This turned out to be one of the very best personal accounts of survival during the Pol Pot Regime. I've read eight others, mostly by women who were children or in their early teens at the time. Chanrithy Him's prose is smooth and engrossing--after the first chapter, which was hard to get through, full of angry bitterness over her experiences; perfectly understandable, but it doesn't draw the reader in, just establishes a barrier. After this, however, she warms up to her subject and paints a vibrant picture of her agonizing struggle for survival during which she loses three siblings and her mother to starvation and her father to a Khmer Rouge death squad. Told in the present tense, the prose is vivid and moves easily back and forth between her internal emotions and the events of her story, and is especially good about explaining cultural and linguistic characteristics relevant to the story. But we can tell that she is not a professional writer: many words are overused and descriptions are repetitive: houses are compared to mushrooms in at least five places. There is also at least one historical error: Him describes meeting a KPNLF soldier prior to May, 1979, when the KPNLF did not exist until October of that year. Nonetheless, I'd rate this at the top of the list of Khmer Rouge survival stories for clarity and readability. The ending, when she finally gets on a plane for the US, is particularly satisfying. The book has a lot in common with Molyda Szymusiak's The Stones Cry Out, but is far more human and introspective, and it compares well with Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father, which has been criticized for its implausible portrayal of a peaceful Phnom Penh in 1975, when the city was actually under siege.

Heart-breaking, and ultimately hopeful, but there is a lot of pain on the way there.

It won an Oregon book award in 2003, and it covers events that happened in the 60s and 70s, but it is still terribly relevant.

This is a memoir written by a woman who grew up (age 9-16) during the years the Khmer Rouge came to power and ruled Cambodia. It was not as gruesome as I feared it might be given the subject. It is the story of her and her family's experiences, and it certainly describes the suffering and tragedies that befall them, but it's also about survival, the human spirit and the ties that bind families to endure hardships I still can't imagine having the strength to endure.

I've been on a reading kick of refugee/war/holocaust surveyors that are still inspiring. This is the third book I've read in about four days on this topic. What I never realized was how modern parts of Cambodia were before the Khmer Rouge took over. These people were just like us.

When Thy talks about having to wade into a river the first time in order to fish for food, she talks about how squeamish she was. For the longest time, they kept thinking that things were going to go back to normal. It just brought it home to me, that whenever there is tip in power, life can change dramatically overnight. We always need to keep that into perspective.

We also need to understand who we can trust, and who we cannot. There of course is lots of room to think in this book. Just how does it apply to my life right now? I believe this would make a good discussion book.

I read “First They Killed My Father” before arriving in Cambodia and it was a stark and eye opening story that gave me important insight into life during the Khmer Rouge. I read “When Broken Glass Floats” hoping that the story would go into her life after the Khmer Rouge and what it was like living in the US and working to help those affected by the civil war and also her experience working in medicine. The story didn’t cover much of that, but instead focused on her life during the Khmer Rouge, with stories and details not included in her first book. It was again an important book for describing the horrors of the war and what it was like to live through this time in Cambodian history. However, I think reading either one of her two books paints the picture and I did not necessarily need to read both, although each was well written and valuable to read for gaining a deeper perspective of what it was like to live through an ethnic cleansing during the Pol Pot era.

This was wonderful book to read, but also a very hard book to get through, Dealing with what really terrible people can do to their country and it's people, The inhumane way they treated the people, slave labor, starvation, torture, no age was exempt from their treatment, death was the only way out of the peoples torment.This was a book written by a women who lived four years under the Khmer Rouge as a young child in Cambodia.

Brutal. Just brutal. Couldn't do justice to even try to define the astonishing display of resilience demonstrated by Thy, her siblings, and basically anyone who survived the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. Exquisitely sad, yet oddly uplifting, my only complaint was a desire for it to last longer and contain more details of Thy's post-Cambodian life. A definite tear jerker, but perspective building at its grandest level. A must read for anyone unfamiliar with this part of history.

