Over the course of two award-winning memoirs, Kao Kalia Yang has charted the physical, political, emotional, and spiritual terrain of the Hmong journey to the United States in the aftermath of America’s Secret War in Laos. In this episode, Yang reads, “To the Placenta of Return,” by Mai Der Vang and discusses the sacrifices mothers made to protect their families during the war.

Later on, we check the Haiku Hotline for your poems about return. Transcriptions of this week’s featured listener poems are available here.

“To the Placenta of Return” by Mai Der Vang appears in the collection Afterland, published by Graywolf Press. Kao Kalia Yang’s books include The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet.

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