Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Latehomecomer, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Politics, Refugee Camps, and Inhumanity
The Immigrant Experience
Death, Spirituality, and Home
Love and Family
Gender
Summary
Analysis
Kao’s family’s apartment in Minnesota is at the McDonough townhouses, which were built for returning World War II soldiers. Now they house soldiers from a different war, who aren’t returning to their families, but living as remnants of their families. The low-income house is small and faded but clean. Thrift store clothes hang on rods in the bedrooms; there’s a black and white television in the living room. There’s a rice cooker in the kitchen, one of the family’s proud early purchases. Kao imagines that the grassy hills are the mountains where her ancestors are buried. Thailand—and the endless waiting—seems more and more like a dream.
Yang reminds the reader that her family is in their situation as new immigrants because of the war, reinforcing the idea that the challenges they will endure as immigrants (like they hardships they endured as refugees) have been thrust upon them because of events beyond their control. Yang also highlights the family’s poverty in mentioning their thrift store clothes. In comparing the hills to Laos’s mountains, Kao subtly reminds the reader about the Hmong people’s spiritual concerns. The Hmong worry about dwelling in environments that are far away from their ancestral lands, from which they draw spiritual strength.
Themes
Kao’s family are among a large wave of over 90,000 Hmong refugees who settled in the United States in the 1980s. Despite living in houses now, their lives haven’t changed much—people vandalize their building and shout at them to go home. The family tries to be invisible and avoid Americans, but Chue and Bee know they must find work. Chue walks everywhere quickly and nervously. Youa lives in California now. Dawb and Kao desperately want to see her, and they cry when Chue and Bee tell them that they don’t have enough money to see Youa. Youa cries too, but the adults promise to see each other one day. Looking back on this time, Kao remembers phone calls and salty tears.
This passage shows how immigrants often have to deal with hostility and prejudice from non-immigrants when they settle somewhere new. Their experience is also largely shaped by family separation and poverty, as captured by the fact that Yang’s relatives are scattered across the United States and can’t afford to reunite. All ofthese burdens place an immense mental strain on Yang’s family.
Themes
Kao starts having vivid dreams about dollar bills—money feels like a wall that keeps her away from Youa. The family’s welfare check is $605 every month. It goes toward rent, gas, soap, and community dinners, which the Hmong hold to plan for emergencies, knowing that they’ll need to lean on one another if things get bad again. The days pass as the family watches soap operas on the television, trying to be invisible in the United States. At night, the adults talk about money, finding work, and surviving in the United States. The conversations make Kao drowsy.
Kao remembers her first summer in the United States as a time full of things she couldn’t do because there was no money, intermingled with the smell of used clothes from church basements. Chue and Bee say that the clothes represent a path out of poverty and a happy future. Kao feels the weight of the journey ahead. Even though there’s no money, Chue lets Kao and Dawb buy ice creams from the ice cream truck that passes by, because she can’t stand to see them go without while they watch other children eat ice cream. Kao imagines her parents standing on a highway bridge with nowhere to go.
The family’s poverty is deeply restrictive: Kao feels like her family must leap through huge hurdles to overcome their financial woes, just like they did when they were trying to escape life in refugee camps. Kao’s image of her parents trapped on a highway bridge emphasizes that poverty is just as restrictive as walls and fences: it confines the family and prevents them from achieving the empowerment that Kao imagined they’d find in the United States.
Themes
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As autumn approaches, Chue stops talking about money and starts talking about getting Kao and Dawb educated. She thinks that they must learn about being American and about the possibilities for their lives that lie ahead. A cousin takes them to register at Battle Creek Elementary School, where a woman asks Kao to recite the alphabet—but Kao only knows the first three letters. She just smiles politely when the woman asks her things she doesn’t know. Dawb recites the full alphabet, but she can’t count in English, so she offers to count in Hmong or Thai. The woman registers Kao for first grade and Dawb for second grade.
In addition to grappling with a new environment and their poverty, the whole family must start from scratch with their education and learn a new language. Kao and Dawb are behind in school, and Chue and Bee can’t find work until they gain language skills and qualifications. All of this sets them back significantly in life, making it harder for them to achieve the stable footing they’re striving for in their new home.
Themes
In their first week at school, a boy comes up to Kao at recess and pushes her to the ground. Before she can get up, Dawb jumps on him, yelling at him in Hmong to stop being mean. The teachers expel Kao and Dawb. They try to go to a few other schools, none of which will keep them, and they end up at North End Elementary School, in a classroom full of Hmong kids of all ages from the refugee camps. A Hmong man helps to translate what the teacher says. One day, the teacher reads aloud from the book Mrs. Nelson is Missing—it’s the first book that makes Kao cry.
Hostility and prejudice toward immigrants, as expressed by the bully at school, can negatively affect immigrants’ progress. The prejudices that the Hmong children face force them to be schooled separately from non-immigrant children, which only deepens the divide between them and their American peers. The fact that the other children in Kao and Dawb’s class are also ex-refugees suggests that the hardships of being a refugee continues to affect people long after they attain freedom from refugee life—all of them are in the same boat, unable to fully integrate into an English-speaking culture.
