Kao Kalia Yang is an award-winning Hmong American author for both children and adults. Yang came to America at the age of six from the refugee camps in Thailand. Her family was resettled in Minnesota where Yang still lives and works from. Her newest nonfiction picture book , From the Tops of the Trees , released yesterday.
Kalia, thank-you so much for stopping by to talk about your newest book and writing. Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been writing? What is your favorite type of book to write? At the stores and in public spaces, the voices of my mother and father faltered and were often met with impatience.
A silence grew inside of me. I wrote to fill that silence. For the longest time, I wrote to make sense of the world and inside of me. The reason why I write has shifted and grown as I have matured and broaden my experiences but everything I write is a love letter to someone somewhere whose story I believe will make this world a gentler, more diversely beautiful place. That is a wonderful reason to write your beautiful stories. What is something no one or few knows about you?
Very few people know of my love for flowering trees. All kinds of flowering trees from all around the world. The fantasy and reality of looking down or up into a giant flower is something that I adore.
There is nothing like sitting in a tree surrounded by cloud of pink cherry blossoms or dogwood flowers. What inspired you to capture this event from your childhood into From the Tops of the Trees? They, born in America, struggled to understand the ways in which I was raised and where. So, one evening I began telling them this particular story as a way of opening up a life that I know is still relevant for many refugee children everywhere, for all children in search of a bigger world, a broader perspective.
