Read book so people across the country are able to have conversations about that experience, Kao Kalia Yang is one of the best to take us there. Her new book the song poet, a nice companion piece to a memoir about her father and his role in keeping history alive through the oral tradition. I thought both books were moving, giving me such insight into the role of culture and family life, made me think about how it works. Without further a do, help me welcome Kao Kalia Yang. [applause] can you all see me . Okay. Can you all hear me . Even if you cant see me. Thank you for being here. Im delighted to be back. Two years ago i was here with the late home, her and i am glad to bring you the song poet. I am incredibly proud of this. Im working on speaking slower. People told me i speak too fast. You give me some feedback afterwards, okay . The song poet came out of a conversation i had with my father a few years ago. I asked my dad how does a song poet become . He looked at me a little bit and said when i was young there were few people that they beautiful things to me. My father died when i was two years old. My mother had 89 children, i was 2 years old. Growing up i always wished for a father. And things people say to each other. I was speaking for myself. That was beautiful. I said to my dad maybe that will be the beginning of my next to book. He looked at me and said maybe at the end, nobody wants to read a book about men like me. They invite themselves. A few years after that a producer came to our house, asked my father how it feels looked at her, i can barely by my own name, my daughter i only wish i could read. I started thinking seriously about men like my father on the streets of new york city when i was studying there. Walking to Columbia University in restaurants. Other colleges like stanford university, most of this world is built on the shoulders of men like my father. They have lessons to offer the world. This is one way of me telling my father, the song poet, he was my first literary experience of the world. The the song poet begins with this is the dedication. For the songs that arise from the horizon, my brothers and sisters, my sons and daughters, my fathers only songs and the still fluttering heart. In the words of Ralph Ellison on american blues, keeping the details and episodes of approval experience alive in one consciousness. Not by the consolation of the philosophy but squeezing from it a different thing. Has a form that loses a biographical catastrophe expressed, it can have the voices of fathers and daughters coming together, different versus of the same song. I am taking on my fathers form the best way i know how. I dont have the voice to sing. My father has a beautiful voice. Your voice is your only vehicle to the world. There are no musical accompaniments. I was born underneath the umbrella to focus my best effort. I will give you a feel for the book. It is a fatherless voice. I ran away from home, each time i loved i did not think of the coming of night. My only plan was to find the tallest tree i could from the village and climb it. I thought i would stay forever somewhere between the earth and the sky. I would sit on the tree of my village and look at the gentle curve of the valleys and search for the place my father was buried. Father is on a mountain in the shape of an uneven triangle rising out of the stream house. On the tree i repeated the words i gathered from friends and relatives, words i heard my mother say to their children, words of appeal of love, courage, words the travel everywhere to come to the same place, do not the afraid, everything will be okay. The jungle foliage was thicker and closer, what was in the sky, shielded the top on the highest mountain peaks floated down and covered the ground. I curled my legs on the tree limbs and saw the cool dampness of the mountain air, saw it travel through my pants and my shirt was armor and against the evening wins and recalled stories village elders told of wandering the night, seeking operations from the living. From the safety of the storytellers it was fine pretending the firefight, the tortured souls would linger. In the dark of my tree limb, the brink of light i saw belonged to that. My courage wavered and i started thinking perhaps running away was not the answer. It was no ones fault i wanted a father. I could not locate in the world. Each time i ran away i walked home on the same path i had taken. I went over things my mother did for each of us, started thinking of my older brothers and sisters, the harvest with his mother and little brother, june became a teacher so he could share his government salary with everyone in the family. I got out before dawn each day and crawled into bed each night. To be the first to work with the village. Working hard at raising healthy chickens, so the family could be at each new years feast. Notebooks in his hand all the time and notes of politics and humor to be an example of education for who i need to follow. God did the laundry and helped with the house and while there were complaints it never stopped her from working. And argued so much and what did i do . It was too sensitive with concern over having enough right, holding himself as a brother, would simply be a good father. It was not his intention to make anyone sad. All his brothers were acting as if they knew home but that was because he didnt have a father. Nothing less and nothing more. I need