{"id":28315,"date":"2025-10-31T15:40:52","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T15:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=28315"},"modified":"2026-02-05T21:41:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T21:41:29","slug":"five-takeaways-author-kao-kalia-yang-on-the-power-of-telling-your-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2025\/10\/five-takeaways-author-kao-kalia-yang-on-the-power-of-telling-your-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Takeaways: Author Kao Kalia Yang on the Power of Telling Your Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

For award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang, to tell a story is to create a home on and off the page. It\u2019s a chance to provide a place of belonging for those in search of refuge. And, it\u2019s a powerful tool in a world that is so often forgetful.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen my memories grow wings and they start flying far away from me, wouldn\u2019t it be nice if the world remembered?\u201d she asked the crowd at Macalester College\u2019s 32nd Annual International Roundtable. The Hmong American writer served as this year\u2019s keynote speaker, reading aloud passages from her critically-acclaimed memoirs and a particularly personal children\u2019s book to illustrate the power of stories.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her talk on October 22, the Guggenheim Fellow explored what it means to live in a story, to grow within one, and to be charged with the happy ending our ancestors have been waiting for. Here are five takeaways from the evening:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using silence as resistance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Known for being a lyrical and passionate public speaker, Yang\u2019s relationship with language is a deeply nuanced one. She opened the evening with a reading from her newest children\u2019s book, <\/span>The Rock in My Throat<\/span><\/i>, an autobiographical story which details her childhood experiences with selective mutism.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after coming to Minnesota as a six-year-old Hmong refugee, Yang witnessed her mother struggle to find the correct English words when speaking with a store clerk. The clerk showed little patience. It wasn\u2019t long after that interaction that Yang stopped speaking English in public altogether. \u201cIt was my great revolution against a world I knew was not listening,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang would not speak English voluntarily again until she was in college. Over time, the future author found her voice not in speech, but in writing: \u201cSometimes the words that I cannot speak into the world, I can write in it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remembering in an age of forgetting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Storytelling is an act of moral necessity for Yang. Drawing on her family\u2019s legacy, her books vibrantly bring to life the struggles and victories of her father, mother, grandmother, and other refugees from around the world. With each story, she pushes back against erasure in an \u201cage of forgetting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang illustrated her point with readings from her newest memoir, <\/span>Where Rivers Part<\/span><\/i>, which focuses on her mother\u2019s quest to leave war-torn Laos and deliver her family to safety. Another reading from <\/span>Somewhere in the Unknown World<\/span><\/i> highlighted the story of Majra Muci\u0107 Gibbons \u201911, a Bosnian refugee.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHistories are getting erased all around the world,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is our remembering that\u2019s going to lead us to the future. Stories are the way we remember the beat of the human heart. Not the numbers. It\u2019s the stories.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking artistic risks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For years, Yang has explored a variety of mediums for her work, including children\u2019s literature, young adult novels, and memoirs. But in 2023, she took an artistic risk unlike any that had come before. She agreed to help turn her memoir <\/span>The Song Poet<\/span><\/i> into an opera, serving as the show\u2019s librettist. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Minnesota Opera first approached Yang to write the libretto, she initially hesitated. But, realizing what was really at stake\u2014the show would become the first Hmong story adapted for the operatic stage\u2014it didn\u2019t take long before she agreed.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I say no,\u201d she recalled, \u201cthen I\u2019d be saying to some kid from the poor side of town that just because you\u2019ve never been exposed to something, you can\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demanding multiple chances<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the recurring themes of Yang\u2019s keynote was her message to audience members that everyone is worthy of multiple chances. \u201cThe hardest thing for me to learn,\u201d she said, \u201cis that I was worth more than one chance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang insisted that every human life deserves renewal\u2014second, third, fourth chances to begin again. \u201cTo demand many chances,\u201d she said, \u201cis to insist that one\u2019s humanity is vast and renewable\u2014that no story, no life, is ever finished after a single telling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding belonging in your story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yang closed out the evening by responding to a Hmong student in the audience who asked about how to move through life while being \u201cthe minority.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang maintained that belonging is an act of persistence and self-recognition. \u201cWe are valuable human beings. Our bodies work in the world. They tire in the world. So you must hold this place, because many, many more will come after you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Yang said, everyone\u2019s story is a necessary gift to the world. \u201cWe have so much to offer the world. We\u2019re vessels of untold stories and universal truths.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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For award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang, to tell a story is to create a home on and off the page.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":875,"featured_media":28319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-newswire","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28315"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30339,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28315\/revisions\/30339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}