The Latehomecomer Reflection

They always say to never judge a book by its cover, but my first impression I got when I looked at this book was that people gathered around a bus waiting for their family members to get off. After reading The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang I then realized that the people on the cover weren't just waiting around for their family but finding their loved ones they once lost. When I first started reading this book I was a little nervous because I never read that many books and I feel that the reason why I don’t is because not many books stand out to me. In school I would have to read books for the class or for a book report but get bored or my attention couldn’t stay focused. Just a few pages into this book and I seemed interested in what was

going to happen next, I thought it was so intriguing and inspirational on how this family kept going and fighting through all the hardships they faced while in search of a place to call home. " We don’t have a country. We are looking for a home." page 4.
To me the author made great detail in this book, she made the jungle come alive, the poverty, the violence, and the hardship of losing her grandmother. It felt so real, I felt I was actually in the middle of the jungle running for my life sometimes with tears about to run down my face. I caught myself flipping page after page to find out what would happen next to this family asking myself, Will they make it through this? Will her mother reunite with her father again? Will she see her grandmother? I learned some information through school about the Vietnam War but after reading this book had me realize that what they teach in schools doesn’t begin to explain what people went through. Yang explains how the little food that the families had they would give to the children even though they looked like skeletons,
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how their feet were covered in dried blood and raw due to running for hours on end trying to escape the soldiers, and how families kept splitting up and getting smaller due to illness and lack of strength. I can't even begin to explain how emotional I would get while reading this novel. My greatest appreciation for the book was learning about the Hmong culture from the importance of possessing something from their mothers, the various rituals, and how they value and cherish their children without the consideration of them being a burden. I enjoyed immensely how Yang opens windows of her personal life experiences for her readers.
While reading this book, it reminded me of what I had learned in school about the Holocaust during WWII.

Of course these two horrible tragedies aren't entirely the same but in some similarities they do compare such as, how horrendous the SS guards treated the Jewish men and woman. They murdered innocent families and the ones who surrendered would be held captive in what they called Concentration Camps. Many Jewish families tried hiding and escaping during this time and some in the end were able to get to a safe area like Yang and her family. In the movie Schindlers List, it explains how many Jewish families hid their personal belongings such as necklaces, bracelets, rings by swallowing them or hiding them in food so the guards could not find them. Before the Holocaust began, some areas in Europe removed Jewish children from the school, until 1938 when they were all banned from attending German schools. Discrimination and isolation within education for children began to take place. After reading some information about the holocaust, I came across a website about why the holocaust ever started. It states that "the holocaust started because of ingrained antisemitism both in Germany and the countries it conquered, compounded by propaganda and the resources of a

powerful
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state, and the encouragement and leadership of political leaders. It also started because the passive and active perpetrators held deep feelings of animosity toward Jews—ingrained by almost 2000 years of antisemitism in Christian teachings‚ which made them receptive to the message of the Nazis, and which made the idea of eliminating Jews, even through extermination, reasonable and indeed desirable." Why did the Holocaust start? (2009). Retrieved July 26, 2015. Learning more and more about both of these cultures and other cultures through out this semester opened my mind, I was surprised in how much information I never knew about families and life around the world.
Having students take a diversity class no matter what major they are planning to achieve is important. Every age group of children should recognize that all people around the world are unique in their own way. There has always been diversity in the classroom but todays society it is important to embrace it and make positive use of it. Today the United States is what I consider a melting pot, what I mean by this is that sometime soon everyone will have almost every race down their family tree. I'm not meaning everyone will be just a mix of all races and it will be noticeable but what I am meaning is that soon enough everyone will have a variety of races and cultures in their family even if it is just 1%. I feel that this may be a good thing because then everyone will finally realize that we are all the same and hopefully racism wont be such an issue anymore. I am currently enrolled in Early Childhood Education course and being in a classroom for only one year changed my whole outlook on diversity. As we discussed and talked earlier in this class about racism, I understand how it feels to be a different color of skin or from a different religion and how teaching others about this important subject may help control racism.
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They always say to never judge a book by its cover and from reading the book The Latehomecomer and being in this class definitely made me think twice before judging someone before getting to know them. I enjoyed immensely how Yang opens windows of her personal life experiences for her readers. This is one of the first books that actually touched me emotionally and opened my mind so such interesting and tremendous information. Learning about the Hmong culture, Native Americans, Jewish Americans and many more just shows me how much information there is about families and life around the world. I hope more and more children learn about diversity so our country will not keep dividing more.