When Broken Glass Floats

April 3, 2000
Born in Cambodia in 1965, Him lived from the age of three with the fear of war overflowing from neighboring Vietnam and suffered through the U.S.'s bombing of her native land. However, thanks to her loving and open-minded family, her outlook remained positive--until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge seized control and turned her world upside down. (According to a Cambodian proverb, "broken glass floats" when the world is unbalanced.) Armed with a nearly photographic memory, Him forcefully expresses the utter horror of life under the revolutionary regime. Evacuated from Phnom Penh and and shunted from villages to labor camps, her close-knit family of 12 was decimated: both parents were murdered, and five of her siblings starved or died from treatable illnesses. Meanwhile, the culture of local communities was destroyed and replaced with the simple desire to survive famine. Yet for all their suffering throughout these years, the surviving Hims remained loyal to one another, saving any extra food they collected and making dangerous trips to other camps to share it with weaker family members. Friendships were also formed at great risk, and small favors were exchanged. But by the end of the book, Him finds herself surprised when she encounters remnants of humanity in people, for she has learned to live by mistrusting, by relying on her own wits and strength. When the Khmer Rouge were overthrown, Him moved to a refugee camp in Thailand. Today she works with the Khmer Adolescent Project in Oregon. This beautifully told story is an important addition to the literature of this period. (Apr.) FYI: In the January 17 issue, PW reviewed another memoir of growing up under the Khmer Rouge, First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung.

April 15, 2000
Him survived the brutal regime of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and here recounts the four years in a labor camp that darkened and shortened her childhood. She was 10 in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge overtook her country in what she calls the time of broken glass. Feeling a survivor's responsibility to do so, Him vividly recalls the brutality of the camps, the strict social control, and alienation from family that the Khmer Rouge enforced. At the start of the conflict, her affluent family included 12 children. Only five survived, but they managed to keep their concept of family and their humanity intact through the "killing fields" of Cambodia. Him's harrowing experiences emcompassed the traumas of massacres, torture, and other cruelties. After those four years of horror, Him describes herself as having been reincarnated in a new body "but with an old soul." Twenty-five years after the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror expired, Him's memoir is a grim, gut-wrenching reminder of its violence. ((Reviewed April 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)