Escaping the Khmer Rouge

Escaping the Khmer Rouge PDF Author: Chileng Pa
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476628289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia for three years, eight months and twenty days. After overthrowing Lon Nol in April 1975 and establishing a so-called Democratic Kampuchea, the Communist-sponsored government was responsible for the deaths of as many as two million people, almost one-third of the country's population. Here, Chileng Pa vividly recalls life under the Cambodian Communists. Attempting to conceal his identity as a policeman for the previous government, Chileng changed his name and moved his family to the village of Prayap, near the Vietnamese border. In April of 1977, after two years of starvation and cruelty at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Chileng was forced to watch as Communist guerillas brutally murdered his wife and two-year-old son. With nothing left for him in Prayap Chileng fled to Vietnam, but eventually returned to Cambodia as part of a Vietnamese invasion force that would end the bloody reign of the Khmer regime. In 1981 Chileng and his new family found their way to America. His "simple strand of remembrance" serves to honor all those who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Escaping the Khmer Rouge

Escaping the Khmer Rouge PDF Author: Chileng Pa
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476628289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia for three years, eight months and twenty days. After overthrowing Lon Nol in April 1975 and establishing a so-called Democratic Kampuchea, the Communist-sponsored government was responsible for the deaths of as many as two million people, almost one-third of the country's population. Here, Chileng Pa vividly recalls life under the Cambodian Communists. Attempting to conceal his identity as a policeman for the previous government, Chileng changed his name and moved his family to the village of Prayap, near the Vietnamese border. In April of 1977, after two years of starvation and cruelty at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Chileng was forced to watch as Communist guerillas brutally murdered his wife and two-year-old son. With nothing left for him in Prayap Chileng fled to Vietnam, but eventually returned to Cambodia as part of a Vietnamese invasion force that would end the bloody reign of the Khmer regime. In 1981 Chileng and his new family found their way to America. His "simple strand of remembrance" serves to honor all those who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Escape from the Killing Fields

Escape from the Killing Fields PDF Author: Nancy Kay Moyer
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310538912
Category : Cambodia
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Escape from the Killing Fields tells the true story of Ly Lorn, a young Cambodian woman caught up in the genocide that took place in the 1970s. The lone Christian in her Buddhist family, Ly Lorn's love of God illuminated her walk through that horrible valley of death that was Cambodia.

In The Shadow Of The Banyan

In The Shadow Of The Banyan PDF Author: Vaddey Ratner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1849837619
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
A stunning, powerful debut novel set against the backdrop of the Cambodian War, perfect for fans of Chris Cleave and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyanis testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. 'In the Shadow of the Banyanis one of the most extraordinary and beautiful acts of storytelling I have ever encountered' Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand 'Ratner is a fearless writer, and the novel explores important themes such as power, the relationship between love and guilt, and class. Most remarkably, it depicts the lives of characters forced to live in extreme circumstances, and investigates how that changes them. To read In the Shadow of the Banyan is to be left with a profound sense of being witness to a tragedy of history' Guardian 'This is an extraordinary debut … as beautiful as it is heartbreaking' Mail on Sunday

Facing the Khmer Rouge

Facing the Khmer Rouge PDF Author: Ronnie Yimsut
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813552303
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
As a child growing up in Cambodia, Ronnie Yimsut played among the ruins of the Angkor Wat temples, surrounded by a close-knit community. As the Khmer Rouge gained power and began its genocidal reign of terror, his life became a nightmare. In this stunning memoir, Yimsut describes how, in the wake of death and destruction, he decides to live. Escaping the turmoil of Cambodia, he makes a perilous journey through the jungle into Thailand, only to be sent to a notorious Thai prison. Fortunately, he is able to reach a refugee camp and ultimately migrate to the United States, where he attended the University of Oregon and became an influential leader in the community of Cambodian immigrants. Facing the Khmer Rouge shows Ronnie Yimsut’s personal quest to rehabilitate himself, make a new life in America, and then return to Cambodia to help rebuild the land of his birth.

Facing Death in Cambodia

Facing Death in Cambodia PDF Author: Peter H. Maguire
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231120524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This book is the story of Peter Maguire's effort to learn how Cambodia's "culture of impunity" developed, why it persists, and the failures of the "international community" to confront the Cambodian genocide. Written from a personal and historical perspective, Facing Death in Cambodia recounts Maguire's growing anguish over the gap between theories of universal justice and political realities. Maguire documents the atrocities and the aftermath through personal interviews with victims and perpetrators, discussions with international officials, journalistic accounts, and government sources.

