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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Latehomecomer, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Politics, Refugee Camps, and Inhumanity
The Immigrant Experience
Death, Spirituality, and Home
Love and Family
Gender
Summary
Analysis
Chue is three months pregnant. She’s boiling yams for breakfast when North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao soldiers ambush the group of Hmong people that Chue is staying with in the jungle. As Chue stokes the fire, it’s quiet and still—until bombs begin to fall. Suddenly, smoke and debris are raining down on everyone, and children run for their mothers as bodies go flying. Chue and the rest of the group retreat to a cave. They know that if the men stay with them, the soldiers will kill them all, so they decide that the women and children will surrender, and the men will go into the jungle to look for the missing people. It’s only at the moment when they have to part that Chue realizes she loves Bee.
The sudden bombing in this passage illustrates how the Hmong people were aggressively targeted by both Vietnamese and Lao soldiers—it’s clear that they have no choice but to flee such violence. Meanwhile, it’s clear that Chue’s love for Bee is growing gradually, as it takes her until partway through her first pregnancy for her to realize she has feelings of love for him at all. As before, this undermines the idea of love as immediate romantic obsession—rather, it’s something that must be cultivated over time.
Themes
Bee tells Chue that if they don’t find each other within a few years, she must start a new life. Chue watches him disappear into the jungle, and then the women and children march on with raw, bleeding feet. Bee’s mother, Youa, ties a white cloth to a stick as they approach the soldiers to indicate surrender. The six women in the group surround the 20 or so children, in case the soldiers start shooting. The soldiers see that there are no men in the group, so they march the women and children to an occupied village and lock them in a hut. Exhausted, the women fall asleep, hugging their children.
Bee’s response to his separation from Chue also contrasts with romanticized notions of love: he’s pragmatic and measured, and he’s thinking about Chue’s long-term well-being rather than their emotions in the moment. Bee’s mother, Youa, reveals herself as a leader here, and as the book progresses, her role as the family matriarch will challenge the patriarchal values that Hmong society centers on. Amid all of this chaos, it’s clear that the Hmong people—even those who survived—experienced unimaginable coercion and suffering during the genocide.
Themes
The group awakens in the morning, covered in dried blood. The younger children cry from hunger. The soldiers march them to another village, where soldier takes Chue’s pack that contains her last few precious valuables: her embroidery, her traditional silver necklace, a blanket, and a rice pot. Chue worries about feeling shamed if other Hmong people see a man who isn’t her husband carrying her pack. Eventually, he gives it back, laughing at her. At the village, a Hmong interpreter tells the group that the soldiers will keep them there, hoping to draw out Hmong men from the jungle. The village is surrounded by big rivers, so there’s no hope of escape.
The captives are treated inhumanely: they’re not permitted to bathe or eat, and they’re forced to walk for hours on end. Chue’s anxiety about having her pack taken away from her reveals that she’s influenced by patriarchal values: even though she’s a captive, she worries about being shamed for associating with a male soldier. She also feels anxious about losing her valuables because (according to Hmong spirituality) they connect her with her family, and she thinks she won’t be able to find her relatives after death without objects like her embroidery. In this way, Chue’s worries underscore how highly she values her family bonds.
Themes
The next day, the women go to gather firewood. Chue is shocked when she passes over a hill and sees thousands of graves and scorched grass. The old women in the village explain that planes came and dropped “bad rain.” Years later, Chue learns about Americans using poisoned gas in Laos and Cambodia. The women grow afraid of drinking the water. Youa boils herbs to cleanse the water and conducts shaman rituals to protect them. She longs for her sons but stays strong for the group. Chue keeps pressing on to stay alive, though she’s deeply lonely. She hugs her growing belly and thinks about her mother.
The “bad rain” and poisoned gas are chemical weapons used by the U.S. military, and the women’s trauma in the wake of these attacks continues to emphasize how the Hmong suffered as bystanders in a war that had little to do with them. Youa, however, emerges as a strong leader for the group while they’re held captive—she takes the lead on physically protecting the group by cleansing their water supply, and she also provides emotional fortitude that helps the group weather their captivity. But despite her strength, Youa suffers at having her family separated, further emphasizing the importance of family bonds in Hmong culture.
Themes
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The women see how strong and caring Youa is, and this helps them keep pressing on. One day, the soldiers force the women to build themselves a hut out of bamboo. Once it’s finished, the soldiers screen a film just outside the hut in which a Hmong man leaves his wife in the war and doesn’t come back. The soldiers urge the women to start new lives and marry communist men. Chue longs for her baby to be born because she wants a friend—she doesn’t yet know how hard motherhood will be. When her labor pains start, she’s scared. Chue gives birth to Kao’s older sister, Dawb, on March 5, 1979.
