Hmong

Lyfoung draws upon her experience growing up in France as the daughter of Hmong refugees from Laos in this bittersweet graphic novel memoir. The comprehensive narrative opens with a sequence of linear b&w panels that show Lyfoung—depicted first as a child, then teen, and finally as an adult—as she navigates conversational pitfalls relating to her background: off-page onlookers assume that she is Chinese, compliment her French, and question her ethnicity, until her response (“Me? I am Hmong”) halts the unseen questioner, unfamiliar with the term. Subsequent high-contrast comics chronicle the history of the Hmong as nomadic mountain people originally from Northern China; after migrating to Southern China in 2000 BCE, further displacement forces the Hmong to scatter throughout Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Visual gags and chibi-style characters engaging in physical humor add levity to the high-stakes accounting, soon connecting the overarching timeline to descendants of Lyfoung who’d later become key figures in the history of the Hmong in Laos. Of her ancestral tree, she writes, “We Lyfoungs have a family forest!” and by finding her place in that forest, she gains perspective, acceptance, and understanding. Ages 11–up. (Apr.)