June 14, 2017

My Father Is Not a Powerful Man: Lessons From My Refugee Father

Our stories hold power no matter the circumstances of our lives. A Hmong-American woman looks on her father's modest life, and her own — through refugee camps in Thailand to their new life in the American Midwest — and reveals lessons from the powerless on our inherent dignity, even through our most vulnerable times.

Essay

June 14, 2018

How We Nourished Each Other When the Fridge Was Empty

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

Kao Kalia Yang shares a memory of the days when her family was new to America, and the ways they found sustenance from the unfamiliar lands around them.

Essay

February 26, 2018

A Refugee Woman on Antidepressants

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

The doctors said they could not change the conditions of her life, that the only thing they could do was change the conditions of her head. No one knew what to do with her heart.

Essay

October 30, 2017

Two Hauntings

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

Something dark lurks in the shadows of Kao Kalia Yang's childhood memories. Two spectral encounters, unsettling and unexplained.

Essay

May 11, 2018

Mothering Ghost Babies

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

Kao Kalia Yang on miscarriage and the fragility of motherhood and its tremendous strength, how it lives beyond life and death.

Essay

July 28, 2017

Your Threads Have Come Undone: A Letter to a Grieving Husband

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

A tender, empathetic, and honest letter to an unknown friend about the anguish of grief — through a story of young love, the loss of a child, and the realization that pain marks an opening to a future where new life can take root.

Essay

June 22, 2018

Suffering Is Both a Barrier and a Bridge

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

Going through hardships gives us strength in the places we’d never thought to develop, spaces we didn’t know we’d occupy, room to reach beyond ourselves, toward others who are where we had been.

Essay

March 10, 2018

The Blue House That I Loved

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

In a plot of grass, behind a bar on Payne, right off Maryland Avenue on the east side of St. Paul there was once a blue house that I loved.

Essay

May 24, 2018

In a Family, We Raise Each Other

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

Kao Kalia Yang reflects on how caring for her younger siblings has taught her about "life's possibilities and the different pathways that people can take into the road of tomorrow."

Essay

August 14, 2017

When Relatives Die They Become Ancestors

Written by Kao Kalia Yang

A reflection acknowledging that the injustice of suffering can't be wrapped up in a neat bow of closure. Instead, we the author looks to her culture’s understanding of ancestry — in the responsibility we have to the loved ones we’ve lost.