In 1975, after five years of devastation and upheaval caused by
civil war, the Cambodian people welcomed the victorious communist
Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot. Once in power, the new regime tightly
closed Cambodia to the outside world. Four years later, when the
Vietnamese communists invaded Cambodia and defeated the Khmer
Rouge, the world learned that during their control the Khmer Rouge
had turned the country into "killing fields," in one of the most
horrifying instances of genocide in history. Of an estimated
population of 7 million people, about 1.5 million had been killed
or had died of starvation, torture, or sickness. After the
Vietnamese takeover, thousands of survivors of the Khmer Rouge,
fearful of continuing war and a new communist regime, fled their
homeland. Approximately 150,000 of them settled in the United
States. This book documents the Cambodian refugee experience
through nine powerful first-person narratives of men, women, and
children who survived the holocaust and have begun new lives in
America. The narrators come from varied socioeconomic and ethnic
backgrounds and include a former Buddhist monk, an unskilled
factory worker, and a farm boy, all of whom are ethnic Cambodians;
a middle-class Chinese Cambodian housewife and her daughter; and a
Vietnamese Cambodian medical student. The refugees first speak of
their lives before the Khmer Rouge. We get an intimate view of a
distinct way of life that had evolved over 2,000 years as the
refugees relate Cambodian views of life, death, rebirth, karma,
love, marriage, and family-views deeply imbued with Buddhist
concepts. Next, with sorrow and sometimes anger, they relive their
traumatic survival of the Khmer Rouge, reflecting on the deaths of
loved ones and the desecration of their culture. Finally, they
retrace their hazardous escapes and journeys to the United States
and talk candidly about their hopes, dreams, and fears as they
continue the difficult adjustment to a new social and cultural
environment. To enhance understanding of the narratives, there are
introductory chapters on Cambodia's history, culture, society, and
religion. The author concludes with a critique of the concepts used
by American social workers and researchers to evaluate the
adjustment of Cambodian refugees to life in the United States.
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