Product Description

In this mesmerizing story, finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Chanrithy Him vividly recounts her trek through the hell of the "killing fields." She gives us a child's-eye view of a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps for both adults and children are the norm and modern technology no longer exists. Death becomes a companion in the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, the members of Chanrithy's family remain loyal to one another, and she and her siblings who survive will find redeemed lives in America. 15 b/w photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71383 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 330 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780393322101
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
"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

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
...[Him] tells us what it was like to struggle to survive while others played out utopian dreams. -- New York Times

A gut-wrenching story, told with honesty, restraint, and dignity. -- Ha Jin, author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award

Astonishing and heartbreaking.... Written in spare, visual prose that makes the world it describes tangible. -- Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe

Customer Reviews

A chilling autobiography
I read this book immediately after I finished "First They Killed My Father." Both are autobiographies by young women who were children at the time of the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia. Rather than being redundant, I found that this book complemented the other.

Both girls were daughters of relatively privileged families who were part of the forced evacuation of Phnom Phen. The author of this one, Ms. Him, was a few years older, and this slight age difference provides some different perspective. In addition, Ms. Him's family evacuated in a different geographical direction, which also affected her family's displacement over those years. The author shows how, as a child, she demonstrated incredible determination and courage in the face of the most horrendous conditions imaginable -- she even escapes one work camp as she was near death from dysentary.

This book provides another necessary and compelling autobiography of a horrible time in history.

My first book review
In a strange twist, I knew the author as a student, and later a collegue doing research on the Khmer Rouge era. I heard parts of the story from her, but was overwhelmed by the prose as she told it. I have heard the stories of many Cambodians, but because of this book I felt I could actually see what was happening. Her family and friends came alive for me on the pages of this remarkable narrative. It is a triumphant tribute to her departed relatives. I wish her the best and hope she will continue writing.

A child's-eye perspective of the great Cambodian tragedy.
Told in an unusually vivid style, "When Broken Glass Floats" provides a striking new perspective even to those readers already hardened from study of events in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. The scenes of the evacuation of Phnom Penh, family separation, slow starvation, and the deaths of members of the author's immediate family materialize as if on film.