-
The Song Poet
- A Memoir of My Father
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Cultural, Ethnic & Regional
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $24.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
-
-
Highly Recommend!
- By Aimee on 12-21-20
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
Somewhere in the Unknown World
- A Collective Refugee Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang, Kurt Kwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere in the Unknown World is a themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis, collected and told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet.
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
Future Home of the Living God
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backward, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.
-
-
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”
- By Mel on 11-27-17
By: Louise Erdrich
-
The Monk of Mokha
- By: Dave Eggers
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mokhtar Alkhanshali grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings raised by Yemeni immigrants in a tiny apartment. At age 24, unable to pay for college, he works as a doorman. Until: a statue of an Arab raising a cup of coffee awakens something in him. He sets out to learn the rich history of coffee in Yemen and the complex art of tasting and identifying varietals. He travels to Yemen, collects samples of beans, eager to bring improved cultivation methods to the farmers. And he is on the verge of success when civil war engulfs Yemen in 2015 and he is trapped in Sana'a.
-
-
MOVING THE NEEDLE
- By Dog Fish on 02-20-18
By: Dave Eggers
-
Secret War in Laos: Green Berets, CIA, and the Hmong
- By: Steven Schofield
- Narrated by: Andrew Rowe
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tale of a young Green Beret medic, Vietnam combat veteran with the top secret Studies and Observations Group (SOG) who was recruited by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Schofield worked five and a half years providing medical support for the Hmong and other Hill Tribes who fought the CIA’s secret war in Northern Laos, and was among the last Americans to leave SE Asia in May 1975. It was a surreal time and place that would be impossible to even imagine today.
-
-
Excellent
- By David on 01-21-20
By: Steven Schofield
-
What You Have Heard Is True
- A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
- By: Carolyn Forché
- Narrated by: Carolyn Forché
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
-
-
Cinematic true story about learning to truly SEE
- By Angel on 04-13-19
By: Carolyn Forché
-
The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
-
-
Highly Recommend!
- By Aimee on 12-21-20
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
Somewhere in the Unknown World
- A Collective Refugee Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang, Kurt Kwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere in the Unknown World is a themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis, collected and told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet.
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
Future Home of the Living God
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backward, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.
-
-
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”
- By Mel on 11-27-17
By: Louise Erdrich
-
The Monk of Mokha
- By: Dave Eggers
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mokhtar Alkhanshali grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings raised by Yemeni immigrants in a tiny apartment. At age 24, unable to pay for college, he works as a doorman. Until: a statue of an Arab raising a cup of coffee awakens something in him. He sets out to learn the rich history of coffee in Yemen and the complex art of tasting and identifying varietals. He travels to Yemen, collects samples of beans, eager to bring improved cultivation methods to the farmers. And he is on the verge of success when civil war engulfs Yemen in 2015 and he is trapped in Sana'a.
-
-
MOVING THE NEEDLE
- By Dog Fish on 02-20-18
By: Dave Eggers
-
Secret War in Laos: Green Berets, CIA, and the Hmong
- By: Steven Schofield
- Narrated by: Andrew Rowe
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tale of a young Green Beret medic, Vietnam combat veteran with the top secret Studies and Observations Group (SOG) who was recruited by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Schofield worked five and a half years providing medical support for the Hmong and other Hill Tribes who fought the CIA’s secret war in Northern Laos, and was among the last Americans to leave SE Asia in May 1975. It was a surreal time and place that would be impossible to even imagine today.
-
-
Excellent
- By David on 01-21-20
By: Steven Schofield
-
What You Have Heard Is True
- A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
- By: Carolyn Forché
- Narrated by: Carolyn Forché
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
-
-
Cinematic true story about learning to truly SEE
- By Angel on 04-13-19
By: Carolyn Forché
-
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
- By: Anne Fadiman
- Narrated by: Pamela Xiong
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.
-
-
Good audiobook but narrator struggles with basic pronunciation
- By Kate on 06-04-15
By: Anne Fadiman
-
Elatsoe
- By: Darcie Little Badger
- Narrated by: Kinsale Hueston
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine an America very similar to our own. It's got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry.
-
-
I highly recommend Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger
- By Morae on 10-13-20
-
Sigh, Gone
- A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
- By: Phuc Tran
- Narrated by: Phuc Tran
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance, they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion.
-
-
Profanity Alert
- By Alene L Wesner on 04-23-20
By: Phuc Tran
-
The Night Watchman
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Melanie on 03-09-20
By: Louise Erdrich
-
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria. An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone.
-
-
4.02 stars
- By james on 06-04-19
By: George Saunders
-
The Round House
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Gary Farmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and 13-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
-
-
Performance takes a bit of getting used to
- By Library on 04-22-13
By: Louise Erdrich
-
World of Wonders
- In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
- By: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Narrated by: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction - a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.
-
-
Interesting approach to a nonfiction book...
- By Fact addict on 01-25-21
-
Caste (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
-
-
Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
Sing, Unburied, Sing
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chris Chalk, Rutina Wesley
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural 21st-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi's past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power - and limitations - of family bonds.
-
-
4.16 Stars
- By james on 01-09-18
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
- A Novel
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones
- Narrated by: Beata Pozniak
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then, a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon, other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind....
-
-
A Haunting Performance
- By M&M on 09-11-19
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
-
This Tender Land
- By: William Kent Krueger
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1932: Located on the banks of the Gilead River in Minnesota, Lincoln School is home to hundreds of Native American boys and girls who have been separated from their families. The only two white boys in the school are orphan brothers Odie and Albert, who, under the watchful eyes of the cruel superintendent Mrs. Brickman, are often in trouble for misdeeds both real and imagined. The two boys' best friend is Mose, a mute Native American who is also the strongest kid in school. And they find another ally in Cora Frost, a widowed teacher who is raising her little girl, Emmy, by herself.
-
-
Scott Brick
- By Momac6 on 11-02-19
-
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
-
-
Clearly a poet
- By susan marlatt on 12-06-19
By: Ocean Vuong
Publisher's Summary
In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes.
Following her award-winning book The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father, Bee Yang, the song poet, a Hmong refugee in Minnesota driven from the mountains of Laos by America's Secret War.
Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until one day a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine.
Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story - of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, and a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Song Poet
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Melissa L. Magana
- 04-27-17
Beautiful, full of sadness, power, and heart.
Would you listen to The Song Poet again? Why?
Yes, this is such necessary listening for everyone-- especially those who don't know the experience of immigrant and refugee families.
What other book might you compare The Song Poet to and why?
It's impossible to compare. Perhaps The Namesake?
Which character – as performed by Kao Kalia Yang – was your favorite?
I came to respect and love this entire family through their stories.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
There were many points where I cried. The stories are heartbreaking, but so strong and determined.
Any additional comments?
This is one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking, real, and insightful books I've ever listened to.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nell
- 04-05-17
A must read
I read Latehomecomer a few years ago in book club. This book was difficult to hear at times but what amazes me is the universality of certain things. We are all connected. We love our children, miss our families and worry about the future. Lao Kalia Yang has a gift as a story teller. I thank her for reminding me what a gift my family is.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Dianne Haulcy
- 11-07-17
Moving Storytelling
Four generation story full of rich Hmong history and culture. A must read for every Minnesotan at least.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Charles N.
- 09-29-17
Cnord
The narrator, the author, was so terrible I found it difficult to concentrate on the story
After 4 chapters I had to quit !
She sounded like a bored teenager who was forced into reading the book.
Did anyone listen to this before inflicting it on faithful customers ?
I'd like my money back. I have bought dozens of books from Audible and this is the first complaint I have ever made