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National Observer Home > No. 46 - Spring 2000 > Book Reviews First They Killed My FatherSydney: Harper Collins, 2000, pp. 240.
When Broken Glass Floats by Chanrithy Him New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000, pp. 330.
In an Author's Note in "First They Killed My Father", Luong Ung writes: "This is a story of survival: my own and my family's. Though these events constitute my experience, my story mirrors that of millions of Cambodians. If you had been living in Cambodia during this period, this would be your story too." Since circa 1970 not many Australians have been completely unaware of Cambodia. For some, awareness began when Cambodia was dragged into the Vietnam War, first by the North Vietnamese military and their Viet Cong surrogates, and then by United States bombing campaigns and military incusions with their South Vietnamese allies. Then came the autogenocidal barbarity of the Khmer Rouge years, 1975 to 1979. The end of Khmer Rouge rule saw the invasion/occupation of Cambodia by the Vietnamese military , 1979-1989. After the withdrawal of the Vietnamese came periods of intense civil war between the Phnom Penh Government and the coalition of Cambodian forces based along the Thailand/Cambodian border regions. The civil war continued until the signing of a comprehensive Peace Agreement in Paris, in October 1991. Under the auspices of a United Nation agency called U.N.T.A.C. (United Nation Transitional Authority in Cambodia), in which Australian Lieutenant-General John Sanderson was the Commander of the U.N. military component, Cambodians were guided towards a general election based on the principles of democratic free choice, held in 1993. But the current situation in Cambodia is far from ideal. The nation is totally saturated with a type of chronic corruption which poisons most aspects of politics, the judiciary, the police, the military, government bureaucracies, and medical and education systems, ad infinitum. But to understand how far Cambodians have progressed since the Pol Pot times, one should read books such as the two reviewed here. There have been scores of works published on contemporary Cambodian history, many released during the decade between 1985 to 1995. Many of those works were written by academics who specialised in Asian or Cambodian history and sociology (such as Milton Osborne: "Sihanouk, Prince of Light/ Prince of Darkness" and David P. Chandler: "Brother Number One: Pol Pot") or by journalist/authors with a particular interest (such as William Shawcross: "The Quality of Mercy" and Elizabeth Becker: "When The War Was Over") or by Cambodian survivors of those tragic years (such as Pin Yathay: "Stay Alive My Son" and Haing S. Ngor: "A Cambodian Odyssey"). What differentiates these latest publications is that they were written by authors who were still very young when the Khmer Rouge poured into Phnom Penh City on 17 April 1975. Luong Ung was only five years old, while Chanrithy Him was nine. So while both survivors are now adult citizens of the United States and pursuing professional careers, their books certainly give a different perspective on the family tragedies than one might have read in similar books produced by authors who were either teenagers or adults between 1975-1979. Even the difference in age between both survivors is reflected in the type of detail contained in each book. "First They Killed My Father" contains less descriptive detail than "When Broken Glass Floats". Both authors give credit to other family members for providing some of the content, and are not in the least concerned with stiff presentations of the political or strategic history of the events. Yet, it is the triumph of those who survived against such abject misery that their accounts remain with the readers long after they have finished reading. Many of our daily problems would appear much lighter if we occasionally reminded ourselves of what others suffered, and only some survived, just a scant twenty years ago. As each family began to lose siblings and parents, one wondered who would be next, who could possibly survive the mounting trauma, sickness and executions? The only thing we know for certain is that the authors survived. Even after their supposed liberation , as the Khmer Rouge fled the oncoming Vietnamese army, the horrors were not over. There were still active Khmer Rouge military units which turned on the survivors, even as against the emerging group of bandits and partisans led by assorted Cambodian war lords. For the family Him, in "When Broken Glass Floats", their ordeal even extended for another two years in refugee camps in Thailand. While the treat ment was nothing like the barbarity of the Pol Pot years, it will be an enlightening experience for some Australians to read that many of the Thailand military protectors were far from being honourable when it came to their treatment of the Cambodian tragedy. This may be seen as an extension of the 1500 years of rich but brutal history which extends back to a time before a Thai (or Siamese) nation existed, and when most of what is now Thailand was actually part of the greater Khmer Empire. When reading these two books, I found that I could not put them down until it became absolutely necessary to sleep. I could not stop turning page after page as each family's tragedy developed. Yet, if one wanted to analyse clinically each book, basically the same skeletal plot could be written: an early description of the loving relationship between parents and a large family of siblings; the massive evacuation of Phnom Penh; the search for a rural settlement with some members of the extended family; eventually a forced relocation into undeveloped rural areas as new people, often despised by the traditional rural villagers who had already suffered under Khmer Rouge control for many years; the separation of family members into various children's work groups, away from home villages; starvation; cruel and heartless working conditions; the inevitable onset of epidemics such as cholera, diarrhoea, oedema, malaria, and typhus; starvation; beatings; the family deaths;then the fall of the Khmer Rouge, escape to Thailand as refugees, and eventual acceptance by the United States as sponsored refugee/migrants. But it would be wrong to think that the reader cannot learn different things from each book. Both contain a variety of aspects of the Cambodian/Chinese respect-filled family values and traditions. There is the stark constrast between this loving gentility and the sudden onset of the brutality practised by the young cadres of the Khmer Rouge. These cadres were themselves a largely uneducated and brutalised by-product of an evil form of insane engineering, the like of which most Australians could even now hardly imagine. Some of us have been privileged to work with the survivors of the Pol Pot madness. Most of those who did developed an affection for the Cambodian people which will probably be with us for the remainder of our lives. That is not to say there were not times, such as when we worked with the refugee survivors in the Thailand border camps, when we did not feel let down, even a little betrayed, by some of the corruption, and the incessant intriguing of the Khmer. But to learn something about the gentle side of Khmer family culture, or to understand why some of us will be forever affected by the personal stories of the Cambodian survivors, much is gained from a reading of both these books, rather than having to make the difficult choice of which one not to read. All of these Cambodian survivors are a tribute to the perseverance and resilience of humankind. That is really the essence of the books. The reader will travel further and further into the depths of despair suffered by those families; even through the worst of times in 1997, after a famine came about after Khmer Rouge mismanagement of the planting seasons and subsequent rice distributions. The entire Cambodian tragedy engendered the plea, "Descending to the abyss. From mass graves in the once-gentle land. Their blood seeps into mother earth . . . Please remember us. Please speak for us. Please bring us justice." Brian Hurlock National Observer No. 46 - Spring 2000 |
