St. Paul writer Kao Kalia Yang is the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Artist of the Year

Before Kao Kalia Yang was named the Star Tribune’s Artist of the Year, before she won four Minnesota Book Awards, before she was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, before she earned an honorary doctorate from Carleton College and published a whopping four books this year, she was a hooper.

The St. Paul-based writer — whose 2024 quartet includes a memoir of her mother’s life, “Where Rivers Part” — doesn’t exactly scream “basketball player.” She’s 4 feet, 10½ inches tall now and was even tinier in middle school. But being short meant nobody bothered to guard her while she stood under the basket, making hoop after hoop. So many that, at the end of the year, Yang was acknowledged for scoring the most baskets.

All because she kept taking the shots.

Yang, 44, also has been a Timberwolves fan since watching them on basic TV as a kid (her family, among many Hmong people who came to the U.S. in the years after the Vietnam War, couldn’t afford cable). So she knows her Wolves.

“There are some who are always taking shots [like Anthony Edwards]and there are some who are always waiting for the perfect shot,” said Yang. “I am Ant. Always shooting. Wherever I am, I am always trying to make something happen.”

[Also: Artist of the Year 2024 honorable mentions: Charlie Parr and Mathew Janczewski]

We spoke with the Artist of the Year, whose other three 2024 books are aimed at young readers — “Caged,” “The Rock in My Throat” and “The Diamond Explorer” — about telling stories, what she owes her ancestors and trusting herself to take the shot:

Q: How is that young hooper like the current you?

A: I’m taking shots all the time. Did I know how to write an opera libretto? No, but I did it [Minnesota Opera’s adaptation of her book about her father, “The Song Poet”]. Did I know anything about scriptwriting? No, but I’ve written a lot of scripts. When all is said and done, no one will say that Kalia didn’t take shots at life.

Q: You planned to be a doctor until you graduated from college in 2003. When did you feel like a writer?

A: When “The Latehomecomer” [2005] won the Minnesota Book Award. That year, there was an award for reader’s choice. I kept telling book clubs about that and I think all of those women — I only met two groups with men — they all voted for me. When I went up for the first award, for creative nonfiction/memoir, I saved some of my speech because I thought, “I am going to be up here again.” And then, when my name was announced for the reader’s choice award, I knew I had arrived. And that I was made in Minnesota.

Q: That’s an important part of your identity as a writer?

A: When my sister Der [recently appointed a District Court judge by Gov. Tim Walz] and I would fight when we were little, my dad would say, “If you two can’t get on the same side, you will never have a chance in the world.” I think about that a lot. If St. Paul weren’t on my side, I wouldn’t have a chance. If Minnesota isn’t on my side, I don’t have a chance. If the Midwest isn’t, I don’t have a chance. If the United States isn’t on my side, I wouldn’t have a place in the landscape of American literature.

Q: You’ve said that book clubs were a big part of helping you make that place. You did something like 1,000 events for “The Latehomecomer,” including lots of book clubs?

A: People always ask how I became a good public speaker [Yang earns more money from speaking than writing]. Book clubs! They would ask the same question and I would take different stabs at answering it. So much speaking makes you external and you can only write when you’re internal but my dad said to me one day, “Speaking is just writing in a different medium.”

Q: Book clubs also helped support you?

A: I would ask for an honorarium, whatever they could afford. Some would give me $20, some would give me a SuperAmerica card. I remember taking my siblings to Macy’s and saying, “What would you like?” And they said, “How are you going to pay for it?” And I said, “Book club money.”

Q: You received an honorary doctorate from your alma mater, Carleton College, last spring. You learned about honorary degrees as a student when you saw someone’s honorary mantle and asked if you could touch it?

A: And he said, “Yes!” It was velvet. So I went home and told my mom and dad about this honorary doctorate that you can get if the work you do benefits humanity. I said, “One day I’m going to get one.”

Q: So now you can touch your velvet mantle all the time?

A: It’s blue, deep blue, with my name on it. It’s actually at my mom and dad’s. They keep all the awards and posters and newspaper clippings that sometimes people send me. My mom has them in a Tupperware container, underneath the bed. The idea that they sleep and dream on top of those things is kind of beautiful to me, as a metaphor.

Q: “Where Rivers Part” is an intimate book, with details about your mom’s miscarriages, marriage and doubts. What was the negotiation like for you to be able to write her story?

A: We have most of our conversations in the garage. We each hold a fly swatter. We sit in camping chairs and talk, and my dad joins whenever he wants to. I said to my mom, “I want to write the story of your life.” She looked at me and said, “Nobody’s going to read it.” I said, “I still want to do it.” And she said, “Go ahead.” That was it.

Q: Did she look at drafts?

