Poetic Justice: Cambodian American Literary Visions

CHAPTER NINE

POETIC JUSTICE:CAMBODIAN AMERICAN LITERARY VISIONS

MARY THI PHAM AND JONATHAN H. X. LEE

Introduction

I write 4 men, women, and children. any1 who ever felt alone, any1 who ever felt disowned, i write for the bones buried in a country call home, i write for u the listener so listen up .... i write for inner city street kids struggling to find their place in a world to (sic) concern with race .... so i write to the few hoping i get trickled down to the masses i wanna spark the world and get reborn in its ashes i wanna unfog their glasses and make em see the sons and daughters they abandoned to be bastards.... so i write from a place of pure bass all the five elements put together to produce faith .... ~Kosal Khiev, Why I Write

Why must a poet write for others? What ethics or obligations compel an artist to create and speak on behalf of others? Kosal Khiev,1 a poet, spoken word artist, and Cambodian American deportee, elucidates on why he writes verses, demonstrating that creative literary production is essential to healing and justice. He begins by asserting that he writes for those who have felt “alone” and who have been “disowned” (l. 1). The operative word in this line is “disowned.” It holds accountable those who have the power to protect, but chose to abuse their power and abandon their responsibilities out of greed, hatred, selfishness, and ignorance. These social conditions may have incapacitated these men, women and children

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from voicing their social disease. He then moves from writing for the (disenfranchised) living to writing for the dead. The “bones buried in a country [I] call home” (l. 2) alludes to the Cambodian autogenocide during the Khmer Rouge regime. Writing becomes a vehicle for the living to memorialize the dead. Healing and justice become the objectives of creative literary expression.

The speaker immediately hails the readers into the text through interpellation: “i write for u the listener so listen up” (l. 3). Khiev’s command for attention situates the writer/speaker as the authoritative voice offering something valuable to the listeners. His wisdom, generosity, and compassion unfold in the following lines as he writes for “inner city street kids” (l. 6), subalterns unable to speak for themselves, and he reveals the social inequalities that stem from a “world to (sic) concern with race” (l. 7). Social phenomena such as xenophobia, white supremacy, imperialism, and colonialism all have roots buried in racist ideology. Writing, such as Khiev’s, exposes these social evils and exculpates the innocent. This type of writing demands to know who is responsible for these social dis-eases and holds culprits accountable.

Further into the poem, Khiev declares: “i wanna spark the world and get reborn in its ashes” (l. 26). He alludes to the phoenix, a mythical creature associated with self-generative powers (Broek 1972: 188) and eternal life (Broek 1972: 55). The phoenix as a stand-in for the poet is apropos because its cries are known to make beautiful song (Broek 1972: 200), just as Khiev does during his spoken word performances.2 The phoenix, in Christian traditions, signifies new beginnings and is a harbinger for happiness and good fortune (Broek 1972: 113). Khiev’s optimism to transform and liberate the world from suffering is exuded in his poetry.

Toward the end of his poem, Khiev draws upon the Five Elements (most likely from Chinese philosophy) as a means to elicit faith from a generation that has been abandoned and bastardized. Once again, the theme of “(re)creation” is invoked by the five elements3 (Yu-lan 1934: 20). “These elements (hsing) represent movement (hsing)” (Yu-lan 1934: 21). They have the power to give birth to the element following it and are overcome by only one (Yu-lan 1934: 22). For example, wood creates fire, and fire creates metal, but metal is overcome by wood and water overcomes fire (Yu-lan 1934: 20-22). “Heaven, Earth, the yin and yang,and wood, fire, earth, metal and water, make nine; together with man, they make ten. Heaven’s number is made complete” (Yu-lan 1934: 19). This cycle of creation and balance calls forth new life and equilibrium. Khiev’s

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invocation of the heavenly elements is a moment of poetic justice meant to “produce faith” (l. 76) in order to heal a world full of social suffering.

Khiev’s spoken word poem upholds a new standard for creative literary cultural producers. His writings challenge the hegemonic victimhood narratives that are prevalent in Cambodian American communities. It is this type of literature that we seek to excavate from a haunted Cambodian past; to illuminate an American society that has long misunderstood, misrepresented, and mishandled Cambodian American communities, and pushed them into the margins of humanity. Through explorations of Cambodian American “healing narratives,” we attempt to undo the internal colonization, “the patterns of exploitation and domination of disenfranchised groups within the United States” that have been a part of the narratives of Cambodian Americans (Spivak 1990: 792 emphasis original). We invite readers, scholars, writers, Cambodian and non-Cambodian, to retire Cambodian American “victim narratives” by spotlighting narratives that heal and empower. Jonathan H. X. Lee notes that:

For many Cambodian Americans, first generation refugees, 1.5 and second generation Cambodian Americans, comfort and ease are often far from their lives. Seen—if they are seen at all—as perpetual victims, as refugees, their social and economic struggles with gang activities and welfare dependency dominate the discourse about them, pointing out and blaming their recent history as the origins of their ‘plight.’ But they have survived, and even with scars, they thrive, and in so doing, have brought their wealth of culture, their wealth of community, and their tremendous strength that was gained through their struggle to survive. (2010: xiv)

Since Cambodian American literature4 is starting to grow, the scope and breadth of this article is limited to Sharon May’s5 interview with Soth Polin, published in a journal called Manoa;6 Anida Yoeu Ali’s poem, “Absence, Part 2: Crying;” Chath pierSath’s poem, “Reunion;” and Peauladd Huy’s poem, “I am here.”

This article shifts our focus from the Cambodian American “victim narratives” to the production, promotion, and distribution of “healing narratives.” First, the cultural and social terrain of Cambodian American history is laid out. We argue that Cambodian Americans are “socially dead” and are, therefore, unable to connect to their traditions, cultural lifeways, histories and social institutions because of the legacy of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal campaign. Having experienced “social death,” Cambodians and Cambodian Americans are hindered in their attempts to seek justice and heal from the evil of the Khmer Rouge regime. However, we argue that shifting the narrative and popular imagination of Cambodian


Americans from being “victims” is a central step towards becoming “socially undead.” This part requires that we, as scholars, writers, and readers, focus on the production and transmission of “healing narratives.” Before articulating the differences between victim narratives and healing narratives, we explore, albeit briefly, the interconnection between this narrative shift in discourse with what we term a pedagogy for healing and justice. One central question we invite readers to explore with us is: “What’s at stake in the continual production and perpetuation of Cambodian American ‘victim narratives’ in society?” We juxtapose this question with a delineation of “healing narratives” through an examination and explication of several Cambodian American literary texts that fall under this category. This article actively engages in expanding the concepts of language as a healing agent and its functions to (1) raise awareness, (2) seek justice, and (3) transmit hope to the next generations. Lastly, the relationship between literature and society will be explored, ultimately, proposing the integration of Cambodian American literature into the U.S. classrooms and literary spheres.

