This book just devastated me in a way I'm not sure I'll ever recover from.

A very interesting book on a subject (the Khmer Rouge) that I was not familiar with until recently.

This is the story/memoir of Chanrithy (Artee) Him, who grew up as a child during the time of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and who was later granted asylum in the US. Today she works on a government funded research project of post traumatic stress syndrome for children who have lived in war time.

The story itself was horrifying, and real. She did not leave out parts - even of her own poor judgements or character. It seemed to me that the Khmer Rouge regime was similar to the cultural revolution in China, with the exception that there were no "better times" or even times between purges. It was just one purge the whole way through. Artee was taken from an upper class family, educated in Phnom Pen, and found herself starving to death, with edema, swelling, feverish, being forced to work in labor camps, and having many members of her large family torn from her in a variety of inhumane ways. There was a lot of detail about the methods that they would go to to capture "food" and the ways that the family stuck together and fell apart. It was a moving story, and not one that I am likely to forget. I definitely have a better understanding of life during that time. Her story is gripping, and I'm grateful that she was willing to share it.

The reason that I gave it four stars rather than five had to do with the writing style more than anything else. There was a lot of the Cambodian language included (not something that I'm generally opposed to) but you had to remember a lot of vocabulary, and each time I set the book down, I forgot what bang, poon, Mak, Om, Yiey, etc meant. It was hard enough for me to keep reminding myself that "Athy" sounded like Artee, Vin was Win, Ry was Ree. I also struggled with the fact that some of the dialogue was done in the third person. I got the impression that this is the way the word structure is in the Khmer, but since these were not recorded dialogues (where keeping it as close to the actual language would make sense)it would have been easier to read if it had been in first person. Especially when the sentence is something like "Mak poon can't walk that far" and not only are you supposed to remember that Mak is mom, and poon is child, and mak poon means mother's child, but you're also supposed to remember that Mak is talking in the third person about the fact that SHE can't walk that far.

I will definitely read this book again- as a haunting reminder of what people can do to each other at their worst, and how hard survival can be.

I actually liked this book quite a bit. I fully admit to knowing almost nothing about Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge or even the part that America played in the collapse of the country. And, after reading this book - I could still say that I don't know much about the politics in Cambodia in the 1970's. However, this book is not a history of what happened - it is a book about the story of one family and how they survived (or in some cases, didn't) the horrific brutality and depravity of the Khmer Rouge. Told from the perspective of a young girl, it is poignant and heartbreaking. At times, it was almost too awful to read, but something compelled me to finish - I suppose the fact that I knew she, at least, survived. Further, it piqued my interest to learn more about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.
Jun 05, 2012 03:22pm