A: I asked my mom, “Do you want to know what I’m doing?” And she said no. When the galleys came, I started reading to her and she started crying and she said, “You have my permission to do this book but I do not want to be there when you do the readings because I will cry and then you will cry.”

Q: In your commencement address, you speak about storytelling as a calling. When did you first feel that call?

A: I was a kid. I couldn’t go to school because I couldn’t do this [she stretches her hand over her head to touch the opposite ear]. It was the maturity test. So, even though I was 6, I couldn’t do that and couldn’t go to school. So I would sit at the feet of the elders as they told stories [in the Thai refugee camp where she was born, before her family came to Minnesota in 1987]. My uncle Chue would also tell his stories, using his hands. He’d say [pointing to knuckles], “These are the mountains and the hairs on my arm are the trees.” I remember noticing how the skin started to fall away from his bones and thinking, “He won’t always be here to tell these stories. I have to hold them safe in my heart.”

Q: You’ve often talked about your grandmother’s death. Her fear that she would be forgotten helped you shift from medicine to literature?

A: I wrote one final love letter to her, and — my dad says, “If you dream in the right direction, the dream never dies. It grows bigger and bigger.” That’s what writing has given me, a dream that grows bigger and bigger.

Q: And, in your case, very much against the odds?

A: Mom and Dad were never supposed to make it out of that jungle [a journey described in several of Yang’s books, including “Rivers” and “The Song Poet”]. Of all the kids born in that refugee camp, I was the runt. I had tiny bird bones. I wasn’t supposed to survive. But, somehow, I made it. It must be destiny that brought me here.

Q: You speak often about what you owe ancestors, how important it is to tell their stories. Will that always be the focus of your work?

A: No. I’m working in fiction right at the moment, using things that inspire me, bits and pieces I have clung to. I have always loved this title but nobody else likes it: “Knife to the Throat.” So I’m working on that. I’m going to build the story around that title, which is a different position for me to take.

Q: Who’s holding that knife?

A: Society. The system is rough. I teach all over because no institution has ever said to me, “Do you want to stay?” They say, “Come. You’re so good at what you do.” But they don’t ask me to stay. I’m the working parent in my family and writing is this artistic endeavor, of course. But it’s also the thing that has to feed my children [she and husband Aaron Hokanson have three children]. I always talk about my dad’s second album, which never came out, as “drumsticks in our hand and rice in our bowl.” I say that about all of my books. They provide drumsticks in our hand, rice in our bowls. And sometimes, I hold that knife to my own throat. I expect great art where only normal art exists.

Q: Storytelling seems like a pretty great legacy.

A: When I’m gone, I hope what people will see is a statement about life’s beauty. Sometimes, people will say, “Your books are so sad,” and I’m like, “Oh my god. I don’t think so.” My books are so much about the strength of human beings and the power of love. And isn’t that the greatest statement about humanity?

Q: It sounds like you’re always gathering material, when you’re talking to family, reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with your daughter, using the restroom at Costco. Can you ever turn that off?

A: When I’m fishing! I grew up fishing with pop cans. Sundays at Como Lake. We couldn’t afford fishing poles but that’s how I learned to fish. Now, I have poles but it’s still the same thing. I’m always fishing. If you’re good and you’re lucky, the nibble becomes a bite. This year, with four books, it’s like I have four lines in the water.

Q: But you’re not thinking about writing when you fish?

A: I’m not a patient person but I can wait all day when I’m fishing. My dad will say, “There’s only a bit of worm left. Cast again.” But I will wait. Because I believe.

Yang says her books only find their places when they land with readers. Here’s what some readers shared about her 2024 quartet:

Where Rivers Part

The book: A memoir of her mother’s journey, from youth in Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand to America.

What she’s heard: “I got an email from a reader who said, ‘In a world where people are now wondering what a woman’s body is worth, you wrote a book about a woman’s body. You shared that with the world.’”

Caged

The book: A picture book about what it’s like to grow up in a refugee camp.

What she’s heard: “In Winona, I did a reading at the public library and there was an Asian woman there. I didn’t immediately recognize her as Hmong but after the reading, she said, ‘All the memories I thought were gone, they’re now alive in your book.’”

The Rock in My Throat

The book: It’s about Yang’s childhood decision to stop speaking in public, inspired by how she saw her parents treated when they spoke English.

What she’s heard: “One girl in a second grade classroom in St. Paul public schools said, ‘Because of this book, there is one less lonely mother in the world.’”

The Diamond Explorer

The book: A Hmong American boy tries to make his way in this country while staying in touch with the traditions of his ancestors.

What she’s heard: “A young writer emailed me and said, ‘You’ve taken Hmong literature to a place I didn’t even know was possible.’”