to extend his heart and become more of what the family needed him to be. And whether it was big round eyes i ran away so many times because i could not carry the weight of words. The ones inside me and around me because i could not use my mind, conscious and unconscious. Words i yearned to hear, there was no one to save them. I found myself stumbling back, embarrassed by lack of confidence. My mother never asked why i ran away or where i had been. Upon my return i said and she agreed i had gone to play by myself because i was a loner and straight too far and had taken much longer to get home what was good for me. My little feet could not be the defense of a great sign. I was young and i forgot. Even after the other things, what they told me to remember. My mother accepted this, only too happy i found my way home again. She surrounded me with well and dry earth, a woman with public words, my mother did not offer many merrymans but when i returned home, i made the beating of her frantic heart. The only person who knew about that innocent mistake, i saw in his eyes a brand of hopelessness and love. Who would lie very still in a message shared with me. He folded his arms over his head, stared up to the ceiling. His eyes did not close. As it comes to me, one hand unfolded from the other and holding my small medium hand at this point. He gave a squeeze. In the course of those fingers i felt i was not alone. If i had not returned, who would truly be alone. That is when i cried. For my own thoughtlessness and endless learning. I didnt dare make a noise, my body jerked in small motions and the hot liquid of my tears slipped out of my eyes and down either side of my face. The tears i held back by the fire lights and away from the village up high in the trees, a small string of hurt unfurling. Through the tears i could see my mothers back turned to the wall and in the dark her body jerked in little motions similar to my own. I was 12 years old when i began singing poetry with my body was changing. More girls were noticing me in the village. My mind was changing too. I understood school is not my arena that i could find other pathways into manhood. The world was changing. Each day i drew more curtains on my future at the deck of a gun, not a pen. A dead battle with cries of widows and orphans in our village, the only way i could meet their pain was to take it inside of me, melt into my flesh and feel what was called through my veins, my heart overflowed. When i began seeing song poetry i discovered i could share stories of courage and sorrow of missing and despair, anger and betrayal, conscious and unconscious, intentional and not. The sensitivity of those around me. My brothers and sisters, family and friends follow their hot tears down there cheeks. My son about me and those around me, those words that were impossible to live up to, unforgettable to hear, the eternal care, and not be afraid, everything will be all right. In 1982 my father came up with an album of poetry that was considered a bestseller in the community. My father made 5000, the goal is to use the money to come up with a second album. I remember very clearly i knew about 5000. I went to my dad and said i need something new. If you dont buy me new colored pencils i wont go to school because i am embarrassed. I dont want to do the same thing year in and year out. My father went there. My older sister wanted things too. The younger ones come along and they follow in our footsteps and my father talked on going to 5000 and the album never came out. It translated closing on our back, drumsticks in our hands. And never asked about the second one. It wasnt until i became a writer, that one question the one producer asked, when you are your self. My dad answered her i can barely write my own name. My daughter writes in english stories i speak. The next thing i will read is from my most the small track in the book, how to love, in my fathers voice. I love you win you said we could get up at 3 00 in the morning and get away from our younger children, wanted me to change jobs and tear up the children during the day. I wanted we did not speak much english. I wanted to ask who would drive you to work in the morning and when the shift was through. We only had one car. I wanted to tell you i was scared to look for a job and come home without one. I wanted to tell you i was scared to go to work without you, who was going to help when you filled them up. What if something was wrong . Who would hold your hand with you outside . How would i ever work in this country, raise the children without knowing you were beside me, you were the only reason i felt we had a chance, and putting our days before our children. I love him too much to speak to you, and even at lesser pay, take care of the children, and part with them each morning. I love you through the years we were together because the work was in different places, and continue the old routine. And the rest. And by 5 you have industries and take care of children until you got home at 2 00 in the afternoon. My shift started at 3 00. And we say hello and goodbye, didnt get home until midnight. The small is quiet because you and the younger children are actually. The other girls, an effort to get up and talk about safety first. I told them not to come close, working in the factory and chemicals and the particles i worked with. I knew it could cause cancer. After i shower i get you close each