A memoir about a Hmong family's journey to safety told from the perspective of the author's mother who survived, and helped her family escape, against all odds.
Her immensely powerful new book confirms Yang as one of America's sharpest nonfiction writers ... The book is stronger for Yang's decision to include fraught, not necessarily flattering, scenes ... For all its harrowing detail, Where Rivers Part lets the reader see the world afresh.
This journey across the world takes more than a decade, and it is told simply and earnestly in Yang’s limpid prose. She takes her time, and the pace of the book is luxurious ... Yang’s memoirs of Hmong life, traditions and displacement are not just powerful additions to the canon of immigrant literature — they are powerful books about life itself.
Yang strikes deep with prose that is spare, concrete, sometimes indeed flat ... Yang evokes the touch of a hand, an angle of the light, the savor of a rare orange or heart of palm with a sensual immediacy uncontaminated by fancy words. Early on, time can stand still for long chapters. Later on, it happens that years melt away in a sentence, or between paragraphs.
