In her memoir The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang explores gender dynamics in Hmong culture. Yang stresses that traditional Hmong communities are patriarchal: women (like Yang’s mother, Chue) live with their husbands’ families, and they face tremendous pressure to bear sons instead of daughters. In earlier generations, Hmong women also had less personal freedom (to choose their own spouses, for example). But Yang shows that, despite their strong patriarchal values, the Hmong community’s strongest leaders are often its women. Yang’s grandmother Youa, for instance, single-handedly keeps her family alive through the Vietnam War. She also provides an endless supply of emotional strength that all of her sons lean on, so much so that when Youa dies, they acknowledge Youa’s true status as the head of their family. Through Youa’s life story, Yang asserts that although Hmong society privileges men, it’s the community’s women who provide the strength, support, and resilience to keep their communities intact, meaning that women are actually the Hmong community’s true leaders.
Yang stresses that Hmong communities have strong patriarchal values that uphold the idea that men are more important that women. When Yang’s mother Chue marries Yang’s father, Bee, Chue must to leave her own family and join Bee’s family, which causes her deep heartache. When Hmong couples get married, it’s customary for the wife to join the husband’s family, which betrays a strong emphasis on patriarchal lineage. Yang’s grandmother Youa is also forced into a marriage with an elderly widower because her male family members demand it, showing that women have less freedom than men in traditional Hmong society. Yang’s mother, Chue, has trouble giving birth to a son. Her husband’s family puts a lot of pressure on him to seek a second wife so that he can have a son, which shows that sons are more highly valued than daughters in this community. And when Yang (Kao) immigrates to the United States, her extended family holds meetings to encourage the youths to succeed in school and their careers. Kao notes “these meetings were more for the boys of the family than the girls,” suggesting that her extended family tends to put more stock in the men’s achievements than women’s.
Despite the traditional emphasis on patriarchy, Yang shows that the women in her family—especially her grandmother Youa—are actually the community’s strongest members, and its true leaders. Despite facing poverty, genocide, and statelessness, Youa works tirelessly to keep her family together. She feels like it’s her life’s purpose to keep her family intact, showing that she takes a leader’s role in her family unit. When Yang’s parents are fleeing Laos, they have to cross the Mekong River despite not knowing how to swim. Although there’s room for Youa on a raft, she doesn’t abandon her son Bee and she floats across the river with him on a bamboo pole instead. Youa values protecting her family above her own safety, emphasizing her role as the head of the family. Youa also provides relentless emotional support that her family members continually lean on, showing that Youa is the family’s central pillar of strength and resilience. Early in the story, Youa’s family are kidnapped by Pathet Lao soldiers during the Hmong genocide. Despite her own fear and sadness, Youa convinces her family that she will keep them safe, which gives them the emotional strength to push on through the harrowing ordeal. Youa’s emotional fortitude establishes her the most resilient and powerful figure in her family in times of crisis. After Youa dies, the whole community aspires to learn from her example and be strong for their own children, which emphasizes Youa’s role as a leader in her Hmong community. When Youa’s son Eng delivers Youa’s eulogy, he notes that “she, a woman, taught us how to become men.” Eng suggests that although men are seen as the leaders of the family, it’s actually Youa who teaches them all they know. Youa’s community admits, in the end, that Youa is the true head of the family. Despite their outward patriarchal posturing, these responses to Youa’s death expose that women are often the true leaders in Hmong families.
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Gender Quotes in The Latehomecomer
My mother says she would not have married my father had she known that in doing so she would have to leave forever her mother and everyone else who loved her.
Although my grandma had always looked like an old person to me, in the camp, she never rested like one. She was always busy selling her herbal remedies because health care was bad in the camp and people were scared of Western medicine. Because Grandma was the type of woman who looked like she knew things, and did, people came to her for medicinal remedies frequently. Once they heard about her talent for healing, even the Thai men, the ones who wore guns and kept us in place, came to her, mostly for concoctions to nurse their sexually transmitted diseases. She was the only person whom I knew who could safely venture out of the camp under the supervision of armed guards.
I had never had brothers. I could not see any good changes that a boy would bring to my life. Still, if my father wanted one so badly, fine. I was too young to grasp the position that my mother was in.
A part of me grew protective of the little boy and the unspoken expectations of the man he would have to become.
I had the freedom to stand strong in the wake of love and to perhaps choose my own mother—instead of a man.
My younger brother and sister could not take care of themselves. They were still just children, so I did not want to marry. Your grandfather was old. I cried at the ground when my cousin agreed to the marriage. There was nothing I could do. I had to marry him.
Aren't you proud?
A woman alone, she carried us through with her guidance. Long after our father died, she taught us how to find lives in a world where life was hard to come by. She, a woman, taught us how to be men.