way and then kiss my older girls at night and falling to the edge of the mattress, three younger ones reading my song in the night. Breath never came until you woke up and could see the children closer and sleep on my back. In those years it was only in my dreams we were together. And held my hand and the hands of our children. There you were softly, you held me close and told me i was doing a good job alongside you but our life wasnt like that. I never asked what your dreams where. I was scared of them. On the weekends, tired and exhausted, happy to be with the children, unsure how to be with each other. Crashing, silencing, on the weekends we share the same house, same children, the same life. Not until i got married, not until my husband and i woke up the same alarm every morning that we were at the same dining table and sometimes we ate lunch together but i understood the loneliness from my mother and father. I understood those weekends when they crowded around us and apart from each other. This next track. My father says he is nothing more and nothing less then the father he imagined for himself. He is only the person that is there. This is from a track titled the sun must rise. With my younger brother . On a dark rainy night our father calls for one more family meeting, and huge voices, return to school get a job and leave home. Our mother sat on the sofa so that she didnt touch him. Pieces of tissue in her hand and put some up to her face to cover her eyes as our father spoke and did not contain her mouth. The words she wanted to say to our father were inside and all we could do was watch who he was fighting for. Our mother said she would rather be safe at home in a world that would not welcome him a. She said our father sustained her if he wanted to but she was not going to take the responsibility for what has happened and our father could blame himself because a father has as much to carry as his son. She said to our father, works with no different at school. He was holding true and the only reason he didnt quit was because he had children to feed. He was no more of a success in america than sue. If anyone gives an ultimatum. Our father tried to say the meeting wasnt about him or their relationship. It was about sue. Our mother would not be quiet. She had her hands over her heart, tissues in her hand and described, yet her voice did not crack, had last she said i am tired of love you both so much and seeing you fall into your selves, the men you are. The more our mother smoke the smaller our father became, it could be big for us. Sue came to his rescue. Sue raised a hand, tried to speak but no words came out of his lips. He didnt want to leave max. Max was 4 years old. Sue looked at max sitting by the wall and looked back at him. Our father said i dont want you to be an example for your little brother max on how to survive in a country as a young man. Our father thought his words were motivating, we watched them slice her brother apart. Max heard our fathers words, he had been sitting by the stairwell, made the decision. When max heard our fathers words he got up and said sue is my brother, cannot leave me. Life without sue is no life at all. I would rather die than live in america without my brother. Locking case with our father, and held onto his arm. Our father moved away, stood up, paste, keeping it even. The balls of his feet burned with the long night beside the machine at work. Standing and walking. He walked a small stretch to the light of the dining area. This is what happens when you stand and walk without rest the night through. He held up his red pants, tight white lines and his hartline colliding across his calloused palms. He said this is what happens to human flesh when it cuts into steel. He said i want you to have a life that is better than mine. I dont want you to be a machinist like me or live your life as men and boys stupider than you telling you you are along here in this country, telling you to be part of the country you do not have. I want you to have a better life than me. I want you to be better than me. Sue looked at our father and said what if you are the best man i know how to be . He didnt want to accept it. For the first time in his life he heard the words of a son to his father, knew what it was like to yearn for a father, burn to make him better and sue had tried to keep him safe. Sue could no longer save our father from himself lose our father said you cannot be moved in this country. Then i cannot provide in this country. Sue got up, walked to put his hand on maxs head, offered no words, no goodbyes. Sue passed by the father into the dining room, into the kitchen and opened the cabinet beside the white refrigerator, pulled out a black garbage bag, closed the cabinet so lightly it made no sound, didnt turn off the lights in the hallway, walked into his room. It was a horrible nightmare, the nightmare we had been dreading, the moment we believed our life together as a family would end, not because of war or soldiers encroaching but because the remnants of war inside each of us, the battle we fought to survive in america. We ran after sue, he held to the end of his shirt and tried to hold them still, washing in Different Directions and back again and stood with hand over there mouths which are mother and father watched from the doorway of sues room, a framed photograph of grandma and the garbage bag. And photograph there is not enough