Standing in the kitchen one day, a young woman discovers that her tiny, elderly Hmong mother is not who she appears to be.
Yia grew up in Northern California, mainly at odds with her traditional mother. Mom wanted Yia to marry, raise a family, tend a Hmong garden, and cook Hmong food. Yia wanted to be free. She was a first gen American kid who wanted to eat fries rather than rice cakes, cheeseburgers instead of boiled pork and mustard greens. The two had little in common, except perhaps their opposition to the other.
In an ordinary moment in Mom’s kitchen, the two stood side by side working, and it was if Yia awoke from a coma in the middle of her life. She saw her mother going from pot to pot with the instinctive moves of a highly trained dancer. She salted bubbling greens before moving on to the rice for its second steaming. There were no instructions, no timers. She just knew.
As the scene repeated, they grew closer. Mom began to reveal her life, and with each meal prepared and each memory shared, Yia’s roots took shape in the family history she never knew. All the food of her childhood became the food that brought her home. Gifted farmers, Hmong food is a monument to the freshest of cooking. It is meant to power a body working the land.
In this epic mother-daughter love story, their parallel lives dissolve as each becomes the nutrient the other needs to navigate life’s trials. Their roles shift and merge, each one leading the other back home.
When Yia really looked at her mom, she finally saw her for what she was: daughter, wife, mother, warrior, survivor, woman, Hmong.
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