Listening to Writers of Color

Our December read: Somewhere in the Unknown World
by Kao Kalia Yang

About the Book:
As the country’s doors are closing and nativism is on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang, herself a refugee from Laos, set out to tell the stories of the refugees to whom University Avenue is now home. Here are people who have summoned the energy and determination to make a new life even as they carry an extraordinary burden of hardship, loss, and emotional damage: Irina, an ex-Soviet, who still hoards magical American fruit – bananas – under her bed; the Thai brothers of Vinai and their business selling purified water to gullible immigrants; the Kareni boys, who have brought Minnesota to basketball glory.

In Yang’s exquisite, poetic, and necessary telling, the voices of refugees from all over the world restore humanity to America’s strangers and redeem its long history of welcome.