This poem shows the importance in between the lines of how much love is deeply rooted between these two. In a boys life he must look up to his father as a mentor and his best friend, the father teaches the son as much as he can throughout his experience in life and build a strong relationship along the way. As the boy grows up after learning everything his father has taught him, he can provide help for his father at his old-age if problems were to come up in each others

    Read More

  • Parent and Son Relationship in one of Nye, Naomi Shihab´s Poems

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.

    Read More

  • Pa Chin's Family

    1479 Words  | 3 Pages

    The family's personal encounters with the destructive nature of the traditional family have forced them to think in modern ways so they will not follow the same destructive path that they've seen so many before them get lost on. In this new age struggle for happiness within the Kao family a cultural barrier is constructed between the modern youth and the traditional adults with Chueh-hsin teeter tottering on the edge, lost between them both. While the traditional family seems to be cracking and falling apart much like an iceberg in warm ocean waters, the bond between Chueh-min, Chueh-hui, Chin and their friends becomes as strong as the ocean itself.

    Read More

  • When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip

    1578 Words  | 4 Pages

    Hayslip, Le Ly, and Jay Wurts. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace. New York: Plume, 1990. Print.

    Read More

  • A Mother-Daughter Relationship in The Woman Warrior

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.

    Read More

  • Powder by Tobias Wolff

    814 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nonetheless, this really is a tale of compelling love between the boy and his father. The actions of the boy throughout the story indicate that he really does love his father and seems very torn between his mother expectations and his father’s light heartedness. Many adults and children know this family circumstance so well that one can easily see the characters’ identities without the author even giving the boy and his father a name. Even without other surrounding verification of their lives, the plot, characters, and narrative have meshed together quite well.

    Read More

More about The Latehomecomer Analysis

Open Document