Cultural Historical Background

The Cambodian autogenocide, which lasted for three years, eight months, and twenty days, between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge held power in Cambodia, has been described as one of the most radical and brutal periods in world history. It was a time of mass starvation, torture, slavery, and killing. Imagine children being separated from their families, and killed if they attempted to return to the parents. Imagine children being trained to be soldiers and then ordered to kill, not just strangers, but their own parents. Imagine being guilty for crimes that you have not committed and being forced to admit guilt, then sent to re-education camps and labor camps as punishment for said criminal activities, or being sentenced to death. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, the nom de guerre of Saloth Sar, attempted to copy Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward in China, and to create an agrarian utopia based on rice agriculture. This leap would create the “cleanest, most fair society ever known in our history,” as stated in a propaganda radio broadcast (Hinton 2005: 8). However, what the message failed to mention was that in order to create this “cleanest” and “most fair” society, it required the destruction of families, social relationships and bonds, traditions, culture, religion, arts, and literature.

Invoking the concept of “social death” defined by Claudia Card as “…central to the evil of genocide… [the] loss of social vitality is loss of

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identity and thereby of meaning in one’s existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents” (2003: 63). For Cambodian Americans, social death was compounded because war and genocide was followed by a mass migration of refugees seeking safety and life. This movement resulted in radical life changes as refugees faced culture shock, survivor’s guilt, and the challenges of adapting to a completely new, modern society. Fleeing their homeland does not simply represent the leaving of a physical space and security, but also the disconnect that thereby occurs from one’s sense of self, one’s culture, and one’s history. The loss is physical, somatic, cultural and symbolic. The number of Cambodians who died under the Khmer Rouge remains a topic of debate: Vietnamese sources say three million, while others estimate 1.7-2 million deaths. More than three decades later, Cambodians worldwide are still haunted by this grim chapter in their history—collective and individual. Collective and individual experiences and encounters with trauma among Cambodian Americans are transmitted across multiple generations silently and unconsciously. First generation refugee-survivors remain quiet about their experiences, and transmit social death—the inability to sustain and maintain connections to traditions, community, and history—to their second generation Cambodian American children. The birth of children to subsequent generations in which the community has been destroyed and ties to past generations have been severed through separation and death is termed natal alienation (Card 2003: 74). Card states, “Those who are natally alienated are born already socially dead” (2003: 74 emphasis original). Cambodian American children who experience natal alienation grow up with a superficial understanding of their heritage, their families’ histories, parents’ culture, and roots because their access to cultural resources (rituals, symbols, language, and extended family) is limited. While not the case for all, or to the same degree, for some refugees of the Cambodian genocide who immigrated to the United States, social death and natal alienation are applicable concepts that highlight the link among psychological, social, and cultural traumas.7 How can Cambodian Americans employ literature and other forms of creative expressions to become “socially undead” and hence to reengage with society, community, and self? We argue that Cambodian American literary expressions provide one path towards becoming “socially alive” which is part and parcel of the complex process of healing and search for justice.


Pedagogy for Healing and Justice

Among Cambodians, those living in Cambodia, and the Diaspora (i.e. the United States, Australia, France, Canada, New Zealand, and Vietnam), peace is elusive, since justice may never be achieved. “How is justice possible if Pol Pot is already dead?” many survivors asked after 1998. In 2003, The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established through an agreement between the government of Cambodia and the United Nations, with a mandate to prosecute senior members of the Khmer Rouge for war crimes and crimes against humanity, during the time the Khmer Rouge held power. The ECCC is a hybrid court composed of Cambodian and international judges and prosecutors working with Cambodian and international laws, under a French-style system. The ECCC is as significant as the war crimes tribunal since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg. This eight-year-old court is fraught with disputes among prosecutors, judges, funders, and officials in the Cambodian government. Today, many of the surviving victims and their descendants fear that the majority of the Khmer Rouge leaders and other low level Khmer Rouge personnel will go unpunished because the judicial process is being manipulated by the current Prime Minister, Hun Sen, himself a known former Khmer Rouge leader. In fact, Prime Minister Hun Sen declared in October 2010 to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that no new cases will be investigated.8

On June 27, 2011, Case 002 opened and is currently proceeding, with no planned successor. The four defendants are: Nuon Chea, 84, Pol Pot’s second in command; Khieu Samphan, 79, the regime’s head of state; Ieng Thirith, 79, former minister of social affairs; and her husband Ieng Sary, 85, who was the foreign minister. Unlike the defendant in the first case against Khaing Guek Eav (alias Duch), all four reject the charges against them and maintain their innocence. Khieu Samphan has also refused to co-operate with the court.9 In court, Nuon Chea said, “I am not happy with this hearing.”

The legacies of this period and the taste of injustice are powerful and affect the lives of Cambodians at home and in diasporic communities abroad. Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights acknowledged that even though the Khmer Rouge crimes were committed more than thirty years ago, “…they remain ingrained in Cambodia’s collective psyche.” Virak’s conclusion about the collective psyche of Cambodian subjects illustrates that they are subjects suspended in an in-between state of ambivalence and fear, which exemplifies the victim narrative. We argue, that, however accurate Virak’s statement may be, that

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writers, students, teachers, peacebuilders—Cambodian and non-Cambodian—shift their focus on the impossibility of justice, to the possibility of transformation, and by extension, to the possibility of other forms of justice.

Although judicial justice is slow and may be impossible to achieve in post-conflict Cambodian and Cambodian American communities, we argue that small but meaningful progress towards achieving other forms of social justice and healing is possible through literary expressions as evident in Cambodian American literature. Teri Shaffer Yamada documents how Cambodian American writers employ memoirs as a way to not only record history and tell their story, but to transform trauma from pain and terror to socially engaged efforts to demand justice for survivors of the Killing Fields (Yamada 2005, 2010). Similarly, Cathy Schlund-Vials writes about praCh Ly, a Cambodian American hip hop artist who employs Khmer musical styles and techniques, with movies about the Killing Fields, and family narratives to construct not only an identity asCambodian American, but a transnational subjectivity that situates the self in a vexing position between two worlds: America and Cambodia (Schlund-Vials 2008). Jonathan H. X. Lee argues that 1.5-generation and second-generation Cambodian Americans will creatively employ the works of Cambodian American writers, artists, and musicians coupled with their own family narratives to (re)create, (re)discover their history and construct a self that is simultaneously consciously and conscientiously Cambodian and American. These creative expressions are central to healing and becoming socially undead that lies beyond judicial justice (2010:343-353).

We, therefore, envision a pedagogy of healing and justice that is inspired by bell hooks’ conception of “liberatory pedagogy” (1990: 9) and Paulo Freire’s concept of “humanizing pedagogy” (2010: 68). A pedagogy of healing and justice is achieved when students, teachers, and authors—Cambodian and non-Cambodian—are exposed to Cambodian American literary expressions. Analysis of this genre of literature authenticates Cambodian Americans as human as opposed to “victims” which, invoking Freire requires “action and reflection” as a praxis that is capable of transforming the world (2010: 125). In regards to the case at hand, this praxis of action and reflection can transform Cambodian Americans from “victims” to human beings who are agents of their own destiny, who will the power to transform their past and dictate their own futures. As Freire suggests, “The important thing, from the point of view of libertarian education, is for the people to come to feel like masters of their thinking…” (2010:124). For Cambodian Americans, this means the


possibility of piecing together the fragments of identity that was shattered under the Khmer Rouge. Rebuilding Cambodians’ lost and damaged sense of identity and belonging is an important starting point upon which to tackle individual, community and national healing.

