*SPOILERS* Mai Yang and her grandmother have been living in a Thailand refugee camp for 10 years. Mai longs to be in America with her cousins and aunt and uncle. Finally word comes that Mai and her grandmother can join their family in Rhode Island. Their new life requires much adjustment from how to use appliances to how to act at school. Mai's cousins aren't as she remembered; they have American names now, lie, and talk back to their parents and hang out with their boyfriends on the sly. Mai wants to spend time with her cousins but is uncomfortable with their behavior. Grandmother fares worst of all, never leaving the apartment to meet other Hmong but spending time sewing her pa'ndau in front of the TV. But then Mai learns that she and grandmother could have left for America at the same time as her relatives. When Grandmother is dying of a heart attack she reveals the fear she had of leaving Laos, that she wouldn't have anything in America.