I asked Dana Hui Lim, author of a great book, My Mother and the Tiger: A Memoir of the Killing Fields to share with us how the events of thirty five to forty years ago impact parenting styles of survivors and on to talk a bit about the manners in which children and grandchildren of killing field survivors are still shaped by these events.
Recently I had the great honor of reading and posting on Dana Hui Lim's very important, deeply moving memoir of her experiences in Cambodia under the rule of The Khmer Rouge. I fear most are not aware of the basic facts of the period so I will relay them.
In 1975, Cambodia was taken over by a group called the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pat. He had a vision of turning Cambodia into a purely agrian society, starting over at "year zero". He ordered all residents of cities to vacate. Under armed guard, often by children, millions were forced out of their homes to work in agricultural projects. Iintellectuals, ethnic Chinese, business people, those who wore glasses, those who gave the slightest resistance were executed. This continued from 1975 to 1979. As Lim explains in her narrative, it was in large part the destruction, destabilization, and atmosphere of terrible fear and suffering created by the senseless American bombing of Cambodia which created a society where this could happen. About two million, twenty five percent of population, died from disease, starvation, exposure and execution from 1975 to 1979. It ended when the Vietnamese, the traditional enemy of the Cambodians, invaded the country in 1979. One of the most exciting episodes in Liu's book was the time those in her slave labor camp realized the Khmer Rouge guards were all gone and they were free.
an extract from my review
I feel Lim's book should become an international best seller. I am going to urge my three teenage daughters to read it.
Mother and the Tiger: A Memoir of the Killing Field is a tribute to to the power of the human spirit. The true wonder of Lim's marvelous book is letting us see the incredible hard times she went through without becoming hard. Her prose is simple and beautiful. Anyone who ever hated someone for their skin color, their birthplace, their language or religion should be required to read this book.
What an important book for readers to know about--thank you! Before I read a novel last year written by another Killing Fields survivor (Vaddey Ratner's excellent In the Shadow of the Banyan), I knew very little about The Khmer Rouge and its regime of terror. I'm glad that more books are out there
ReplyDeleteas the Crowe files and reads- this is a very good morally and as literature book. Be sure and read her q and a- thanks so much for your visit
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