Cambodian American Victim Narratives10

Before we begin exploring alternative Cambodian American literature, it’s useful to examine a “victim narrative” and inspect how its features differ from a “healing narrative.” There are no clear markings that determine whether a text is a “victim narrative” or a “healing narrative” and each reader experiences a text differently. In this article, a text’s valuations of whether it’s a “victim narrative” or a “healing narrative” are based on Kosal Khiev’s criteria for poetic justice.

One example of a “victim narrative” can be found in Sharon May’s interview with Soth Polin11 in the Manoa journal. The tone of this particular interview dampens the human heart.12 Throughout the interview, Polin shares his love for literature and his writing career, but even within these narratives, they are clouded by fear and despair, and lingering visceral haunting(s) of the Khmer Rouge. Polin tries to explain to May the crippling effects the Khmer Rouge has on the imagination and states:

Even if we had more writers of my generation, we could not succeed if we continued writing as we did. There is something that we cannot get past. It just kills the imagination. It is the atrocity of the Khmer Rouge. Even if you are reaching in your imagination for a new destination, you cannot get past their cruelty. When you try to write something without mentioning the Khmer Rouge, you can’t. The next generation will forgive that, they will forget, but for us, we cannot forgive it. (2004: 16-17)

Polin’s answer speaks to his generation’s creative energies being stymied by the memory and trauma of the Khmer Rouge regime. He also distinguishes between the experiences of his own generation, who actually lived through the autogenocide, and juxtaposes it against that of future generations who may still be affected through intergenerational trauma. However, unlike his generation, they are still able to transcend the loss through literary production; Polin no longer has any hope left for his generation.

This sense of hopelessness is further reflected when May asks Polin: “What advice do you have for young writers?” he replies with a hopeless question, “That is difficult to answer. I cannot give advice to myself. How can I advise other people?” (2004: 16) Although Polin’s answer is honest

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and authentic, it also reflects a person who is lost and unable to lead others. He is in despair and lacks personal agency. When May probes Polin to disclose how the Khmer Rouge affected him, he concludes by saying:

As I said before about the Khmer Rouge: you cannot get past it. You resuscitate a painful past, and you have to talk about it. You cannot pass over it. That is a lesson for humanity: not to let it happen again—that atrocity and that cruelty. Maybe this is why I cannot finish my writing: because of this story. Because of this, I lost my inspiration. Because the reality surpasses the imagination. (2004: 20)

Polin has admitted defeat as a writer and cultural producer. The Khmer Rouge won. There are no stories of victory, healing, or moving forward in this text. The personal and collective pain is so strong it has incapacitated Polin’s imaginative and narrative power. The best that he can do is talk about it with May in an interview and hope that she will take up the work that he is no longer capable of performing on his own. Polin’s subjectivity engulfs the reader’s optimism and deflates the reader’s spirit. Based on Khiev’s criteria for poetic justice, this text’s lack of healing and justice signal a “victim narrative.”

What purpose lies in making distinctions between a “victim” and a “healing” narrative? In Kelly McKinney’s article, “‘Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence’: Testimony, Traumatic Memory, and Psychotherapy with Survivors of Political Violence,”13 she raises challenging questions for psychotherapists who use the “testimony method” to heal survivors of political violence and critiques the reframing of the trauma story in the way it attempts to portray “historical truth” by casting patients as “innocent victims, paradoxically denying a sense of their full moral and psychological agency rather than restoring it” (Haaken in McKinney, 2007: 267). Victims are being painted in a one-dimensional lens untainted by evil intentions or vengeful thoughts. The creation of this “false, pure victim identity” that some of the clinics practice in their healing sessions are detrimental because the patients lose their “authentic selves” and must suppress their desires for revenge or violence—out of shame; this suppression is ultimately destructive because the patients have been retarded from tapping into their personal agency (McKinney, 2007: 267). McKinney’s findings are significant because it challenges popular beliefs that the simple re-telling of a “victim narrative” elicits liberation and results in fewer victims to burden society. This is the effect of the “victim narrative” that we expose and caution against. The creation and re-creation of these “victim narratives” perpetuates a cycle of helplessness and


victimization in which the patients may not be able to move forward or access their personal agency.

In addition to perpetuating victimization, the production and re-production of Cambodian American “victim narratives” uses Cambodia’s historical past as a scapegoat and simultaneously legitimates that the U.S. is based on meritocratic values while denying the existence of racial inequality. For example, in The New York Times, Patricia Leigh Brown reports on sex trafficking of Southeast Asian American minors with a focus on Cambodian American girls. However, she does not explicitly show that there’s a direct correlation between high crimes and poverty. Instead, she links the vulnerability of Cambodian American girls to being raised by emotionally distant parents affected by the Khmer Rouge. While this is not to understate the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of those who have been affected by the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror and genocide, we are showing how the framing of this reporting is misleading. She not only briefly mentions poverty, but Brown relays that “the Polaris Project, a national advocacy organization, estimates that a stable of four girls earns over $600,000 a year in tax-free income for the pimp. Drug dealers here are increasingly switching to prostitution, inspired by the bottom line and fewer risks” (2011). This huge figure gears readers’ mind frames toward profit rather than poverty. This kind of reporting elides the real issues that many Cambodian American communities are facing: high poverty and crime and low funding. Furthermore, Brown cites organizations like Asian Health Services and Banteay Srei which suggest that the Cambodian American girls are already getting all the social help they need, therefore, no further resources are required for under resourced and unprivileged Cambodian American communities.

It has been nearly four decades since the Khmer Rouge regime, and yet, they are still being blamed for all social unrest within Cambodian American communities, including: poverty, unemployment, social maladjustment, educational underperformance, and discrimination. This tendency to use the Khmer Rouge regime as a scapegoat is disproportionate from the actual Cambodian refugee experience in the U.S. and must be challenged and re-examined critically in order to assess the situation accurately and aid Cambodian American communities in ways that are effective. Ownership of our social problems is necessary to ensure a society based on democratic values. Furthermore, since we are all interconnected, this can only profit all communities and society as a whole because empowerment has a direct correlation with victimization. This means that as more Cambodian Americans are healing and being empowered, the result will be a lesser presence of victimization in our

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society and a healthier, more functional, democratic nation-state. Despite the gravity of this subject, there is hope because there is a solution. This is an invitation to retire “victim narratives” and to counterbalance them with the cultural production of “healing narratives.”

Cambodian American Healing Narratives

Does literature have the capacity to incite social change? David Morris posits that suffering exists beyond language (1996: 27), but that literature is a safe, alternate space that’s more distant from the writer and reader, and hence, suffering becomes more accessible (31). According to his assessment of the functions of literature, it can be used to tap into suffering in ways that are inaccessible through the basic “transmission model.”14 If suffering can be accessed, then, it also allows for the opportunity to heal. Morris concludes that:

The content of the utterance while crucial to its writer or speaker, matters less in suggesting what literature can tell us about suffering than the sheer act of speech itself: affliction has at last broken through into language. We are finally in the presence of words that cross over from the other side of torment. (1996: 30)

Morris suggests that voice is a promising tool for healing because it opens up a portal for the suffering to finally be released. He asserts that literature, then, becomes the perfect medium to take on this type of work. Morris’ assessments of literature coupled with Khiev’s demand for poetic justice are good measures for recognizing “healing narratives.” Morris warrants that studying certain elements of literature can aid us in the way we think about suffering within and beyond literature. We deviate from Morris’ hypothesis in the elements that it examines. Morris suggests studying voice, genre, and moral community, whereas, we examine the interplay among history, literature, subjectivity, cultural production, and social suffering, justice, healing, and empowerment for self and community.

