Book
Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields
Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors is a collection of first-person accounts by people who survived the Khmer Rouge as children, published in 1997.[1][2] The photojournalist Dith Pran compiled the accounts, and Kim DePaul edited them.[1][3]
About the book
The contributors were children when the Khmer Rouge took power in April 1975.[1] Writing as adults, most of them then living in the United States, they tell of life in Democratic Kampuchea (1975 to 1979) as they saw it through a child's eyes.[1][4] Their accounts record relocation, starvation, malaria, forced labor and the separation of families.[1][4] Children were taught to give up family ties and to show loyalty to Angka, the Khmer Rouge regime. Some were made to watch the execution of their own relatives without showing grief.[1] Many lost members of their families.[1]
The first chapter, "Worms from Our Skin," is by Teeda Butt Mam.[5] She tells how her father was taken away for "reeducation" and never heard from again, how children were taken to live in communes, and how her family set out for the Thai border after the regime fell.[5] In April 1979 she joined the celebrations for the New Year, four years after the Khmer Rouge came to power.[5]
Pran drew on his own years in Cambodia, which were portrayed in the film The Killing Fields.[4][6] He founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, and DePaul, his wife, was its executive director.[1]
Publication and editions
Yale University Press published the book in New Haven, Connecticut, in its Yale Southeast Asia Studies monograph series.[2][3] Kirkus Reviews gives the release date as May 1, 1997.[1] Ben Kiernan wrote the introduction, and the book includes photographs of the contributors and a glossary.[3][6][4] Sources count the accounts differently: Kirkus Reviews gives 30, and a 2008 review in the Journal of Mine Action gives 29.[1][7]
- 1997 hardcover, Yale University Press: ISBN 0-300-06839-5, 192 pages[1]
- 1997 softcover, Silkworm Books[6]
- 1999 softcover, Yale University Press: ISBN 0-300-07873-0[6][7]
Reception
Kirkus Reviews called the testimonies compelling.[1] The Journal of Mine Action review read each memoir as a testament to human resilience.[7]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Kirkus Reviews
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Internet Archive
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 East Carolina University Libraries catalog record
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Goodreads, Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 The New York Times, first chapter of Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 AbeBooks, Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Journal of Mine Action, book review (Summer 2008)