Themes
One day, Dawb chews gum in class, and the teacher grabs Dawb’s arm hard enough to leave a big bruise. Chue and Bee say that they can’t do anything about this—the children must follow the rules if they want to survive in the United States. Dawb grows scared of school, but Kao takes Dawb’s place when they have to recite numbers, and nobody notices. Meanwhile, Chue attends night school, and she urges Bee to try for community college. Bee convinces his social worker that he’s not afraid of work, but he wants to study English and integrate into society better. Eventually, the social worker agrees. Bee goes outside and stares at the hills as if he’s staring at the mountains in Laos, where his father is buried.
In addition to the hardships the family faces with language, education, and access to work, they must also constantly watch their own behavior. Bee feels immense pressure to constantly express gratitude for the chance to be living in the United States, and the children must tolerate abuse at school so as not to jeopardize their new immigrant status. Meanwhile, Bee searches for a connection with his homeland, and he worries about being far away from his relative’s graves, which he believes connect him to his ancestors’ spirits. In this way, immigrant life tests Bee’s spirituality, which adds to his emotional burden.
Themes
Another summer passes. Chue and Bee miss Laos, which they talk of fondly. Kao thinks of Laos as their country, and Thailand as hers. The United States should be theirs, but they feel lonely, lost, and struggling for future happiness. Kao still misses Youa desperately, but she’s getting used to the pain. Meanwhile, Dawb moves up to third grade, in a class with white students. The doctors give her special shoes that stops her limp, and she does well in school—things are looking up for Dawb in the United States. Kao struggles with speaking English, but she likes writing better. She writes lots of letters to Youa in California.
Although Kao anticipated that the United States would be a perfect place full of happiness, the family is struggling to feel at home in their new environment. This feeling of not fitting in, or not being at home yet, also adds to their mental burden as they attempt to assimilate. Despite these worries, the children are beginning to adapt, suggesting that their attempt to feel at home isn’t unattainable—it’s just harder than it initially seemed. It takes time, patience, and a lot of effort to fit in somewhere new.
Themes
At a parent-teacher conference, Kao’s teachers worry that Kao rushes through all her work and doesn’t talk much in class. Chue and Bee are surprised, since she talks a lot at home, but Kao explains that she doesn’t have a voice in English. Kao’s shyness when speaking English also makes it difficult for her to make friends at school. The whole family tries to help her with reading, and eventually, she starts writing short stories.
Although Kao’s parents struggle more than their children with their language barrier, it still affects Kao and Dawb’s progress at school and in their assimilation more generally. Kao’s language barrier affects her confidence: it makes her anxious about participating in classes and speaking with other children.
Themes
Kao’s first short story is called “The Watermelon Seed.” It’s about a watermelon seed that knows it will be eaten, so it tries to stop growing, but it can’t. The watermelon makes a wish to the moon for one of its seed to fall out, so that when it dies, a part of it will remain. When the watermelon is cut open, all its seeds fall out and blow far and wide to live in the world, just as the watermelon wanted. When Kao’s teacher grades the story, she writes that Kao isn’t bad at English—she just won’t speak it.
In emphasizing her writing aptitude, Yang (Kao) lets the reader know that she struggles primarily with speaking. This emphasizes how difficult it can be for shy or anxious people to gain confidence with communicating verbally in a new language—and how this struggle makes them even more anxious in turn. Kao’s story about watermelon seeds scattering far and wide mirrors her family’s experience as immigrants, scattering from their homelands to disparate places.
Themes
As time goes on, Kao’s family eats more American-style food, and the Hmong families in the neighborhood start taking up hobbies like fishing or soccer. Kao’s family starts watching wrestling matches on television—it becomes their family bonding activity. The extended family gathers for meals at Nhia’s house on wrestling nights, because Nhia has a color television. One night, Bee tries to walk Kao and Dawb home from Nhia’s house and gets lost in a snowstorm. Eventually, Chue opens the door to find him standing there, like a puddle of wet rags “on the doorstep of America.”
An important part of immigrants feeling at home in a new culture entails adapting to new social habits and customs. As the Hmong families learn to socialize in ways that Americans would, they begin to feel more comfortable. But despite their progress, the imagery of Bee standing on America’s “doorstep” stresses that Yang’s family is still only in the beginning of their journey to assimilate into American culture.
Themes
Kao knows that her family escaped a terrible war to be in the United States—everyone says how lucky they are to be here. Kao, however, feels that life is hard in the United States: she watches her parents struggle, and she feels it. She tries to fit in at school, and she feels it. Sometimes, it feels sad to be a Hmong person in the United States.
Parents and children alike struggle with fitting in to a new culture, and this takes a toll on their mental health. The pressure to assimilate seems to be triggering sadness, loneliness, and anxiety in Kao—all of which could have serious effects on her mental health in the long term.
Themes