Poetry: Writing for Self, Writing for Others

“The world changes the poetry, and the poetry changes the world,” says U Sam Oeur15 during an interview with Sharon May (2004: 189). Similar to Polin’s previous assertions, Oeur’s statement is also reflective of the “victim narratives” that were produced after the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime. A sense of hopelessness prevails over Cambodian and


Cambodian American literature. As Oeur notes, before war broke out in Cambodia, poets were preoccupied with pastoral poems that celebrated the female form, blossoms, and beautiful things, but after the war, the poems were bathed in the aftermath of genocide and became about suffering and loss and pain and grief (2004: 189). The second half of Oeur’s quote that “poetry changes the world” articulates the potency of poetry to transform ourselves, our communities, and ultimately, the world. Nearly four decades later, although Cambodian American poetry still addresses feelings of hopelessness, some of the poems’ tone and landscape are gradually shifting towards healing, empowerment, and justice.

Poet: Anida Yoeu Ali16

An example of a “healing narrative” can be found in Anida Ali’s poem “Absence, Part 2: Crying.” In the poem, Ali begins by trying to capture the essence of “absence” through various metaphors. Absence is: crying for home, leaving, loss of ownership, separation, shadows, silence, mourning deaths, another landmine tragedy, witnessing tears, tightly wound face, remembering home, sacrifice, etc….(ll. 1-20). These and many more losses and pain are cited as metaphors of “absence.” Taking on multiplicity of meanings, “absence” doesn’t merely connote a state of being away or a state of deficiency; “absence” is also the consequences of the Khmer Rouge’s destructive regime and this poem serves as documentation of the crimes against humanity.

Initially, the poem may seem like a “victim narrative” because of the endless depiction of tragedies, but there is hope. Partway through the poem, Ali asserts that absence is “the heart’s unrecorded ache,” but as this is uttered, the poem becomes self-reflexive and creates a space for the heart’s unrecorded ache (l. 21). In the process of telling, Ali uses her poem as a means to record these losses; her use of form reinforces and echoes the contents of her message by giving legitimacy to grief and by acknowledging the suffering of the victims of the Khmer Rouge. By revealing the absence that is felt when the suffering of millions continue to go unacknowledged and newborns, who are born natally alienated, are embedded in a “dying generation / of living memories,” the poem becomes a space for healing and seeking social justice for first, 1.5, second, and future generations (ll. 42-3). In a couple of instances, Ali addresses the suffering of her father and “unpolitical” mother. This poem is reflective of the promising “healing narratives” that are beginning to emerge from 1.5 and second generation Cambodian American artists like praCh Ly17 and Laura Mam.18

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According to Jonathan H. X. Lee’s “ethics of identity formation,” 1.5 and second generation Cambodian Americans have a responsibility to record their family histories because they would be better candidates than the first generation to “lead the way to inter-generational recovery, since they did not directly face the horrors of the Khmer Rouge like their parents did, and can therefore more easily confront the past and move through it” (2010: 351). Ali demonstrates the “ethics of identity formation” in the way her poem keeps and produces history so that future generations will not experience the “amnesia of history” that’s prevalent in many race/ethnic groups that have been subjected to severe trauma. In this way, “Absence, Part 2: Crying” is a poem that fits both Morris’ valuations of literature as a portal to social suffering, in the way it addresses and heals personal and cultural wounds, and Khiev’s standard for poetic justice.

Poet: Chath pierSath19

Another example of a “healing narrative” can be found in Chath pierSath’s poem, “Reunion.” This poem is about the poet who imagines his own death in order to reunite with his mother. In the first stanza, pierSath paints serene, pastoral images of his homeland the way he remembers it in his childhood before the atrocities of war and autogenocide in Cambodia. Then, in the next stanza, he conjures up strong women who demonstrate against the massacre of their innocence. In the third stanza, the poet asserts that he shall do a celebratory dance in the monsoon for all the loved ones he never got to know while his mother’s embrace shall unite them all. The poem closes with a solo line declaring: “Having known her is my sorrow and my inheritance” (l. 14). This is also the last line of his book of poems.

pierSath’s poem lends complexity to the “healing narrative” because it occupies both joy and pain. The title “Reunion” conjures both happiness and sorrow because while it speaks of the possibility of a reunion, it simultaneously connotes separation: the absence of his mother through her death and his survival. However, rather than being a “victim narrative,” the poet acknowledges the suffering, but ultimately takes ownership of his inheritance and chooses to celebrate life. Despite the eeriness and morbidity of imagining his own death, pierSath skillfully and successfully uses poetry as a vehicle to imagine a happy reunion with his mother by expanding our familiar notions of “death.”20

The theme of death appears four times in the poem and possesses multiple meanings. In each of these instances, death yields positive connotations. The first death refers to the speaker’s mother. However, rather than depicting her death, he breathes life into his mother through his


poetry and through the afterlife. In this way, he is able to memorialize her. Rather than endanger her safety, the speaker conjures his own death. pierSath’s second allusion to death engages in poetic license in the way his death embodies agency through its purpose to reunite him with his mother. Here, death doesn’t take on the traditional meaning of dejection and surrendering; instead, it represents a means to “eternal peace” (l. 3).

The third reference to death occurs in juxtaposition with the “thatched-roof house full of strong women / raising their fists against the massacre of their innocence” (ll. 8-9). The “massacre of their innocence” alludes to the Khmer Rouge’s autogenocide, but the speaker does not depict helpless victims in submission. On the contrary, he uses powerful activist imagery to re-imagine the tragedy in a way that transforms the suffering into demanding justice, thus creating a path towards self-empowerment. These images are displays of anger (not despair) which have not been appeased because of the lack of justice. As Frank Stewart explains, the function of writing is a means in which “individuals are able to maintain their humanity and resist evil—and, therefore, why the freedom to write is always a threat to authoritarian regimes” (2004: xi). Lastly, the poet alludes to death once more when he dedicates a dance in the monsoon for all of his “loved ones [he] never got to know” (ll. 11-12). In this way, pierSath’s remembrance of these deaths through his writing resists crimes against humanity and re-humanizes the dehumanized by paying homage to the innocent lives that were lost. Moreover, he memorializes the death of the innocent who were not provided a proper burial. This “funeral” releases the souls of the dead and allows them a possibility of rebirth. As Buddhists, the dead who are not properly buried are doomed to suffer in the hell realm as “hungry ghosts.” Through literary expression, pierSath reunites social bonds and allows for souls to be reincarnated.