Beautiful Hero

Beautiful Hero PDF Author: Jennifer Lau
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998079899
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
With only half a canteen of water and one baby bottle, a family of eight fought for their lives in the killing fields and land mines of Cambodia. Heroes emerge in the most unlikely places, under the most dangerous conditions. They are often the most ordinary of people facing extraordinary times. Surrounded by unimaginable adverse forces, one woman would ultimately lead her entire family to survive. Beautiful Hero is an autobiographical narrative told from a daughter's perspective. The story centers around Meiyeng, the eponymous Beautiful Hero, and her innate ability to sustain everyone in her family.Meiyeng's acumen in solving problems under extreme circumstances is thought-provoking and awe-inspiring. She shepherded her entire family through starvation, diseases, slavery and massacres in war-torn Cambodia to forge a new life in America.Over two million people--a third of the country's population--fell victim to a devastating genocide in Cambodia. The rise of the Khmer Rouge posed not merely a single challenge to survival, but rather a series of nightmarish obstacles that required constant circumvention, outmaneuvering, and exceptional fortitude from those few who would survive the regime intact.Beautiful Hero suspensefully unravels the layers of atrocity and evil unleashed upon the people, providing a clear view of this horrific and violent time of the Cambodian revolution.The story highlights the most basic impulses of man: good vs. evil, individual vs. group, democracy vs. tyranny, and life vs. death. It is the ultimate story of love, sacrifice, survival, and redemption--and lives pushed to the limits. It reaffirms the good in humanity by showing how one family lived and survived with grace and dignity.

Traces of Trauma

Traces of Trauma PDF Author: Boreth Ly
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856090
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
How do the people of a morally shattered culture and nation find ways to go on living? Cambodians confronted this challenge following the collective disasters of the American bombing, the civil war, and the Khmer Rouge genocide. The magnitude of violence and human loss, the execution of artists and intellectuals, the erasure of individual and institutional cultural memory all caused great damage to Cambodian arts, culture, and society. Author Boreth Ly explores the “traces” of this haunting past in order to understand how Cambodians at home and in the diasporas deal with trauma on such a vast scale. Ly maintains that the production of visual culture by contemporary Cambodian artists and writers—photographers, filmmakers, court dancers, and poets—embodies traces of trauma, scars leaving an indelible mark on the body and the psyche. Her book considers artists of different generations and family experiences: a Cambodian-American woman whose father sent her as a baby to the United States to be adopted; the Cambodian-French filmmaker, Rithy Panh, himself a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, whose film The Missing Picture was nominated for an Oscar in 2014; a young Cambodian artist born in 1988—part of the “post-memory” generation. The works discussed include a variety of materials and remnants from the historical past: the broken pieces of a shattered clay pot, the scarred landscape of bomb craters, the traditional symbolism of the checkered scarf called krama, as well as the absence of a visual archive. Boreth Ly’s poignant book explores obdurate traces that are fragmented and partial, like the acts of remembering and forgetting. Her interdisciplinary approach, combining art history, visual studies, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, religion, and philosophy, is particularly attuned to the diverse body of material discussed, including photographs, video installations, performance art, poetry, and mixed media. By analyzing these works through the lens of trauma, she shows how expressions of a national trauma can contribute to healing and the reclamation of national identity.

Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields

Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields PDF Author: Kim DePaul
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300078732
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Publisher Fact Sheet This extraordinary collection of eyewitness accounts by Cambodian survivors of Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s offers searing testimony to an era of brutality, brainwashing, betrayals, starvation, & gruesome executions.

Short Hair Detention : Memoir of a Thirteen-year-old Girl Surviving the Cambodian Genocide

Short Hair Detention : Memoir of a Thirteen-year-old Girl Surviving the Cambodian Genocide PDF Author: Channy Chhi Laux
Publisher: Archwaypublishing
ISBN: 9781480852938
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 551

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Book Description
Short Hair Detention shares the true story of a thirteen-year-old girl's experiences as she struggled to survive the Cambodian genocide -- Back Cover

Shoulders to Freedom

Shoulders to Freedom PDF Author: Mai Bunla
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615763439
Category : Cambodian Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Mai Bunla was born into an ethnic Lao family in Cambodia. Her memoir, "Shoulders to Freedom," is about escaping the Khmer Rouge regime, beginning a new life in the United States, and finding herself along the way. Central to the events that befell Bunla's family is the tragic capture of her oldest brother, Ai Sang Thout, on whose shoulders she was carried to freedom across the border to Thailand during the escape from the Cambodian genocide. After the Khmer Rouge took her brother, Bunla's family cut their losses and moved forward. However, Bunla learned that moving forward was not an easy path. She recounts the hopelessness she felt living in the refugee camps of Thailand and the Philippines, and the shock of moving to the United States. She was treated as an outsider in each new place, taunted in foreign tongues by faces that didn't look like her own. While Bunla struggled to be a "normal" American teenager, a process that strained her family bonds, the fate of her brother stayed a constant nagging in her life. Twenty-one years after leaving Cambodia, Bunla finally returned to Asia. Only then did she begin searching for her lost brother, a journey that helped her find her true self.