Clouds take on multiple meanings throughout The Latehomecomer. The Hmong believe that babies descend from the clouds when they’re born and return to the clouds when they die—in this way, clouds loosely represent the Hmong people’s interpretation of paradise, heaven, or a place of peace and happiness. Drawing on this idea, Kao Kalia Yang uses clouds to represent what the Hmong people have lost since becoming political targets following the Vietnam War—including freedom, empowerment, close connections with one another (and with their ancestral home), and peace of mind.
When Kao is young and living in a refugee camp, her father, Bee, tells her that babies come from the clouds before descending down to Earth when their mothers give birth to them. Kao finds it empowering to think about unborn babies having access to all the things she’s denied—the freedom to roam, abundance, joy, and autonomy. Clouds thus represent the opposite of her day-to-day reality, which is marked by being captivity, filth, hunger, and powerlessness to change her situation.
Later in the story, when Kao’s grandmother Youa dies, Kao thinks about Youa’s spirit returning to the place she was born, ascending to the clouds, and uniting with her ancestors. This aspect of Hmong spirituality—captured by the idea of a return to the clouds—explains why the Hmong have profound spiritual anxieties about being born or dying far away from their ancestral lands. The Hmong believe that if the dead are unable to retrace their steps to their ancestral lands, they’re doomed to wander alone forever. Life in exile thus makes them worry that their spirits will be separated in death as well as in life. In this context, clouds represent the Hmong people’s yearning for other things that they’ve lost: close-knit communities, their homelands, and peace of mind about the afterlife. Clouds represent the opposite of what life is actually like in exile—families are separated, scattered, and perpetually anxious.
In both senses, then, clouds represent the things that were taken away from the Hmong when they became political targets following the Vietnam War: freedom, empowerment, community, peace of mind—and ultimately, home.
Clouds Quotes in The Latehomecomer
I loved the idea and power of a journey from the clouds. It gave babies power: we choose to be born to our lives; we give ourselves to people who make the earth look more inviting than the sky.
The guide apologized at this point for no longer being able to take Grandma directly to each place where they had been during the five years in the jungle. He explained that after all, it had been a war, and they had been running for their lives, and their homes had been only made of banana leaves, stacked on top of small tree limbs. There would be no markers left. There was no way anyone could remember the many places they had hidden, one mountain cave or the next. He only wanted her to do her best.
Clouds Symbol Timeline in The Latehomecomer