Literature Performs “Socially Undead” Ceremonies

In addition to setting the souls of the dead free, the act of telling history is a claiming of public space (Tonkin in Sugiman, 2004: 384). Elizabeth Tonkin’s research (1992) takes Morris’ argument on voice further by suggesting that testimonial discourse not only involves using language to orient oneself to the topic and audience, but also places a claim that one should be listened to (Tonkin in Sugiman, 2004: 384). The selected poets in this chapter voluntarily locate themselves in history and assert their testimonial discourse (in poetic form) into a public narrative. In Pamela Sugiman’s research on Japanese Canadian internment experiences, she hypothesizes that ultimately, the “literacization of memories is always a

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political act” (Sugiman, “Abstract”). These acts are significant the way they claim and create their own subjectivity. Similarly, we propose that the act of resurrecting these personal/national memories/histories has the power to move the Cambodian American communities forward psychologically, socially, and ultimately—politically.

Through producing, publishing, and reading the reconstructed accounts of these untold stories, through poetry and other literary forms, we have collectively chosen to challenge and respond to the “socially dead” effects of the Khmer Rouge regime. Literary production has the ability to perform “socially undead” ceremonies within Cambodian American communities in the way it revives these social connections that the Khmer Rouge regime demolished. This act of defiance is also an act towards liberation. As Paulo Freire states, “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly” (2010: 47). Writers and readers of literature are not merely appreciating and adding to the collection of art; we can make a conscious decision to use “healing narratives” as an agent to heal, seek justice, and transmit hope. With each act of production and reading, we are staying informed, reconnecting with history, and seeking and claiming our freedom. The following explication of Peauladd Huy’s poem, “I am here,” makes clear the power of literature to heal and undo the “socially dead” effects by the Khmer Rouge.

Poet: Peauladd Huy21

Huy’s poem, “I am here,” demonstrates poetry’s ability to raise the dead in order to speak about the crimes against humanity that the Khmer Rouge inflicted upon the once living. The poem is split into three sections with the same speaker using different tones in each section. The speaker unambiguously states that breaking silences and seeking justice are the main objectives. However, each section uses different devices to achieve this affect.

The tone in section one reminds readers that this is not a matter of “what’s already done” (l. 5). The speaker was once alive, a functioning human being like us. Due to the Khmer Rouge take over, s/he experienced an unnatural death. The crimes against humanity committed by the Khmer Rouge are reinforced at the end of the first section when the speaker poses a rhetorical question to the perpetrators: “What more can you do? / Piss on my bones again?” (ll. 14-15). The “piss” informs the reader of the cruel conditions under which the speaker lived and died. Moreover, since the opening of the poem is in present tense, the surprised ending jolts the reader into the realization that the speaker has come back from the dead in


order to speak. This is an instance of literature performing a “social undead” ceremony in the way it allows the dead and living to commune. This exchange defies the “social death” effects of the Khmer Rouge in its attempt to reconstruct relationships between the dead and the living and the past with the present.

The next section begins with a direct address to the reader: “Don’t be alarmed, Reader” (l. 16 emphasis original). The speaker’s act of interpellation, hailing to the reader, creates an unnerving response from the reader and makes the text self-reflexive. Not only is the reader being reminded that s/he is reading, but now, something more is at stake; the writer’s political act becomes the reader’s. The speaker declares: “I am here to speak / because they are too afraid / to remember, still too stunned to speak out” (ll. 17-19). By confiding in the reader, the speaker breaks down the wall between the printed words and the reader. We are made aware in this section of the poem that reading is no longer an act of enjoyment and complacency, but a conscious attempt to invoke compassion in others’ suffering and plight and to bear witness to this speaker’s testimony. To read is to attest to the writer’s truth.

The final section begins with a bold warning: “Reader discretion is advised” (l. 30 emphasis original). The warning gives readers a chance to back away from the poem or to continue reading at their own risk. Carrying the same message as the last section, the speaker reminds us that reading is not a passive activity and not for the faint-hearted, either. This last section divulges the gruesome details as to why victims are still traumatized and unable to speak. Unthinkable horrors such as cannibalism lurk in the subconscious of these victims. The speaker asks: “What do you make me of?... / …a ewe / to be gutted-up for your experimental / eating pleasure” (ll. 31-4). This last section is arranged in such a manner that the culprits have been arraigned to answer to their indictment and the speaker and readers serve as the judge and jurors. What the judicial system has failed to achieve, poetry may still avail. These unfathomable cruel acts consume and erode the life sources of these victims. They have become numb and socially dead, but poetry addresses and heals important personal as well as cultural wounds and tensions.

The tone in this section is more urgent and forceful. It effectively uses interpellation to put the perpetrators on trial: “You, you, and you over there / in council chair” (ll. 34-5). The speaker fearlessly identifies the culprits responsible for the horrors these victims were subjected to. S/he asks these murderers: “do you think I don’t know / how many gall bladders it took to dye your eyes a permanent yellow?” (ll. 35-7). Jonathan H. X. Lee notes that among the Cambodian/Cambodian American

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communities, it is known that some former Khmer Rouge personnel ate the gall bladders of their victims. As a result, there is an urban legend circulating among Cambodian American communities that maintains that those who have yellow eyes may be former Khmer Rouge personnel who practiced cannibalism (2011: 217-219). Similarly, this poem alludes to these inhumane practices and seeks to confront and find a voice to transcend these crimes against humanity. This poem forces readers to confront the ethical question: “What are our responsibilities as readers, as witnesses, and as citizens of the human race?”

Cambodian American Literature in U.S. Classrooms22

Despite the inevitable grim tone that is perpetually present in the discussion of the Khmer Rouge and their victims, we propose that there are ways that we can help heal, seek justice, and transmit hope to future Cambodian American generations; the solution begins in our classrooms. Cambodian American literary criticism as a field is diminutive.23

Tremendous effort is being made by survivors turn authors, poets, and scholars, such as Sharon May and French translator Christophe Macquet, to excavate Cambodian literature from the ashes of the Khmer Rouge regime, but not enough energy is directed towards creating literary criticism for Cambodian American literature.

The complaint for a more inclusive and representative literary canon is an old, ongoing debate in the U.S. educational system. Spivak’s article critiques the U.S.’s English Literature classrooms and pedagogical styles. She proposes that a new canon must be created in order to include literature that’s representative of a transnational cultural studies and that currently (even though her article was published in 1990, her concerns are still relevant today), the structure of the canon and pedagogy in the U.S. is reflective of an “internal colonization.” Cambodian American literature is therefore tokenized as “ethnic literature” and marginalized in U.S. English Literature courses and departments. It has been 20 years since Spivak’s article was published, and yet, there are no clear signs of improvement within the U.S.’s canon in the English Literature Department or the practice of cultural sensitivity by the educators. Improvement must not only be made towards erasing the “victim narratives” from 1.5 and second generation Cambodian Americans’ psyche, but also by encouraging the study and creation of literary criticism for Cambodian American literature in the U.S.’s curriculum and classrooms.

This negligence demonstrates both a demand for this field as well as evidence that Cambodian Americans have not been faring well in the U.S.


in terms of academic progress and scholarship that goes beyond “victim narratives.” As cultural healers and social scientists, we believe that the study of literature is also the study of social forces, and therefore, the remedy to healing social suffering is through mapping the various discourses that break silences and liberate social groups that have been muted by the hegemonic forces of the dominant group. We assert that it is possible to honor “victim narratives” as historical documentation without having to transmit and prorogate the victimization mentality. By using “victim narratives” as a pedagogical tool to terminate its crippling effect, a portal for social progress is paved for self- and community-empowerment. In order for this to be possible, society as a whole must take responsibility to bear witness to social suffering, commit to an anti-complicity campaign, and engage in activist work that improves the communities that have been disadvantaged by social/historical/political policies and historical formations. We must begin by promoting and producing “healing narratives.” However small our contribution may be, our hope is that it creates a ripple big enough to audiences who champion literature and see the value in reading, studying, talking, and writing about Cambodian American literature. We invite all to join us in creating an all-inclusive conversation within a literary sphere which includes Cambodian American literature not as a subgroup, but as an equally fascinating, thrilling contribution to our existing human narratives.

