A Year Without Home
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A poignant novel in verse about a Hmong girl losing and finding home in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. For fans of Jasmine Warga and Veera Hiranandani.
"As gripping as it is informative and as beautiful as it is heartbreaking, A Year Without Home does what all great books do: spark curiosity, ignite compassion, and leave its readers changed for the better. The young people who read V.T. Bidania's story will feel energized and empowered to make their future kinder, more peaceful, and more just than either the past or our present."—Jarrett Lerner, award-winning author-illustrator of A Work in Progress
For eleven-year-old Gao Sheng, home is the lush, humid jungles and highlands of Laos. Home is where she can roll down the grassy hill with her younger siblings after her chores, walk to school, and pick ripe peaches from her family’s trees.
But home becomes impossible to hold onto when the communist government takes over after U.S. troops pull out of the Vietnam War. The communists will be searching for any American allies, like Gao Sheng’s father, a Hmong captain in the Lao Army who fought alongside the Americans against the Vietnamese. If he’s caught, he’ll be killed.
As the adults frantically make plans – contacting family, preparing a route, and bundling up their silver and gold, Gao Sheng wonders if she will ever return to her beloved Laos and what’s to become of her family now. Gao Sheng only knows that a good daughter doesn’t ask questions or complain. A good daughter doesn’t let her family down. Even though sometimes, she wishes she could be just a kid rolling down a grassy hill again.
On foot, by taxi and finally in a canoe, Gao Sheng and her family make haste from the mountains to the capitol Vientiane and across the rushing Mekong River, to finally arrive at an overcrowded refugee camp in Thailand. As a year passes at the camp, Gao Sheng discovers how to rebuild home no matter where she is and finally find her voice.
Inspired by author V.T. Bidania’s family history, A Year Without Home illuminates the long, difficult journey that many Hmong refugees faced after the Vietnam War.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This edifying novel by Bidania, narrated in evocative verse by 11-year-old Gao Cheng, traces the year during which she and her extended family of 20 lived as refugees following the end of the Vietnam War. As the war concludes, Hmong residents who stood against communism alongside the American military—like Gao Cheng's elite soldier father—must flee Laos with their families. Bereft at the loss of their hilltop house, where "perfect" peach trees grow, the family contends with myriad obstacles before they finally arrive in Thailand; there, they live in two consecutive refugee camps. Gao Cheng, always an exemplary daughter, cares for her family's younger children and helps prepare meals while stifling her resentment of the traditional respect and leniency accorded to her younger brother. Portrayals of a loving family balance Gao Cheng's growing perspective on expected female roles in Hmong culture as she internalizes her struggles and finds ways to advocate for herself. The protagonist's perceptive voice, at once gentle and firm, makes for a powerful story of personal growth as well as an affecting historical narrative. A contextualizing author's note concludes. Ages 10–up.
