Youa Character Analysis

For the adults, the stench and the humiliation of human waste were the worst part of that long week.

Although my grandma had always looked like an old person to me, in the camp, she never rested like one. She was always busy selling her herbal remedies because health care was bad in the camp and people were scared of Western medicine. Because Grandma was the type of woman who looked like she knew things, and did, people came to her for medicinal remedies frequently. Once they heard about her talent for healing, even the Thai men, the ones who wore guns and kept us in place, came to her, mostly for concoctions to nurse their sexually transmitted diseases. She was the only person whom I knew who could safely venture out of the camp under the supervision of armed guards.

Still, to be a ferocious tiger with a raging heart caught in a cave blocked by boulders was too mean.

I had never had brothers. I could not see any good changes that a boy would bring to my life. Still, if my father wanted one so badly, fine. I was too young to grasp the position that my mother was in.

Money was like a person I had never known or a wall I had never breached before: it kept me away from my grandma. I saw no way to climb this wall. Sometimes I thought so much about money that I couldn’t sleep. Money was not bills and coins or a check from welfare. In my imagination, it was much more: it was the nightmare that kept love apart in America.

My parents tried their best at English, but their best was not catching up with Dawb’s and mine. We were picking up the language faster, and so we became the interpreters and translators for our family dealings with American people. In the beginning, we just did it because it was easier and because we did not want to see them struggle over easy things. They were working hard for the more important things in our lives. Later, we realized so many other cousins and friends were doing the same.

There was a clear division: the Hmong heart (the part that held the hands of my mom and dad and grandma protectively every time we encountered the outside world, the part that cried because Hmong people didn’t have a home, the part that listened to Hmong songs and fluttered about looking for clean air and crisp mountains in flat St. Paul, the part that quickly and effectively forgot all my school friends in the heat of summer) or the American heart (the part that was lonely for the outside world, that stood by and watched the fluency of other parents with their boys and girls […] The more I thought about it, the sicker I became[.]

My younger brother and sister could not take care of themselves. They were still just children, so I did not want to marry. Your grandfather was old. I cried at the ground when my cousin agreed to the marriage. There was nothing I could do. I had to marry him.

My grandfather was not a bad man, as my grandmother grew to know and love him.

Aren't you proud?

The guide apologized at this point for no longer being able to take Grandma directly to each place where they had been during the five years in the jungle. He explained that after all, it had been a war, and they had been running for their lives, and their homes had been only made of banana leaves, stacked on top of small tree limbs. There would be no markers left. There was no way anyone could remember the many places they had hidden, one mountain cave or the next. He only wanted her to do her best.

A woman alone, she carried us through with her guidance. Long after our father died, she taught us how to find lives in a world where life was hard to come by. She, a woman, taught us how to be men.

For the adults, the stench and the humiliation of human waste were the worst part of that long week.

Although my grandma had always looked like an old person to me, in the camp, she never rested like one. She was always busy selling her herbal remedies because health care was bad in the camp and people were scared of Western medicine. Because Grandma was the type of woman who looked like she knew things, and did, people came to her for medicinal remedies frequently. Once they heard about her talent for healing, even the Thai men, the ones who wore guns and kept us in place, came to her, mostly for concoctions to nurse their sexually transmitted diseases. She was the only person whom I knew who could safely venture out of the camp under the supervision of armed guards.

Still, to be a ferocious tiger with a raging heart caught in a cave blocked by boulders was too mean.

I had never had brothers. I could not see any good changes that a boy would bring to my life. Still, if my father wanted one so badly, fine. I was too young to grasp the position that my mother was in.

Money was like a person I had never known or a wall I had never breached before: it kept me away from my grandma. I saw no way to climb this wall. Sometimes I thought so much about money that I couldn’t sleep. Money was not bills and coins or a check from welfare. In my imagination, it was much more: it was the nightmare that kept love apart in America.

My parents tried their best at English, but their best was not catching up with Dawb’s and mine. We were picking up the language faster, and so we became the interpreters and translators for our family dealings with American people. In the beginning, we just did it because it was easier and because we did not want to see them struggle over easy things. They were working hard for the more important things in our lives. Later, we realized so many other cousins and friends were doing the same.

There was a clear division: the Hmong heart (the part that held the hands of my mom and dad and grandma protectively every time we encountered the outside world, the part that cried because Hmong people didn’t have a home, the part that listened to Hmong songs and fluttered about looking for clean air and crisp mountains in flat St. Paul, the part that quickly and effectively forgot all my school friends in the heat of summer) or the American heart (the part that was lonely for the outside world, that stood by and watched the fluency of other parents with their boys and girls […] The more I thought about it, the sicker I became[.]

My younger brother and sister could not take care of themselves. They were still just children, so I did not want to marry. Your grandfather was old. I cried at the ground when my cousin agreed to the marriage. There was nothing I could do. I had to marry him.

My grandfather was not a bad man, as my grandmother grew to know and love him.

Aren't you proud?

The guide apologized at this point for no longer being able to take Grandma directly to each place where they had been during the five years in the jungle. He explained that after all, it had been a war, and they had been running for their lives, and their homes had been only made of banana leaves, stacked on top of small tree limbs. There would be no markers left. There was no way anyone could remember the many places they had hidden, one mountain cave or the next. He only wanted her to do her best.

A woman alone, she carried us through with her guidance. Long after our father died, she taught us how to find lives in a world where life was hard to come by. She, a woman, taught us how to be men.