Carleton Connects: Kao Kalia Yang ’03 and the art of finding your voice

Noted for her mesmerizing and heart-wrenching stories of family, immigration, and community, Kao Kalia Yang ’03 discusses her two newest books: Where Rivers Part, a story of her mother’s life, and The Rock in My Throat, an illustrated children’s book that tells a tale from her own childhood. Kao Kalia Yang ’03 is a celebrated author, speaker, and teacher. Among the eleven books that she has written or edited, her memoir The Latehomecomer (2008) was a Minnesota Book Award winner and a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read; The Song Poet (2017), an account of her father and his quest to keep Hmong traditions alive through song, became the basis for an opera of the same name, performed in 2023 by the Minnesota Opera. In addition to hundreds of speaking engagements at book groups, conferences, and faith institutions, she has taught at Carleton, Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, and many K-12 schools across the nation. Yang, who majored in American Studies at Carleton, is the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.