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Appendix Why I Write By: Kosal Khiev

I write 4 men,women,and children.any 1 who ever felt alone, any1 who ever felt disowned, i write for the bones buried in a country call home, i write for u the listener so listen up take a step back and imagine the bigger picture cuz i write the real so feel me i write for inner city street kids struggling to find their place in a world to concern with race i write for the momz and pops shops strugglng to stay atop cuz the dopeboyz got the block on lock cant compete with the drama so i write soap operas about single mothers and brothers about the struggle and hustle the bustling city where empty bellies rumble like silent earthquakes we shake hungry like young lions we defying the the odds prayin to God Lord give us the strength to carry on so i write to redefine the stars naw, none of that hollywood glitz and glamour or them stones that shimmer and glimmer butsome of that earthy residue that comes thru when one is being true so i write to the few hoping i get trickled down to the masses i wanna spark the world and get reborn in its ashes i wanna unfog their glasses and make em see the sons and daughters they abandoned to be bastards know that we grow like mollasses i point to the north like davie jones compass just follow the sounds of trumphets and listen up i write for love for wind chimes when they dangle and jangle moving passionately like two doing the tango i write for the sweet taste of mangos cuz this is that tropical heat sun blistering skin glistening while drinkin coconuts under the cabana while i listen to the sound of ur sleep


beauty like the everglades i write to the beat drums of runaway slaves engrave in the ecthings of oaktrees so even when time pass we last like classic oldies weathering the elements yeah i write for the essence of soul for the old cuz experience is wisdom and wisdom is gold Behold i write for the gorillas in the congos for the nomads in the jungles following the rythm of the bongos yeah i write for the warriors stretched out in the far corners of asia malaysia,cambodia,afghan,iran,iraq,and deep africa i write for the souls lost i attica i write for california the golden state where we holding weight struggling to hold on to faith cuz they steady packing us in prisons til we’re old and grey so i write for those in blue thats doing all day tehachapi,new folsom,corcoran,pelican bay all the way to susanville,high desert,and back down this way calipat,lancaster,soledad,ironwoodand so many more built into cesspools so i write about wats less cool less fake so less take a moment of silence for the fallen and press pause okay thats enough lets get back to the cause lets get back to these walls built to separate and generate hate built to execute and induce waste so i write from a place of pure bass all the five elements put together to produce faith i write for men women and children anyone whoever felt alone anyone whoever felt disowned i write for the bones in a country i call home i write for u the listener so listen up take a step back and imagine the bigger picture i write the real so feel me

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Absence, Part 2: Crying By: Anida Yoeu Ali

absence is an inaudible gut wrenching bellow for Home, our eyes averting a public remembrance, the shape of my name left behind in a scurry. a family home left permanently unlocked. a change of ownership on claimless land. family reunions separated by years and miles of tears. shadows we were born with but had mistaken for silence. mourning over first born sons a year after his death… then 30 years later, the familiar sound of a stranger humming a foreign tune, vibrations felt in newsprints from another landmine tragedy, witnessing my father’s vulnerable tears. absence is my father’s tightly wound face when I ask him to remember Home. a generation’s blood swathed in sweat sacrificed for another generation’s hopes. the heart’s unrecorded ache. redolent tears from survivors forgiving their torturers. the tight-jaw clench of my tourist face arriving Home. a face wounded open from the remembering. a face wounded open from the leaving. a face wounded open from the returning. a cycle of leaving and returning. the sudden death of 2 million people and still dying…somewhere else. my unpolitical mother’s letter filled with her triggered memories. my unpolitical mother’s concern for women and children in overcrowded refugee camps. 20 million people in our world with no place to call Home and still counting… absence is the borrowed legacy of the refugee. every moment left unnoticed. a newborn birthed into a dying generation of living memories. absence is a dying generation of living memories.


Reunion By: Chath pierSath

From the womb of life to death I shall return To the majesty of my mother’s presence in the here of eternal peace, I will know the joy of childhood again.

Her ancestral warriors shall lead me back to where I belong, to the land of my birth, in the milk of rice and wine of palms, to the memory of a thatched-roof house full of strong women raising their fists against the massacre of their innocence.

I, a child in the body of a man, think of loved ones I never got to know. But I shall dance for them in the monsoon’s cleansing rain, my mother’s embrace uniting us all.

Having known her is my sorrow and my inheritance.

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I am here By: Peauladd Huy

-for my momma, my hero.

1

There is a reason I am here in the world. I can no longer wait to be acknowledged by someone believing that this is only for matters concerning the earth

and what’s already done. I am somebody – once speaking face to face, man to man, but you dismissed me, kicking me in my chest and head, again and again, when I appealed to you speaking the same language

in the routine of torture. You said, shut up, if you cry, you’ll get more. What was I to do

but stand up for myself. Your threats no longer affect me. Do you hear me? I am beyond reproach. What more can you do? Piss on my bones again?

2

Don’t be alarmed, Reader.I am here to speak because they are too afraid to remember, still too stunned to speak out what are making them cry out at night. (Children, mothers and fathers now, are still shaking awake between damp sheets in the a.m. hours. Refusing sleepto deny a life of nightmares.)

I am not like them. Did you think that I would shut down that easily? That I would crumble again and yield (to bury the hatchet) because now you said impunity for the Khmer Rouge defectors. That their slates are wiped clean, each killing dismissed, each life meaningless.


3

Reader discretion is advised. What do you make me of? An animal again before my frightened children: a ewe to be gutted-up for your experimental

eating pleasure. You, you, and you over there in council chair, do you think I don’t know how many gall bladders it took to dye your eyes a permanent yellow?

You, you, you, you, you. Whoever is left, you know who you are. Shame on you, even now, still having the gall to deny us our part in our own history book? We’re a saga, an era of mass slain.

What are you afraid of– that your own children will see you as monsters?

