The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father

Although it seems as if the reader gets to know Bee because much of the memoir is written as if Bee himself is narrating it, it is important to remember that Kalia is writing as if she were Bee. This is important because it means we have two characters for Bee, the one presented in the memoir and a kind of shadow character, recognizable from what Kalia chooses to tell the reader about Bee.

The first character is straightforward: Bee is a lonely man, who has always suffered from the loss of his father. Out of that loss, he constructs song poetry, stringing together beautiful words and images to describe his own sense of loneliness and isolation. Despite this isolation, however, Bee is determined to be a good father, whether that means running drugs in the refugee camp to keep his family safe or working in conditions in America that are slowly killing him. Bee is most concerned with survival, not necessarily his own, but of his family, especially his children.

The second character emerges from the things Kalia tries to justify. For example, Track 4 functions as a love song from Bee to his wife, Chue. In it, he explains all the ways and times he’s loved her. However, Bee did not write a love song for Chue—Kalia did, meaning she has noticed and wondered about a strain in their relationship. The strain seems to have healed when Bee and Chue travel to Cambodia and climb a mountain hoping to catch a glimpse of their homeland, Laos. They support each other on this difficult climb, symbolizing how they have unknowingly supported each other throughout their marriage, and Kalia (speaking as Bee) takes from this evidence that her parents are still in love.

Similarly, Kalia attempts to smooth over Bee’s relationship with her brother, Xue. Xue struggles in America, and Bee’s disappointment in him is palpable. Kalia explains Bee’s behavior by pointing to the many ways Bee had suffered, implying that Bee’s behavior toward Xue is motivated by intense love and a need to see his son succeed where Bee seems to have failed. Xue, however, knows none of this.  

In the places where Kalia justifies Bee’s behavior, the reader can see another character emerge: a man who does not express his affections to his wife and son, a man who has isolated himself. However, it is the primary character Kalia wants to celebrate, one who still has something to sing about even if they are “silent, silent songs” (268).

Shong is Bee’s cousin, though he considers him an older brother. Bee’s parents take Shong in and raise him alongside their other children. Shong is the closest thing to a father that Bee knows, and he benefits from Shong’s love and kindness. Furthermore, Bee identifies with Shong, who also lost his father at a young age and who is also a song poet.

During their flight from the Communists into the jungle, Shong’s son is hit by a bullet, and Shong and his family decide to stay in the cave where the family had taken refuge to care for the boy. The Pathet Lao soldiers capture them, and Shong is tortured for two weeks as the soldiers get him to say where the rest of the family went. After this, Shong is a changed man, prone to bizarre behavior: “He gathered fruits from trees he didn’t own. He climbed high on those trees. He sat on the tree limbs for hours. He wept the whole while” (91).

Bee and his family are never reunited with Shong, and Shong dies a broken man. Shong symbolizes the fate of the Hmong in Laos, destroyed by the Communists, and even if alive, never able to recover what they once were. Although Bee knows he is lucky not to have suffered Shong’s fate, he seems to feel as if, in some way, what happened to Shong happened to them all. 

Chue is Bee’s wife. He woos her with a story, and they work together to build a life, first in the jungle, then in the refugee camp, and finally in America. From the stories Kalia shares, Chue is clearly a strong woman. She suffers through six miscarriages and the loss of her own family, who are unable to emigrate with them.

Her nature becomes clear in Track 4, when Kalia reveals that all of the positive changes that happened for her family, such as working split shifts so that they didn’t have to leave Kalia and her siblings with relatives or buying a bigger house, came from Chue’s directions to Bee. Chue encourages Bee and pushes him to be the best version of himself, much as she does with their children.

For example, when Bee tells Xue he must leave if he does not return to school, Chue stands up for Xue and tries to get Bee to see that it is the weight of his expectations that have damaged Xue. However, Chue’s character is most clear between the lines of this story, when the reader realizes that, through a lifetime of suffering and pain—war, twelve pregnancies, including six miscarriages, emigration, poor nutrition, working for little money in poor conditions—Chue has kept going despite it all, and perhaps even despite her husband.