45 pages • 1 hour read
Kao Kalia YangThe Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Album Notes-Track 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Album Notes Summary
Kalia explains that her father, Bee, does not identify as a poet. In fact, when asked he identifies himself as a husband and father, and “on his gravestone he wants it known that his wife and his children are his life’s work” (1). Nevertheless, he “composes, day and night, in Hmong, our language, his kwv txhiaj” (1). Kalia describes how she and her siblings would sit on the floor, listening to their father’s songs. These songs transformed the poverty of their lives into unimaginable beauty: “The mold growing wild becomes the backdrop of the beautiful paintings we see on television, the peak of this mountain, the descent of that river, the sliver of tree that clings to life on the edges of the rocks, open and exposed” (1).
Kalia explains that though her father might not think of himself as a poet, that even though it took her many years to even describe him that way, his skill is undeniable. He shapes his poetry “into long, stretching stanzas of four or five, structures them in couplets, repeats patterns of words, and changes the last word of each verse so that it rhymes with the end of the next. He is a master of parallelism […]” (2).
Kalia recalls the first time she remembers her father sharing his poetry at the 1989 Hmong American New Year celebration. Kalia first unsure if her father will be able to perform; she also worries that he will embarrass her. However, her father’s song is powerful. It recalls the lives they lived in their homeland, the people they lost during the war, and expresses their desire to be as one again. Kalia recognizes that her father stood before his people “with his heart open, bleeding hardship and harrowing hope” (10).
After this performance, many people requested that her father record his songs. He finally agreed, recording six songs, and they sold the CDs at grocery stores and festivals. At first, they were going to reinvest the money into another album, but they needed the little bit of money they made for living expenses. Kalia and her siblings came to think of his songs “as little more than our father’s hobby” (15). After their grandmother, their father’s mother, died Bee forgot his songs.
As a grown woman, Kalia, now a writer herself, began exploring her father’s old cassette tapes. She realized what her father had sacrificed for her, and she wants her father to know he gifted the world with something. This memoir I sin his memory:
[It] is and can never be your second album […]. It is an answer to the songs that you’ve sung but have not recorded because of us. I take on your voice so that you may write the stories of your life through me in English for those fluttering hearts that are still coming (20).
Track 1 Summary: “Birth of a Song Poet”
Kalia describes her father’s birth in 1958 in Laos; she uses the first person here, taking on the persona of her father, Bee. Bee’s mother was in her forties, and Bee would be her tenth child. Indeed, some of
Bee’s brothers were already married by the time he was born. Bee was born during the Laotian Civil War, but at the time, their village was untouched by the chaos and violence. His father and mother were shamans.
By the time Bee is two, his father is already old and sick. The only words Bee remembers his father speaking to him are “My little boy, come to your father. My son, come to me. Your father is making a rope for you to tie around the little chicken. My little son, don’t cry” (27). Bee’s father dies not long after this exchange, and Bee’s family is devastated by his loss. However, Bee is grateful that his father did not live to see the affect the war would have on their village, Phou Khao: “turned into a military-prisoner site by the Americans” (31)
Album Notes-Track 1 Analysis
Kalia structures the text as an album, and the chapters are titled as tracks. Before the advent of digital music streaming, such albums often included liner notes. These notes often explained or explored the songs, provided the lyrics of the song, and helped the listener more fully understand the album. Here, Kalia uses the liner notes to introduce her family, especially her father, Bee, and contextualize the story that follows. She wants the reader to envision Bee as a skilled poet, one who can capture the attentions of large crowds, as he sings of the old ways and the losses his people have suffered.
In the first track, Kalia takes on the persona of her father, using first-person narration. This mimics the songs her father sang. Here, Kalia and Bee’s voices come together to tell Bee’s story, beginning with his birth. Both of Bee’s parents were shamans, healers, and this first section explores what daily life was like for the Hmong in Laos prior to the war. It was a hard life, but a fulfilling one, and it demonstrates the Hmong values of family and community. Bee lives with his parents and his older siblings and their spouses, and together they work the land and care for each other. Bee recalls the death of his father, and his mother’s terrible grief. Bee, however, is glad that his father doesn’t live to see the changes that come to Laos, which Bee refers to as “the Land of the Million Elephants,” and how Laos fell “to the roar of the iron birds that dropped balls of fire from the sky” (31). Bee’s words foreshadow tragedies yet to come, much worse than the death of his father.
In addition to foreshadowing, Kalia also uses language that reinforces her father’s role as poet. For example, Bee describes his mother’s realization that she is in labor as his “decision to venture from the clouds and into the world” (25). Similarly, Bee does not simply say that Laos was frequently bombed via airstrikes, but he describes it as “iron birds” dropping “balls of fire” (25). The language here is carefully crafted, and again, this imagery stands for the coming together of the father-daughter voice.
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