Seeds in a Rapid River: Kao Kalia Yang’s Collective Storytelling
Time: Sept. 24, 2026, 6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Location: Community Folk Art Center, 805 E. Genesee St.
Part of the Syracuse Symposium series.
Kao Kalia Yang reads from Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life and the picture book A Home on the Page. Yang’s writing channels the voices and experiences of her family and community into collective memoirs, incorporating sung Hmong poetry and storytelling with written English—and visual art. Her work shows how creative, embodied practices remake home and belonging in the wake of war and displacement and in the face of the discrimination and material hardship that often accompany resettlement.
American literature and Hmong studies scholar and poet Debra Kue will engage Yang in conversation and lead audience Q&A.
SUNY Upstate hosts this event, offering signed book giveaways, thanks to the Upstate Medical University Library.
Contact Rebecca Garden for more info, or to request an ASL interpreter (by Sept. 15, please).
Additional supporters:
- Upstate Medical University’s Public Health and Preventive Medicine Department
- Community Folk Art Center
- The Writer’s Voice at the YMCA of CNY
- The Consortium for Culture and Medicine
About the speaker: Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American teacher, speaker, and writer whose work crosses audiences and genres. She is the award-winning author of the memoirs, The Latehomecomer, The Song Poet, Somewhere in the Unknown World, and Where Rivers Part. Yang co-edited the groundbreaking book, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. She is a librettist for The Song Poet Opera (commissioned by Minnesota Opera). Her children’s and middle-grade books center Hmong children and families who live in our world, who dream, hurt, and hope in it. Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN America literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, the Carter G. Woodson Award, and garnered seven Minnesota Book Awards. She’s Star Tribune’s 2024 Artist of the Year. Yang holds an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Carleton College. She is a McKnight, Soros, and Guggenheim Fellow.