in his eyes despite the side with hairspray. He has a blade of grass. On his bookshelf with the photograph of 2yearold max from a shirt that was too small. Maxs hands behind his back and to the side, put a picture in the garbage, grabbed a few white tshirts, a pair of jeans and a sweater, there was no waking up from this nightmare. Sue left that night, we sat outside calling for him as he drove away and disappeared into the dark. In the distance we heard the sound of the cars. I will read one more excerpt and open up for q a. I will read a short one. I had been thinking, my heart was on the other side, spicy and sweet, brought to mind the simplicity i had known as a child in the thick coconut risk giving way, of chicken soup, but more important, yearning to see your brothers but meeting them without the presence of her mother. There are pieces of us and after all these years we had to return Going Forward. And go to laos for a week. And in a tiny way. I could not sleep, listened to the humming of a small airconditioner in the room, in the mattress. I drifted in and out of sleep. Restless as a grey cloud. I got up and opened the door of the patio the room, drove it across and felt the heat and humidity, closed the door behind me, stood on the small balcony, hand on the railing and saw fireflies flittering across the dark corners of the courtyard, small floating sparks in the trees, hot winds blue, motorcycles and somewhere the lonely sound reminiscent of what drifted toward me. I missed my people in a way i had never missed. I missed laos, missed my father. It wasnt only my father or my mother, it was laos that awoke me in my journey separated by time, the leaves of my heart returning. Laos ravaged by war and its aftermath as had been my life. I knew the old places would be gone. I believed the majestic mountains would stand. Through the years there were moments i believed i would return to laos in death and meet again the land that had given me life. I stood on the dark balcony feeling the flow down my cheek and the rush of my hands. Thank you for being with me. [applause] i am here for you. I have no remarks that i dont like to talk at people. I want to be in conversation with them. There is a microphone set up right there where connor is standing. Questions from the microphone. You can ask me anything you want. I will try my best to think it over. My question, you have written a book for your mother, and your father. How have they received them . Are they in conversation about them . My first book was very much about my grandmother. Im like the dog after he sent of a thong. I dont know when to give up and i dont. So, this book is alive and its in the world. Thats the test of the world. Anyone else . People tell me im best at the q a, not the reading part, but the q a and it would not be okay with me if you left to this room without saying a thing and went in the world and said i had nothing to offer thats not fair to me, so please ask me whats in your heart, whats on your mind. You can ask me about writing if you like. Yes. How can i listen to your fathers album . Its on my website and you can order from it and listen to it. He has a beautiful voice. That is indeed a simple question. I can really go on in my answers and that one was very distinct. I really enjoyed the part where your parents are climbing you have read the book. Yes. Could you give us insight on it youre been back to thailand and laos and what your plans are for that . When i was 20 years old i had an opportunity to study global developments. I was a junior at Carleton College and so i took the opportunity. In order to go ahead to become an american citizen and all my life i had a lovely photo of my ear i beautiful photos of my ears. Good ears. I cried when september 11 happened when i was in thailand. American nationals were told to stay put. But, i know that in may of 1979, my mother buried photos of herself, her mother, and a patch everywhere i went people would say what are you and i would say they would say you dont look like that and they say you move like american. You are submitting a rock. You eat like an american any waste so much energy, but they would tell man looked japanese and chinese. A face of lungs to so much, so i decided to illegally cross the river as a japanese students. I spent the day on the base of the river searching through the bamboo groves. I cannot find those photos. Now, i understand maybe they were not mine to find. They were for my mom and my dad. You read the book, so you know mom and dad went to thailand. My sister and her husband were working at the time. However, when they got to laos they were in the airport and her family was reading there on the outside for my mom. She could see them. They let my mom through. Theyve let my sister through. They stop my dad and the woman said if you value your life, dont leave the airport and my dad said what did she said we kicked you out once, do you want us to kick you out again. My younger sister born in america said can i talk to supervisor. The woman went to her gone, so my dad said no. The laos government hijacked the oneway airport for my parents to come back to thailand, so they never made it back. In every National Library in laos theres a copy of the book and i havent friend who went there and went into all the libraries and placed a copy of the book. There is a couple in new york that read the book and they gave a Million