First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, and: When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge, and: The Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Childhood, 1975-1980 (review)

Reviews R.eader-to-Reader: Capsule Reviews This column invites readers to share theirfavorite nonfiction books in print. Memoirs, travel, writing, nature writing, essay collections, biography, adventure stories—all are welcome here as mini-reviews ofnew books and oldfavorites that are still available. Our aim is to keep the best nonfiction alive in a reader-to-reader kind ofway. Mimi Schwartz, "Reader-to-Reader" Editor1 Maureen Stanton Patricia Hampl wrote that the subject of memoir is not the self, but "consciousness in the light of history." In reading these three deeply moving accounts of Cambodians who survived under the Khmer Rouge, I was acutely aware of their historical importance as testimony of Pol Pot's genocide . Each writer brings her own sensibiUty to bear as witness, a poignant contrast to the regime's oppressive political doctrine of uniformity. I highly recommend aU ofthese elegantly rendered accounts, in which the most base human impulses contrast with breathtaking acts of courage and kindness. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung. Harper CoUins (paperback), 2001. 238 pages, $13.00. Ung was five when the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia in 1975, and her middle-class family fled Phnom Penh. Like mfllions ofCambodians, 1If you would like submission guidelines for this column, contact Mimi Schwartz at schwartm@stockton.edu or c/o Writing Program, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Jim Leeds Road, Pomon, NJ 08240. 279 280Fourth Genre Ung's family suffered extreme poverty, physical torture, and death under the Pol Pot's violent regime. While Ung's father, mother, teenage and baby sisters lose their lives, she and four siblings survive the harsh labor camps. Ung describes the day-to-day atrocities and abject suffering under the Khmer Rouge from a child's perspective. What is remarkable is her ability—as an elementary-school-aged girl—to survive extreme hardship by transmuting her rage into cunning survival. Ung's wiUful spirit and indomitable hope never waver, in spite of enormous losses at such a young age. "Someone once told me that ifyou hit your head hard enough you lose aU your memories. I want to hit my head hard. I want to lose my memory. The pain in my heart hurts so much it becomes physical and attacks my shoulders, back, arms, and neck like hot pins pricking at me. Only death wiU relieve me ofit. Then something takes over me . . . My pain and sadness no longer feel real or personal—no longer mine . . ." Reading this book, Loung Ung's pain, her family's, and that of aU who suffered under the Khmer Rouge becomes ours. When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge, by Chanrithy Him. WW Norton (paperback), 2001. 330 pages, $13.95. Chanrithy Him's story correlates with Ung's: the evacuation from Phnom Phen into rural poverty; the banal indifference to suffering of the Khmer Rouge; the cruelties casuaUy inflicted by soldiers unto their countrymen. This passage conveys what was tragicaUy a typical experience—Him's mother in a filthy sham ofa hospital battling starvation by capturing and eating rats: "It's a strange cycle—the rodents come to gnaw on the weak and dead; the dying wait to trap those who would feed upon them." Him, who was eight when the Khmer Rouge stormed Phnom Phen, presents more background than Ung: family history, political context, Cambodian culture and language. The book is more dense, but I valued this information. Like Ung, Him lost both ofher parents and several siblings to death by execution, starvation, or iUness. "As a survivor," Him writes, "I want to be worthy ofthe suffering that I endured as a child. I don't want to let that pain count for nothing, nor do I want others to endure it. This may be our greatest test: to recognize the weight of war on children." Book Reviews281 The Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Chüdhood, 1975-1980, by Molyda Syzmusiak. Indiana University Press (paperback reprint), 1999. 245 pages, $12.95. At twelve, Syzmusiak was the oldest of these three memoirists when the Khmer Rouge embarked on its brutal political experiment, which lasted five years. She first...