[.ca] When Broken Glass Floats (ISBN 0393322106)

From Amazon.com:
"Chea, how come good doesn't win over evil?" young Chanrithy Him asks her sister, after the brutal Khmer Rouge have seized power in Cambodia, but before hunger makes them too weak for philosophy. Chea answers only with a proverb: When good and evil are thrown together into the river of life, first the klok or squash (representing good) will sink, and the armbaeg or broken glass (representing evil) will float. But the broken glass, Chea assures her, never floats for long: "When good appears to lose, it is an opportunity for one to be patient, and become like God." Before this proverb could come true, Chanrithy had to watch her mother, father, and five of her brothers and sisters die, murdered by the Khmer Rouge or fatally weakened by malnutrition, disease, and overwork. Now living in Oregon, where she studies posttraumatic stress disorder among Cambodian survivors, Chanrithy has written a first-person account of the killing fields that's remarkable for both its unflinching honesty and its refusal to despair. In wrenchingly immediate prose, she describes atrocities the rest of the world might prefer to ignore: her sick yet still breathing mother, thrown along with corpses into a well; a pregnant woman beaten to death with a spade, the baby struggling inside her; a sister impossibly swollen with edema, her starving body leaking fluid from the webbing between her toes. The mind retreats from horrors like these--and yet what emerges most strongly from this memoir is the triumph of life. Chanrithy is determined to honor her pledge to the dying Chea, to study medicine so she can help others live. When Broken Glass Floats accomplishes the same goal in a different way. "As a survivor, I want to be worthy of the suffering that I endured," Chanrithy writes; by giving such eloquent voice to her dead, she has proven herself more than worthy of her suffering--and theirs. --Chloe Byrne

good story:
gives me a clearer picture than any history book ever will. im sure i'll remember it.

Not as Well-Written as Loung Ung's Account:
This book lends itself to easy comparison to Loung Ung's tome "First They Killed My Father," and while "When Broken Glass Floats" is a good book it's not as fulfilling as "First They Killed My Father." "When Broken Glass Floats" leaves large chunks of time un-narrated, doesn't discuss the ramifications of the author's Chinese (as opposed to pure Khmer) heritage, and generally is a less engaging read. It finds a strength, however, in its greater number of "cultural asides," that is, places in the text where the author directly addresses the reader and notes some small detail of Cambodian culture. Additionally, this book would have benefitted from an epilogue regarding the author's post-Cambodian life in the U.S., and would also have benefitted from some discussion either in the text or via footnotes, of what was actually happening politically at the time--it would make the story flow a little better.

Murderous utopia:
Chanrithy Him's book depicts another gruesome aspect of the murderous Red Khmer regime in the 1970s in Cambodia: labour camps for children and their traumatic consequences for the victims. Like Pin Yathay's book 'Stay alive, my son', it contains an excellent first-hand account of the disorderly evacuation of Phnom Penh after the Red Khmer victory in the civil war. After the evacuation, everybody, from the elderly to the very young, was forced to participate in a totalitarian experiment (no money, no private property, no family bonds, total control, spying on everybody), which was based on monoculture: rice. The main ideological aim was equality at any cost, not freedom, except naturally for the members of Angkar (the Organization) themselves. The whole system resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from hunger, exhaustion, torture and summary executions of 'enemies' of the system. A terrible shame for humanity and for the ideologically pure left. Chanrithy Him's book tells also the story of the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia: refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines. She also indicates discreetly that the main reason for the Red Khmer regime in Cambodia were the illegal US bombardments of the Cambodian border with Vietnam, which turned the main part of the Cambodian peasantry in the arms of the Red Khmer. Apart from its uncontested historical value, this book should be read as a warning against the madness of pure ideologists, who, once in power, accept without the slightest remorse millions of human casualties to implement their maniacal policies. For a more political (national and international), economical and social analysis of the Cambodian history and the Red Khmer regime, I recommend the works of David P. Chandler and Ben Kiernan, as well as William Shawcross's 'Sideshow'.

Childhood impressions of the Khmer Rouge:
It would be impossible for me to give this book less than a perfect rating because it is a first hand account of how a child sees the Khmer Rouge. That being said, that is all it is and if the reader is looking for more than it may fall short of your expectations. I think this book could be improved if the author had included historical data and information about what was going on in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge at the time that she is recalling. That would have been very helpful for me, because there is still much I feel I need to learn about the Khmer Rouge and Cambodian politics that I was not able to get from this novel. However, the firsthand accounts of what it was like to be a helpless child in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge are extraordinarily moving and I would definitely recommend reading this book. It is important to understand what living in these conditions were like and this novel holds implications for all children that are exposed to national atrocities.

Childhood Impressions of the Khmer Rouge:
It would be impossible for me to give this book less than a perfect rating because it is a first hand account of how a child sees the Khmer Rouge. That being said, that is all it is and if the reader is looking for more than it may fall short of your expectations. I think this book could be improved if the author had included historical data and information about what was going on in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge at the time that she is recalling. That would have been very helpful for me, because there is still much I feel I need to learn about the Khmer Rouge and Cambodian politics that I was not able to get from this novel. However, the firsthand accounts of what it was like to be a helpless child in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge are extraordinarily moving and I would definitely recommend reading this book. It is important to understand what living in these conditions were like and this novel holds implications for all children that are exposed to national atrocities.