Dollars to this organization. Theres a library where what the dedication for my grandma who never how to read and all of the boys and girls in laos that hope they read the stories they never wrote. I would love to go back. I understand now on the streets there are now copies of my first book, the late home, or. Its a bit smaller than the american copies in the quality is not as good, but they are being sold on the streets, so the store has found its way back i have yet to follow, but that is one thing i want to do. I would love to go back with my mom and my dad. Im like the dog after the son of a bone. I dont let go. In the next five years or even if i dont have money we have credit cards. Anyone else . This is the first time i have heard you or been introduced to your work and went to comments that your voice and when you are reading it is very lyrical, very poetic, very beautiful. Thank you so much. Really, touched me. I dont know your story. How long you were born in laos and when did you come to america if you could just comment a little bit. So, i was not born in laos, but a refugee camp in thailand a year after my mom and dad cross the river. I dont know if you know anything about the history, but when america was fighting the vietnam war they were they can dish commissioned 32000 boys to fight and die. A third were slaughtered in the war with the americans and another third were killed in the genocide of the aftermath and after the americans left the leading paper of the communist government said its necessary and not all. Big trucks came into the villages and took the remainder of the boys and men, old men and young and the women in the girls found them slaughtered in the jungle. My family was one of the first to fully into the jungles of laos. My uncle would become the leader of the rebels. My family lived there for five years my parents met into the jungle. She was 16 and he was 19 and she said they went for a walk and there was no end in sight. I talked about my grandma, my moms mom earlier. My mother was 16 and she and my father were visiting her family in an encroachment of poachers were coming and she watched her mother get up to go to the river to fetch water and my mom said she sat there by my father and did not run after her. She did not say goodbye. This is the nightmare she carries with her. My mom dreams all the time. Thats where my life can come of these two young people. We believe before babies are born of the pieinthesky that they can see the rivers and the trajectory of mountains and i saw a young man and young women walking without shoes and i chose them. So, i was born in 1980. My parents say i was like a gift at a time when they did not bear presence. I lived in a refugee camp of the first six years of my life and i could not go to school. There were 40000 of us on 400 acres, so less than a square mile radius, if you can imagine. There was no room. We got food three days out of the week. I can still remember if i close my eyes i can still see a women and girls who went up to the camp to forage for food, crawling back with bloods seeping in between their legs. I can see the men in the boys sometimes being killed for leaving the 400 acres. Thats where i was born and everyone kept telling me this is not home. This is not the world. My grandma used to tell me beautiful stories of laos. My dad used to carry me to the tops of the tall trees and he would tell me that the size of my hand at my feet, that these things when i dictate my life journey that i was not a child of war, poverty and despair, but born the captain took more beautiful feature that when they would walk on the horizon that my father had never seen. So come on july, 27, 1987, my father need the decision to come to saint paul, minnesota, because his best friend was here he heard there were low skill jobs in the factory and he heard there were good schools. After me and my mom left the camp every time i looked to her no matter what was in her hand come out she would give that to me because it shipped six miscarriages, all little boys who could not come down to our world and our life because my mom did not have the food and nutrition to sustain them for life. I was her baby and my mom and dad came here so one day my daddy said i could do work that was good for the world that we lived in. So, that is my story. I was born after the fighting, but me in so many of the people in this room are here right now want to men and women who wake up shaking from the nightmares for the shoulders are running after them. Where the people they love are no longer here to talk to them. Theres a lot of ptsd in the community. We are the inheritors of trauma and pain and hope, so much hope. Maybe thats where my story begins and thats why as some writers i started writing my first look at 22. My grandma was dying and she said education is a garden i cultivated in america and one day we would reap the harvest together. I was a senior, a few months from graduating. July 18, 2003, my grandma passed away and she told me that it would be selfish or me to cry for her to stay that there were people who loved her before me and jenna mom and dad and brothers and sisters and while there is no lone man in the map of the thicker world that she would open up the house tour youth and everyone would be there, her mom dad, my grandpa, beautiful little girl and everyone would say where have you been, why are you so late in coming home. My