I bought this and one other book (First They Killed My Father) to take with me while backpacking Cambodia. It's a great way to learn about what took place there in the 70's which continues to haunt the landscape today (you won't see very many old people and several farmers who've lost limbs to land mines are left to beg in city centers--Us being responsible for many of those land mines) . Phnom Penh's tourist attractions revolve around the atrocities inflicted by the khmer rouge, which is the regime that systematically killed off their own people including doctors, teachers and children. Many were killed and put in mass graves while others starved to death or died from dysentery. It's my hope that books like Him's are being read in schools and coupled with works like Samantha Brown's "A Problem From Hell" which offers insight into how the US and UN aided this regime. Perhaps this side-by-side learning by our future leaders will inhibit them not to be blind to the consequences of their actions.

A heart wrenching book about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. Chanrithy Him writes a compelling true story about her survival during the brutal reign of this group. Starvation, sickness, terror and abuse are a part of her daily life. It is only her courage and determination to survive that keeps her going. I felt nothing but sadness for Thy as she loses member after member of her beloved family. She works daily in fields and tries to creatively find food for not only herself, but her starving family. I can't imagine that I would have had an ounce of the courage that this young girl had. The book bogs down a bit during the latter chapters when she moves from refugee camp to refugee camp, but overall a book that should be read by all.

A heart rending biography. An astonishing, startling story of survival that underscores how fragile life is. A latter-day 'animal farm' but perhaps even more extreme.

A coup by a Maoist regime overthrows the Cambodian government- that is already weakened as a consequence the West's (Nixon's) clandestine military incursions across the boarder in the Vietnam conflict. A cultural revolution ensues. The historic slate is wiped clean and life is re-calibrated from 'year zero'. Chanrithy recounts a life-eked out living under tyranny; detailing the heartbreaking, gradual disappearance of members of her own family. Sadly, this is mirrored by the fate of so many living under the vile regime. As a consequence, the middle classes are decimated -(in the killing fields); ultimately, this culminates with the disappearance of almost a third of the population. The picture that is painted is truly frightening and you can't help but wonder:- should I have had to endure this scenario, where but for the grace of God would I go? When -everything we cherish is completely destroyed- would we have Chanrithy's amount of will to survive?

"To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss."

Genocide, a notorious word coined after the holocaust, is currently a widely atrocious crime that has occurred in many countries. Being one of the few countries to experience genocide, Cambodia is left with an unpleasant history of mass murder, severe oppression and a memoir through the lenses of Chanrithy Him. The author recounts an odyssey where she experiences the loss of her home and the death of seven family members under a totalitarian regime called the Khmer Rouge. Every day, hundreds and thousands of people have died, picked off like sand in a chilling breeze. Chanrithy painfully sees the execution of her father, the disposal of her living mother, and narrates a series of killings and forced labor, where broken glass floats. At the end of the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge is eradicated and power rests on the Vietnamese, where soldiers guide the rest of the Him family to safety. When Chanrithy's life is restored to normal, the broken glass sinks, and a long aspired life replaces the abiotic lifestyle.

Chanrithy Him is a dedicated writer with a passion and purpose. Being a woman of altruistic purposes, Him makes many sacrifices to fulfill the needs of her family, unravelling a story full of mixed emotions. This memoir depicts the true life of a suffering Cambodian, making the reader feel as if he/she is in the story. ~ Student: Steven A.

If you're looking for a beautifully written historical book this is the one for you!

Going into Him's book I knew nothing of Cambodian culture and was ignorant of the existence of the Khmer Rouge. When I reached the halfway point, I felt as though I gained an understanding of Cambodian culture (and history) as well as the heinous crimes that were committed by the Khmer Rouge.

I was moved continuously throughout my time reading (sometimes even to tears). If you enjoy history, culture, or READING, read this book. I learned a lot. It truly opened my eyes.