Youa’s resilience and nurturing helps the captors pull through their fear and hopelessness, underscoring how much of a leader and role model she is in this community, despite the region’s strong patriarchal values (which are illustrated in the film that the soldiers screen). This passage further develops the wider political context of the Hmong’s persecution. During the genocide, it’s clear that the Laotian authorities wanted to kill Hmong men and force Hmong women to abandon their communities. In this way, it seems that Laos wanted to destabilize the Hmong people’s relationships, traditions, and belief systems as another means of exterminating their culture.
Themes
Busy caring for the baby, Chue forgets about death—but one day, the soldiers announce that they’ve killed Bee. The women are in disbelief. When the baby cries, Chue cries—she doesn’t know what else to do. One night, however, two men steal into the camp. Their men are alive, and it’s time to escape. Chue ties Dawb to her chest and carries her embroidery with her. As the women creep away, they see two rafts on the river. The soldiers begin shouting and chasing them, but the women are already on the raft. Then, Chue sees Bee, and she holds onto him like she’ll never let go. It feels like a dream.
In addition to physical hardship, authorities also put Hmong captives through mental torture—they pretend that they’ve killed Bee, for example, which persecutes Chue emotionally. Chue and Bee’s reunion, meanwhile, is the closest they’ve come to a romantic moment between two lovers. This perhaps suggests that true romance is more emotional than it is physical—their love deepens through mutual care and concern rather than mere infatuation or physical attraction.
Themes
The men push off the rafts, and fear pounds in Chue’s ears as more soldiers approach, shooting wildly. The Hmong men have planted stolen grenades along the river. The rafts push off as the women hear Vietnamese soldiers screaming. The group scrambles to a mountain cave, and Bee holds Dawb for the first time. Chue tells Bee that she missed him even more than she misses her mother, and they feel like a family for the first time. They decide that there’s no hope in Laos—the group will head to the Mekong River (which is a 10 days’ walk away) and cross it to reach the refugee camps in Thailand.
As before, Yang shows the violence and aggression that the Hmong are fleeing to foster compassion for their plight. Chue and Bee have a profound moment when they see themselves as a family for the first time. This is also the first time in the story that Chue’s feelings for Bee to surpass her love for her mother, showing that her notion of love is deeply bound up in family bonds—and that she’s beginning to include Bee in her vision of what family means. It’s only when Chue sees herself as starting her own family that she feels her love for Bee is becoming substantive.
Themes
The group gathers taro roots, drying them for the journey. The monsoon season is starting, and people begin falling ill from the constant dampness. Chue’s breast gets infected and stops producing milk, and Dawb grows weaker by the day. One night, the group sleeps in a ravine as the rain washes the ground away. Chue and Bee think that the night will never end—but in the morning, the rain slows to a drizzle, and they set off again. They reach the Mekong on May 20, 1979; it’s a formidable river. Many Hmong, who are mountain people and don’t know how to swim well, have died trying to cross it.
The Hmong are forced to flee in miserable conditions, showing how damaging political persecution can be to people’s health. Given that Dawb is still a baby, her illness during the monsoon will likely hinder her development and perhaps affect her in the long term. This detail emphasizes how forcing innocent babies into such conditions, as the Laos troops do, is utterly cruel and inhumane.
Themes
The group trades their possessions for rafts, but Bee can’t afford one. Nobody will accept Chue’s necklace—it’s useless in wartime—so Bee trades his clothes for a bamboo pole. Chue and Bee tie themselves to it, hoping to float across the river. Chue buries her possessions and touches the spot to remember it, hoping to come back one day. She wears her necklace and ties Dawb to herself. Youa doesn’t go on a raft, tying herself to Bee’s pole instead—if her son dies, she’ll die with him. They cross in the dark with the current swirling around them, all the while hearing gunshots behind them.
The high stakes of this situation, in which the Hmong are being gunned down at every moment, further emphasizes how aggressively they’re being targeted. Meanwhile, Chue wants to remember where she buries her possessions because she believes her spirit will need them in the afterlife to reunite with her family’s spirits. Personal possessions are deeply important in Hmong spirituality, and Chue’s anxiety highlights the cruel suffering the Hmong face when they have to part with such possessions because of political persecution. As before, Youa proves her fierce strength: she has no qualms about risking her own safety to help those she feels responsible for, showing that she is a true leader. Youa’s commitment to remaining with her son—even if it means dying—shows how important family is in Hmong culture.
Themes
Bee sees lights in the distance in Thailand, but he doesn’t think they’ll ever make it. The water is freezing. As dawn approaches, Bee feels pebbles on his feet, and he drags his family to shore. Behind them, soldiers drag others from a raft into boats, taking them back to Laos. As Bee, Youa, Chue, and Dawb crawl to shore, they see that Dawb has gone limp. Chue wonders if this was all for nothing. They crowd over the baby, and as the sun rises, Dawb’s eyelids flutter open.
Even after the Hmong people flee the border of Laos and enter the treacherous Mekong River Delta, many of them are rounded up at gunpoint and forced to return to death camps. As before, Yang stresses how violent and aggressive the Hmong genocide was as an emotional appeal to the reader’s empathy.
Themes