never my grandma never went to school and she never learned to read or write, but when we got to america i started writing her love letters because we could not afford longdistance phone calls. She lived in california we lived in minnesota and i thought if i pressed hard on the pages she could see my love. When my grandma died my twin to her place. She never had a room of her home but she had 13th of suitcases that she would take from one place to the next and they had all of the letters that we had written her hair some of the letters she read with her hands so anytime set the ink had run off and all you could see was the indentation in the page. So, my first book began as a love letter to my grandma. To say that i will always remember her with a single tooth because with that siegel tooth we took down jolly ranchers and non them both in to say with the beauty of my years i will always remember she was never able to remember in rings because she had been chased by a tiger in laos and they had been ripped apart. I remember clearly my dad asking me on page 37 what are you doing and i said writing a love letter to grandma. My dad said to me, you know if you dream in the right direction the draining of the dries. It grows thicker, so a dream was born. The world, the reading world went along with me and we would learn from the lessons she lived through. When you write your grandmas a story you document your own history and thats why did. Yes . Thank you for your powerful words and the gift of a storyteller, to be able to convey these authentic realities and you do so which with such courage and integrity. Many of my best friends are a member of the community and they were able to take their children on a remarkable odyssey back to laos to rediscover the roots of their culture and their families, but as you talk so much about i think your experience is of older generations and perhaps younger generations and it resonates with the experience, for example, i have a friend whos a jewish author, secondgeneration and her parents were part of the holocaust and part of her journey is to journey back and also to see how this carries out for her son. Native americans i think in many common experiences, but could you just remark on the arc of the generations, their survivors, folkestone with trauma who are part of an older generation, your own experience and how that moves forward to a generation that both embraces tradition and also weaving themselves into the fabric of american life. Thats the opposite of a simple question. [laughter] my grandma knew to english words. She knew hello and no trickery can the phone rang she would pick it up and say hello and if she did not understand she would say no and hang up. Shes my american hero. She never tried to fit in. She knew there was no way. My grandma taught me wonderful lessons i remember being a teenager and wayne braces. We do not have cable tv so we watched a lot of they watch and Pamela Anderson and everyone else had wonderful teeth and i would ask if i could get braces and instead of saying no, they would say maybe next year. Finally one year my grandmother looked at me and smiled and said is my smile not beautiful. It was not until i gave birth to my own children and saw their toothless smiles that i saw smiled that reveled my grandmother. That was my grandma. My mom and dad came here and would merely to the factories to feed us. Thats where they were for a long time until my dad and 14 of his others were let go for wanting to have a conversation not about the quality or racially quality. Nevermind there are told to eat the hot dogs at like an Employee Appreciation walk. Nevermind these things happen. They only wanted to ask if one of the younger men could run the machine because one of the older men had carpal tunnel and could no longer run it and they were let go. Theres my generation, my older sister and i came here and our parents told us we needed doctors and lawyers. My gemma grayish [inaudible] my older sister became a lawyer because she when an Elementary Schools spelling the. A year after we came to america she won the spelling bee under the guidance of a teacher. She could somehow take part english words and peace the mac together again. I became a selective mute because i was seven and with my mother kmart and we we were looking for light bulbs. My mom who is 10 years younger than i am today before you and i thought she was incredibly beautiful and brave and she went to the clerk of said im looking for the thing that makes the world shiny because she did not know the word lightbulb. My mother carries a thick accent, so the clerk did this and the more she tapped on the ground the thicker the words became in my mothers mouth and by the time my mom finished and walked away and we waited for her to come back, but she did not come back and that was the first time i saw my mother bow her head in defeat. At that was the moment i decided if the world we lived in and did not need to hear my mother my father and it did not need to hear me there and i stop talking. What began as a revolution became a revolution against me because when the teachers asked if i was here and i would whisper here. The courage to speak. Dot inside me. I was only a kid in the words had to go somewhere and for me all those unsaid words found their ways to the pages and every time he made a mistake my teachers would not cross it out. There was always a . A