[1] Born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in December, 1980, Yang came to Minnesota in the summer of 1987, along with her parents and older sister Dawb.
Her mother suffered six miscarriages after giving birth to her, and with no male heir, her father was being pressured to find a second wife.
For Yang's parents, leaving Ban Vinai was not only about finding opportunity for their two daughters, but also rescuing themselves from family and cultural pressure.
Yang says that while her sister mastered the English language quickly, she struggled for many years, finally discovering that her gift lay not in the spoken, but in the written word.
Yang received her Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University in New York City.
[12] During the two-hour interview, of which less than five minutes was aired, Yang was brought to the point of tears over "Robert's harsh dismissal of my uncle's experience.
"[13] Following a public outcry, Krulwich issued an apology on September 30 writing, "I now can hear that my tone was oddly angry.
"[14] The podcast itself was later amended on October 5, and according to Yang "On October 7, I received an email from Dean Cappello, the Chief Content Officer at WNYC, notifying me that Radiolab had once more "amended" the Yellow Rain podcast so that Robert could apologize at the end, specifically to Uncle Eng for the harshness of his tone and to me for saying that I was trying to "monopolize" the conversation.
In addition to Robert's apologies—which completely failed to acknowledge the dismissal of our voices and the racism that transpired/s -- Radiolab had simply re-contextualized their position, taken out the laughter at the end, and "cleaned" away incriminating evidence.
The fact that my uncle was an official radio man and documenter of the Hmong experience to the Thai government during the war was absent.