Creator

Putsata Reang

Cambodian American journalist and memoirist, author of Ma and Me.

Putsata Reang is a Cambodian American journalist and memoirist, the author of Ma and Me (2022).[1][2] She was born in Cambodia, raised in rural Oregon, and has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries, among them Cambodia, Afghanistan and Thailand.[3][2]

Journalism

Reang decided to become a journalist at 16, on a return visit to Cambodia that took her to Tuol Sleng, the former S-21 prison. Learning that journalists had been taken there during the genocide, she resolved to carry on the work of the reporters killed at Tuol Sleng.[4] After college she spent a year at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, where she began as a culture reporter in 1996.[4][5] Her writing has since appeared in The New York Times, Politico, The Guardian, Ms., The Seattle Times and the San Jose Mercury News, and in essay collections of women's and Khmer voices.[6][7]

She has reported from Afghanistan, and from Thailand during a military coup.[6] She has trained reporters in conflict and post-conflict countries, including Cambodia, Afghanistan, Thailand and Bangladesh, taught investigative reporting, and worked for freedom of expression.[7][8] A 2005 Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship took her back to Cambodia to report on landless farmers.[2] She has followed the work of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and on October 24, 2017, she was a panelist for the Open Society Foundations discussion "The Collapse of Cambodian Democracy and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal."[9] She has written several articles for Oregon Humanities.[6]

Ma and Me

MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Ma and Me on May 17, 2022.[2] The book began as a different project and, with her editor, became a memoir of a mother-daughter bond and of claiming a self as the child of refugees.[4][10] The book takes up war, displacement, escape by boat, inherited trauma and the pressures of cultural and filial duty, along with the double displacement of gay refugees.[11][10][8] Its cover shows a crocodile and a tiger, drawn from a Khmer saying.[5] In July 2022 she discussed the book at a Northwest Passages book club event in Spokane.[5]

Ma and Me won the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association prize for nonfiction. It was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Washington State Book Award.[1][2]

Teaching and speaking

Reang teaches memoir writing in public schools and at the University of Washington School of Professional and Continuing Education.[2][6] She has taught a ninth-grade memoir class and has worked as a WITS apprentice mentor.[3][7] She speaks at colleges, conferences and organizations, including Microsoft and the State Fund of California.[2] On February 11, 2026, she gave the keynote at Clark College's seventh annual Northwest Regional Equity Conference, where she spoke of storytelling as an act of resistance against the erasure of communities' stories.[3] She has been interviewed on Dani Shapiro's Family Secrets podcast and on NPR's On Point.[2]

Recognition

  • Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship (2005)
  • Jack Straw Writing Fellowship (2019)
  • Residencies at Hedgebrook, Mineral School and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts[2][7]
  • Grant, Washington State Artist Trust[7]

She serves on the alumni board of the Mineral School artist residency.[8]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Putsata Reang, Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Putsata Reang, About
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Clark College, Reclaiming narratives to combat erasure (February 11, 2026)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The Spokesman-Review, Putsata Reang reflects on identity growing up as a child of refugees in her memoir 'Ma and Me' (July 22, 2022)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 The Spokesman-Review, Author Putsata Reang reflects on 'Ma and Me,' her accidental memoir, at Northwest Passages talk (July 27, 2022)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Oregon Humanities, The cost of being who we are with Putsata Reang (December 1, 2023)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Seattle Arts & Lectures, Putsata Reang
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Jack Straw Cultural Center, Putsata Reang
  9. ↑ Open Society Foundations, A conversation with Putsata Reang, Heather Ryan and David Tolbert (October 24, 2017)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 The Writer, Talk to the practitioner: Putsata Reang (September 15, 2024)
  11. ↑ Putsata Reang, official website
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:36.