little girl chasing after meaning and you create a writer in the process. A writer does not just emerge from a family. My little sister, was once asked if i was so sad that many kids could no longer speak and had lost touch with the culture. She said my grandparents were from china in laos. Im from america. We are all of the world now. She say if you give me the best piece of yourself who would i be up and died did not care that forward. How can i not believe. My brother max reminds us that we have had the power to bomb the world for a long time now, but the world remains intact and people keep giving birth and we tell them these little boys and girls that they will walk towards a more beautiful future. I tell him hes the happy entity ive been waiting for. All of us in this room, somewhere in time there was a man and women and we were as far into the future as they were ever going to get. Thats all. We have had the power to bond each other for a long time, not to end the world as we know it. It remains intact no matter what everyone says that it remains intact for a reason and i believe so very much in the young people Going Forward in their intelligence and i know as a teacher that my best features teachers have been the ones with not set the limits but pushed me and so on me that things i could become long before i had the power encourage thats what i try to do for the young ones. Beyond writing and make my life teaching. Thats what i try to do, to tell them that the future they are building that their hmong home will be built. Thank you. I too grew up in another area of the world where i played in bamboo groves and i miss it terribly, but if i were to take the test to become an american citizen today i would fail because i dont know anything, but because of the grace of god my parents were american, so i am american. Although, i dont really feel like i am. My point today is that how can we even talk about not receiving immigrants in this country. It is so selfish of us. We have so much more than any other country has. Look at all of us today. [inaudible] i dont know how we came to be together, but we have a 3year old daughter and identical to enjoy seven the boys were first born neither of us got much sleep. s sleep is very precious. Its worth more than a lot of money in our home. When night he woke me up and i was not happy about it because i had fallen asleep and he said and i looked at my husband in the dark and i could see he was crying because we were talking about whether we should let more refugees into the country and he said if we dont then the children are gone and theres no, you and theres tommy and theres no love we have been building for the last six years that generations before us have filled. I think when we talk about whether we want to let more immigrants and refugees in we dont often talk about why they are coming. We dont talk about a world that is always issuing more more refugees every day or that we have the power to help the ability to hurt. My grandma said if you have the power to help someone and you have the power to hurt them. We dont talk about that. I stand before you as a very proud american, as an American Writer contributing to literature from eight hmong perspective, from a hmong heart, but every time i leave america i remember im a human being and not it is the human story that every writer in the world that tries to talk about. The beat of the same human heart. [inaudible] thank you. Thank you for giving me the power of a microphone. Anyone else backs. Thank you for being here with me ,. [applause]. Thank you so much and thank you to all of you for coming. We will be back at noon. Thanks so much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] youre watching book tv on cspan2 and this is our live coverage of the wisconsin book festival from the madison public library. That was Kao Kalia Yang and in about 30 minutes the next author will be out here and thats then aaron wright talked about his book the way to the spring. Thats in about 30 minutes and we will be back with more live coverage then, the first heres an interview from book tvs this attack last year to the university of wisconsin in madison. University of wisconsin professor, jennifer. Frederick nietzsche was a 19th century german philosopher who wrote many many many books and all sorts of different forms. All of them, some essayist, some critiques and all of them had something to do with the challenge of universal truth. So, he took as his enemy the notion of universal truth and pretty much all of his work has something to do with his effort to pare it down, excavated, look at the history of that idea and to show that anything that we take to be universal like god, and human creations, but they are not rooted in nature or necessity or mayors of reality. Speaker1 he wrote one time got his dead speak one time god is dead and this first makes its appearance and in it the gay science is an aphorism called the madman. So the aphorism is hes playing with this idea that a madman runs into the town square and says god is dead, god is dead, we have killed them you and i and everyone said hes crazy. He realizes that his time is not come yet and so there he is announcing what will be basically his intellectual project for the rest of his writing life before he goes insane and that is the notion that god is dead. What troubles nietzsche
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