The Rock in My Throat by Kao Kalia Yang (review)

Reviewed by: The Rock in My Throat by Kao Kalia Yang Kate Quealy-Gainer, Editor Yang, Kao Kalia The Rock in My Throat; illus. by Jiemei Lin. Lerner, 2024 32p Trade ed. ISBN 9781728445687 14. 24 Reviewed from digital galleys R* 5-9 yrs "Recess is the hardest time of the day" for our young narrator, who silently observes her fellow classmates talk and play. She has never found her place among them and is not even sure she wants to; she refuses to speak English, like the people she has seen disregard, and worse, denigrate her refugee mother's attempts to communicate. The girl is much more comfortable in the presence of other family members who speak Hmong, but even then, she is unable to express her sadness; the metaphorical rock in her throat has now stolen her voice completely. Interestingly, there's no clear happy ending here: the girl does not start speaking, but there's a possibility that she might someday with a new friend. An author's note shares her own experience with selective mutism and adds a bit more context about her family's experience as refugees, but the loneliness and grief the little girl is experiencing is palpable, even without those details. Though quiet in her own life, she makes an astonishingly vivid and insightful narrator, with evocative imagery conveying emotion with ease. When a teacher demands she speak louder, for example, she wishes the floor would open up and take her "all the way to the core of the earth, so that the burning in my face would feel cool next to the plasma underneath everything. " Lin's digital art emotes with passion and dignity, with plays on perspective conveying the girl's fear and sadness; a woman in the grocery store, for example, grows larger and larger, soon dominating the spreads as she waits impatiently for the girl's mother to speak. A nature motif runs throughout the scenes, anchoring the girl in a world that requires no language, just the songs of birds and movement of growth. This is a gorgeous and deeply empathetic look at the refugee experience and what it means to feel truly alone in the world. End Page 266 Copyright © 2024 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois