Coffee with the Author: Kao Kalia Yang

In the persisting new normal of 2020 we sat down for “zoom coffee” with the author of our newest title, The Latehomecomer. We talked about literature and what books have meant for her throughout her life. Kao Kalia says “The adaptation of The Latehomecomer by Literature to Life made my throat thick with memory and love for the characters in the book, the family that raised me, for the young writer that tried to bring that love to life in a different language, for a world that just might listen and feel along.” Check out the rest of the chat below:

What is your favorite childhood book? 

When I was a child, a true child, my favorite stories were never in books. They were told by the adults around me, on the stretch of an arm: the hair were trees, the knuckles were mountains, the veins were the rivers flowing far and fast. My favorite stories were the ones that involved the places I'd never known, creatures I'd never met. There was a great deal of magic, of heart, of hope, lots of love in my favorite stories. Many of the storytellers of my youth are long gone now, but I have a memory of an old man sitting on a wooden stool close to the ground telling his stories by the starlight, all of us children huddling close on a woven plastic mat on the hard ground, seeing before our very eyes a maiden so beautiful that where she stood, the night glowed. 

Do you have a favorite “grown-up" book right now? A favorite genre?

I love a book with beautiful language, not too self-aware, but one that never forgets that the best stories are woven with powerful imagery. At the moment, I'm reading: E.J.Koh's The Magical Language of Others. Poets write beautiful narratives. 

Do you have a favorite line or section of The Latehomecomer?

I don't have a favorite. When the book first came out, I'd read from different parts of the book at different events to test out the power of the words. Here are three that I love:

“If she ever touched that bamboo again, she told herself, forming the words on her lips, she would remember. One day, she would find the pictures again. One day, she would tell her brothers and her mother that she still had the photos of them from before the war. She would tell them that she would never forget them because the way they were was burned into her heart.” 

“He would tell me, years later, ‘My heart hurt more than my body--the flesh can take the blows, the heart suffers them...'"

“In all the languages of the earth, in all the richness of words, there is no word, no comparison, no equivalent, for my grandmother's trying to be strong for me, her one me naib."