Shea, Pegi Deitz. Tangled threads; a Hmong girl's story.

Houghton Mifflin, Clarion. 236p. bibliog. c2003. 0-618-24748-3. $15.00. JS

Thousands of Hmong people came to the U.S. from Laos as political refugees in the 1980s, and this story is about one teenager who spent ten years in a refugee camp in Thailand before coming with her grandmother to settle in Providence, Rhode Island. The Hmong women are known for their careful needlework, the stories of their lives sewn into small murals. (I have one on the wall of my office in front of me, showing people leaving their villages, swimming across the Mekong, and entering a new life on the other side of the river.) This is Mai's story, essentially, except the threads of her family's life are tangled. Mai's parents were killed in their village when Mai was a toddler, and her elderly grandmother cared for her on the escape to Thailand and in the long years in the camps. This grandmother has taught Mal the ways of her people, and she knows it will be hard to keep the traditions once the family relocates in America. When Mai and her grandmother come to Rhode Island and live next to relatives who came five years before them, it's clear that the Hmong children have a difficult time adjusting to the new life and at the same time keeping the traditional customs. Mai's teenage cousins are breaking all the rules and getting into trouble. Mai does meet other Hmong girls at school who seem to be able to negotiate the two worlds slightly better, and through them Mai joins a dancing troupe that will perform Hmong dances.

Shea has many friends among the Hmong community and she has absorbed their stories as well as read about other Hmong experiences: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is listed in the bibliography, for instance--the best-selling book about a true situation in California when a Hmong child was sick and her parents and the American doctors were totally in disagreement as to how the child should be healed. Another book listed is I Begin My Life All Over: the Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience--both these books have been reviewed in KLIATT.

Shea tells Mai's story well, in a way that will appeal to other immigrant teenagers caught between two cultures, and all readers who are interested in other cultures. There are many emotional scenes, and Mai's experiences are filled with hardship and challenge. A Thai soldier tries to rape her at the camp in Thailand, for instance, and she finds a way to escape him, though her best friend wasn't so fortunate. This friend returns to Lads and leads a traditional Hmong life while Mai is starting anew in America--her letter to Mai tells of an arranged marriage to a much older man who already has several wives. In fact, arranged marriages are the norm for Hmong people, and this is one of the major conflicts in Americanized families: the girls don't want to be married so young (usually at about 15), and they certainly want to be free to choose their husbands--and perhaps their choice won't be a Hmong boy.

Shea tells all these basics well in the novel, and she creates in the character of Mai a smart, determined young woman who is trying to figure out how to live in the new world. Claire Rosser, KLIATT