Notes

1 Kosal Khiev was born in a Thai refugee camp in 1980. His family escaped the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge and came to the U.S. in 1981 only to be relocated to public housing with harsh conditions and few social services. In his teenage years, Khiev got embroiled in gang activity. His involvement in a gang fight at 16 led to his arrest. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to 16 years in a state penitentiary for attempted murder. While serving 14 years in prison, a Vietnam War veteran introduced Khiev to spoken word poetry and it has been a creative avenue for transformation. The laws of deportation for criminal immigrants had undergone draconian measures since the Sept. 11 tragedy and as a result, upon his release, the U.S. government deported Khiev to Cambodia in 2011, a country he had never been to. 2 Kosal was invited to represent Cambodia in Poetry Parnassus in London for the summer of 2012. He has performed at numerous venues in Phnom Penh and is Studio Revolt’s first Artist-in-Residence. 3 In Chinese philosophy, heaven has Five Elements in the following order: wood, fire, metal, water, and earth (Yu-lan 20). 4 Our definition of Cambodian American literature is broad because we believe that any publication of any genre related to Cambodian American experiences has an effect on the reception and perception of their communities. 5 Sharon May now goes by Sharon Brown. She researched the Khmer Rouge for the Columbia University Center for the Study of Human Rights. She was a guest editor for Manoa’s Cambodia issue during the summer of 2004. In this volume,

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she interviewed four Cambodian American writers and three Cambodian women writers: Soth Polin, Loung Ung, praCh Ly, U Sam Oeur, and Pal Vannariraks, Mao Somnang, and Pollie Bith. 6 Manoa is a journal from the University of Hawaii that was launched in 1989 and it strives to bring the literature of Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas to English-speaking readers. 7 According to various international clinical psychological studies 11 per cent of the Cambodian population older than 18 years is suffering from symptoms of probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, mistrust etc. Cambodia, a country that seems so peaceful to visitors, harbors a high prevalence of drug abuse and domestic violence. Second generation trauma is hardly researched but Cambodian youth still seem very affected by what has happened (Sonis 2009; Van Schaack 2011). A Cambodian psychologist, who is skeptical about the applicability of PTSD research methods in his culture, developed his own approach: His diagnosis for many of his people is “baksbaat” —to have a broken courage. 8 In April 29, 2011 the judges prematurely closed the investigation into Case 003 that targeted two top military commanders, Sou Met and Meah Mut. Met and Mut participated in the purges that killed tens of thousands of people and until recently, served as top officials in the Cambodian military. International prosecutors complained that judges did not question the suspects nor did they visit the scenes of the alleged crimes. Critics alleged that Hun Sen’s interference in the operations of the ECCC stems from the fact that many former Khmer Rouge officials, like him, are now in government. Therefore, Hun Sen and company fear that investigators could dredge up new evidence of war crimes, and thus new defendants. 9 Duch was the director of Tuol Sleng (S-21)—a notorious secret prison at a former school in the middle of the capital, Phnom Penh—ended with a guilty verdict in July 26, 2010. The court found Duch guilty of charges involving pre- meditated murder, torture, rape and enslavement. Duch was sentenced to 35 years in prison, which was reduced by sixteen years as a remedy for his unlawful detention by the Cambodian Military Court prior to his transfer to the ECCC in July 2007 and time already served. Duch’s verdict was not received well by Cambodians who viewed it as an “insult to victims.” Duch oversaw the torture and killing of 17,000 victims: Only seven survived. In order to make the Duch verdict accessible to ordinary people in Cambodia, the ECCC printed and distributed 17,000 copies of the summary of the verdict and 10,000 copies of the complete verdict in Khmer. 10 It’s important to make the qualification that just because a text has been categorized as a “victim narrative” does not make it less valuable or less deserving of attention. A “victim narrative” can speak the vulgarities of human suffering in the way a “healing narrative” may not have the capacity to do so. Furthermore, juxtaposing the genres “victim narrative” and “healing narrative” is useful because they share a dialectic relationship in the way one function to illumine the other’s capacity. Regardless of whether it’s a “victim narrative” or “healing narrative,” the nature of a printed text is to break silences and document history (or entertain). In this way, both genres share similar functions.


11 Born in 1943 in Kompong Cham, Cambodia, Soth Polin grew up in a middle class setting which privileged him to speak both in French and Khmer and to study classical literature of Cambodia, as well as, Western literature and philosophy. Polin founded Nokor Thom, a newspaper and publishing house, in the late 1960s. Polin was a militant nationalist who supported the politics of Lon Nol and promoted both an anti-Sihanouk and anti-Communist campaign. 12 Sharon May and Soth Polin conducted several interview sessions over the phone. There are no visual documentations of their conversations. We are aware of the limitations of studying conversations as an authored text and as a piece of literature; it’s also problematic to give precedence to the printed word over the verbal utterances of the interviewer and the interviewee, but we feel that much can still be gained regardless of our imperfect methodology (Cissna and Anderson, 203-205). We are relying upon Sharon May’s transcript of their interview published in Manoa’s 16th Volume as the most accurate documentation (that’s publicly accessible) which preserves the essence of their conversation (since there is a different, edited version that was reprinted in Manoa’s 18th Volume for their special edition on Asian Writers on Their Work).13 The “testimony method” consists of the therapist “coaxing” the patient to disclose his/her trauma story through a series of sessions. Underlying this method is the belief that the victim can only heal after his/her trauma story has been told. 14 The basic “transmission (communication) model” is the conventional way of thinking about the functions of communication; this model implies that we use communication to exchange information (Spano, 6). Morris’ scholarship suggests that unlike the “transmission model,” literature is able to assess human suffering, and aid in the healing of social suffering. 15 U Sam Oeur was born in Svay Rieng Province in Cambodia in 1936. He was sent to the U.S. in 1962 to study industrial arts, then, poetry. He returned to Cambodia and was elected to Parliament. He served in the military until the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975; he survived the Pol Pot regime. In 1992, he returned to the U.S. and in 1996 he published a book of poetry called Sacred Vows translated into English with American Poet Ken McCullough. Since he’s the first prominent Cambodian poet to write in free verse, he has also been called the Walt Whitman of Cambodia and has also translated Whitman’s “Song of Myself” into Khmer. 16 At the time of publication, Anida Yoeu Ali went by Anida Yoeu Esguerra. 17 Known as Cambodia’s first rap star, praCh Ly uses his music to inform the public about Cambodian and Cambodian American history, challenge the U.S.’s political involvements, celebrate his heritage, and memorialize those who’ve lost their lives to the Khmer Rouge regime. praCh’s fame began when, in 2000, he recorded his first album in his parents’ garage for the Khmer New Year celebration, and unbeknownst to him, his album made it across the Pacific to Cambodia. Since then, he has been featured in various magazines, such as: Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, and New York Post. 18 Through youtube.com, a social phenomenon occurred which allowed for the beginning of Laura Mam’s musical career to go public transnationally. American-born with Cambodian parents who escaped the Khmer Rouge, Mam incorporates

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her family history in her music to heal, inform, and inspire other Cambodians across the globe and Cambodian Americans to rise above their traumatic pasts. 19 Chath pierSath was born in Cambodia in 1970 and came to the United States as a refugee in 1981. He is a self-taught artist, poet, writer, social worker, and activist. 20 pierSath also uses tremendous imagination and innovation through combining sound, imagery, and diction. We chose to emphasize death in the poem because it’s easy to mistaken the speaker’s desire to die in order to reunite with his mother as a “victim narrative.” Far from being a poem about defeat, pierSath uses narrative power to heal the speaker’s “temporary” separation from his mother, since he will join his mother when he eventually dies. Poetry, a vehicle that transcends the speaker’s reality, can take him on an imaginative journey to his mother and dead relatives; this empowering narrative feature makes this poem a “healing narrative.” 21Peauladd Huy was born in Cambodia and lost both of her parents by the Khmer Rouge. She came to the U.S. after staying in several refugee camps in Thailand. 22 Please note that English Literature is deliberately being privileged with an upper case “L,” whereas, Cambodian American literature utilizes a lower case “l” to demonstrate its valuations, marginalization, and current neglect within the literary sphere.23 See the following texts for further readings on Cambodian American literary criticism: Monique Truong, “Vietnamese American Literature” in An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature; Teri Yamada, “Cambodian American Autobiography: Testimonial Discourse,” in Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature edited by Xiao-jing Zhou and Samina Najmi; “Modern Short Fiction of Cambodia: A History of Persistence” in Modern Short Fiction of Southeast Asia: A Literary History edited by Teri Shaffer Yamada; “Trauma and Transformation: The Autobiographies of Cambodian Americans (1980-2010)” in Cambodian American Experiences edited by Jonathan H.X. Lee; Lorraine Dong, “Crossing the River and Ocean: A Review of Cambodian American Literature for the Young,” in Cambodian American Experiences edited by Jonathan H.X. Lee; Susan Needham “Reports from the Edge: Cambodian American College Students’ Narratives of Experience” in Cambodian American Experiences edited by Jonathan H.X. Lee.

