Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother's Life by Kao Kalia Yang

From Atria Books: An Esquire Best Memoir of 2024A mesmerizing and hauntingly beautiful memoir about a Hmong family’s epic journey to safety told from the perspective of the author’s incredible mother who survived, and helped her family escape, against all odds.Born in 1961 in war-torn Laos, Tswb’s childhood was marked by the violence of America’s Secret War and the CIA recruitment of the Hmong and other ethnic minorities into the lost cause. By the time Tswb was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were labeled as traitors. Fearing for their lives, Tswb and her family left everything they knew behind and fled their village for the jungle.Perpetually on the run and on the brink of starvation, Tswb eventually crossed paths with the man who would become her future husband. Leaving her own mother behind, she joined his family at a refugee camp, a choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Eventual