Paj Ntaub, a young Hmong American girl, spends a busy year with her family in their new home, and seeks a way to share the beauty of the world with a grieving neighbor.

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely proud people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most...

"In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand, and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family's story after her grandmother's death, this book is Kao Kalia Yang's tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together....

In the 1960s when Kalia's mother, Chue, was born, the US was actively recruiting Hmong Laotians to assist with CIA efforts in Laos's Secret War. By the time Chue was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were perceived as traitorous for their involvement. Notably, from 1964-1973, Laos became victim to the heaviest bombardment by the United States against communist Pathet...