Works Cited

Broek, R. Van Den. The Myth of the Phoenix: According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions. Trans. I. Seeger. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1972.

Brown, Patricia Leigh. “In Oakland, Redefining Sex Trade Workers as Abuse Victims.” The New York Times 23 May 2011: n. pag. NYTimes.Web. 23 Aug. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24oakland.html>.

Card, Claudia. “Genocide and Social Death,” in Hypatia 18.01 (Winter 2003): 63-79.


Cissna, Kenneth N. and Rob Anderson. “Public Dialogue and Intellectual History: Hearing Multiple Voices,” in Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter, and Kenneth N. Cissna, eds. Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2004. 193-207.

Esguerra, Anida Yoeu. “[RE]Visions.” Limited Edition: USA, 2004. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum

International Publishing Group Inc., 2010. Hinton, Alexander L. Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of

Genocide. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. hooks, bell. Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston: South

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Khiev, Kosal. “About Kosal.” Spoken Kosal. Studio Revolt. 13 Jan. 2012. Web. 6 Aug. 2012.

<http://spokenkosal.com/about/>. —. “Resume.” Kosal. Studio Revolt. Web. 11 Aug. 2012. <http://spokenkosal.com/resume/>. —. “Why I Write.” Spoken Kosal. Studio Revolt. 5 Dec. 2011. Web. 6

Aug. 2012. <http://spokenkosal.com/2011/12/05/why-i-write-2/>. Lee, Jonathan H.X. ed. Cambodian American Experiences: Histories,

Communities, Cultures, and Identities. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 2010. —. “Cambodian American: Urban Legends,” in Jonathan H. X. Lee and

Kathleen M. Nadeau, eds. Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2011.

—. “Peace Profile: Laura Tevary Mam and The Like Me’s,” in Peace Review (2011).

McKinney, Kelly. “‘Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence’: Testimony, Traumatic Memory, and Psychotherapy with Survivors of Political Violence.” ETHOS 35.3 (2007): 265-299.

May, Sharon and praCh Ly. “Art of faCt: An Interview with praCh.”Manoa 16.1: In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing from Cambodia (Summer 2004): 73-82.

May, Sharon and Soth Polin. “Beyond Words: An Interview with Soth Polin.”Manoa 16.1: In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing from Cambodia (Summer 2004): 9-20.

May, Sharon and U Sam Oeur. “Ambassador of the Silent World: An Interview with U Sam Oeur.” Manoa 16.1: In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing from Cambodia (Summer 2004): 189-194.

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Morris, David B. “About Suffering: Voice, Genre, and Moral Community.” Daedalus 125.1: Social Suffering (Winter 1996): 25-45.

pierSath, Chath. “After: Poems.” New York: Abingdon Square Publishing, 2009.

Schlund-Vials, Cathy J. “A Transnational Hip Hop Nation: praCh, Cambodia, and Memorialising the Killing Fields,” in Life Writing, 5.1 (April 2008).

Seth, Mydans. “Cambodia’s Past on Trial” International Herald Tribune28 June 2011.

Sonis, Jeffrey et al. “Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Disability in Cambodia. Associations With Perceived Justice, Desire for Revenge, and Attitudes Toward the Khmer Rouge Trials.” The Journal of the American Medical Association: 302.5 (2009).

Spano, Shawn. Dialogue Resource Guide: Dialogue and Diversity Facilitation Workshop. San Jose: San Jose State University, 2010.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “The Making of Americans, the Teaching of English, and the Future of Culture Studies.” New Literary History21.4: Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change (Autumn 1990): 781-798.

Stewart, Frank. “Editor’s Note.” Manoa 16.1: In the Shadow of Angkor: Contemporary Writing from Cambodia (Summer 2004): xi.

Sugiman, Pamela. “Memories of Internment: Narrating Japanese Canadian Women’s Life Stories.” The Canadian Journal of Sociology 29.3 (Summer 2004): 359-388.

Van Schaack, Beth et al. Cambodia’s Hidden Scars: Trauma Psychology in the Wake of the Khmer Rouge. An Edited Volume on Cambodia’s Mental Health. Documentation Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh,2011.

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—. “Modern Short Fiction of Cambodia: A History of Persistence,” in Teri Shaffer Yamada, ed. Modern Short Fiction of Southeast Asia: A Literary History. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 2009.

—. “Cambodian American Autobiography: Testimonial Discourse,” in Xiaojing Zhou and Samina Najmi, eds. Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005.

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Century A.D.). Trans. Derk Bodde with introduction, notes, bibliography, and index. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953. Trans. of History. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934.

CHAPTER TEN

ALTAR ART: BINH DANH AND THE CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE

ISABELLE THUY PELAUD Reviewers often look for works by Vietnamese American writers and artists to represent the refugee experience after the end of the Viet Nam War and to provide resolution to this unresolved conflict. This practice poses a problem for the 1.5 and second generation Vietnamese Americans who have little or no memory of Viet Nam before 1975, or those who want to speak to the experience of the broader group of Southeast Asian Americans. How to interpret, for instance, works by Vietnamese American artists like Binh Danh on the Cambodian Genocide that spill over ethnic categories? According to Yen Le Espiritu, “to engage in war and refugee studies is to look for the things that are seemingly not there, or barely there; and to listen ‘to fragmentary testimonies, to barely distinguishable testimonies, to testimonies that never reach us.’ It is analogous to writing ghost stories” (2005: XX). The assumption for many is that ghosts remain in one country, and their stories will be told by a person whose origin can be traced to that nation. But do ghosts travel across national borders? If so, who can ethically tell their stories? By ghosts I mean persons or events to which the living remain emotionally attached to, regardless of time and space. Ghosts are no longer ghosts when the living can let go of the anger, sadness, guilt and remorse attached to their memories. Does Binh Danh’s aesthetic and spiritual engagement with Cambodian American memories and experiences display disrespect for national memories, or can his representation serve the partial and forever incomplete rendering of missing testimonies? Binh Danh’s artwork, I argue here, does the later, as it opens a spiritual and political space that invites personal healing and reflection across national boundaries. In the process, the artist asks viewers to critically reflect upon the vexed history of the region while complicating the ways in which one thinks of identity.

Poetic Justice: Cambodian American Literary Visions

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