A New Asian American Boom: A Reading List of the Cambodian American Experience

I feel a cultural shift in the way the publishing world is accepting Cambodian American stories. In 2021, Ecco Press posthumously published the groundbreaking story collection, Afterparties, by Anthony Veasna So, opening new doors for Khmer American writers. The next year the University of Hawai’i Press published a treasure trove of writings by Cambodians in Srok Khmer and in the diaspora, and 2023 saw the publication of three major books by Cambodian Americans.

In short, we are witnessing a boom in Cambodian American literature.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for some time now. I grew up Khmer on the East Coast in the 1980s, and like many new Americans, was surrounded by white teachers, white students, and mainly read books by white authors. Instinctively, I knew that literature was my way out of the depression and alienation I felt. I wanted to tell my story and have people know what I was going through as a Cambodian refugee in America. I craved books by and about my people.

In the early 1990s I discovered books by survivors of the Cambodian Genocide. Testimonial autobiographies by Someth May, Haing Ngor, and Pin Yathay, as well as memoirs of child survivors like Chanrithy Him and Loung Ung, all document the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge while bearing witness to the suffering of the Cambodian people.

These books helped me, a child survivor of the genocide, understand what happened in Cambodia and what my uncles, aunts, and grandparents went through. But they weren’t enough. We are more than one story. I needed to know what happened to us in America.

My new novel Koan Khmer is a bildungsroman about an orphaned refugee who was saved by literature, and it is in conversation with the authors below because it presents a perspective of Khmer life in the States. By no means is the list below exhaustive. Rather, these books were chosen because they were published in the past several years and depict the diverse experience of Cambodians in America—a small sample of the boom in Cambodian American literature that the 2020s have brought.

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Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties: Stories

 Anthony Veasna So creates a broad network of characters in his debut collection, in which not every narrator is marked by the Cambodian Genocide. We Cambodian American readers recognize our world in So’s stories: businesses like the donut shop, the video store, the garage shop, owned by Khmer elders and sometimes run by their children.

We see oums and mings going to the wat (Cambodian Buddhist temple), bringing food to monks and receiving blessings from them. We see second-generation characters grappling with their elders on issues of home, culture, and identity. These stories seem like they were written for So himself and Cambodian Americans like him: not for white America.

Sadly, So passed away before his debut collection came out. Ecco published his second collection, Songs of Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes, in 2023.

Vichet Chum, Kween

Vichet Chum is a Cambodian American actor and playwright. His debut novel, Kween, is told from the perspective of a queer second-generation Cambodian American student Soma Kear. This YA novel tackles immigration and deportation, diversity and inclusion, Cambodian history and culture.

The Cambodian Genocide is only a facet of Soma’s story as the novel takes place in Lowell, MA. Soma experiences what most high schoolers experience: friendship, romance, social media, family dynamics, and conflicts at school.

Ultimately, the novel is about Soma finding her voice and living up to her Khmer name as she navigates her father’s deportation, an overbearing older sister, and first love.

Sokunthary Svay, put it on record: a memoir-archive

put it on record: a memoir-archive is a critical inquiry on what it means to be a Cambodian American in this global, multi-faceted, media-saturated world. In this hybrid collection, Sokunthary Svay uses a tapestry of memoir, personal essays, poems, photographs, letters, the Khmer alphabet, memos and newspaper ads, to map out Cambodian America, from stories about her parents to a meditation on the work of Cambodian artist Joe Bun Keo, essays on Black-Asian solidarity and pan-Asian coalition to postpartum depression, music, and operas.

In the title work, Svay aims to put on record Cambodian American history, culture, and identity that has been absent far too long from the American archive. Svay’s voice, throughout this hybrid collection, is fierce, intelligent, brave, as she sings a Cambodian America that we Khmers dream about.

Putsata Reang, Ma and Me

Ma and Me is a memoir by journalist Putsata Reang, whose family left Cambodia on a naval ship with three hundred other refugees before the Khmer Rouge takeover. Reang was a sick and dying baby whose mother nursed her back to life. She grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, where she feels this double debt to the mother who gave her life and saved her.

Not wanting to disappoint her traditional mother, Reang hides her queer identity. Ma and Me is beautifully told, honest, and powerful, as Reang considers gender, feminism, queerness, and the patriarchy in Cambodian culture, as well as exploring war, immigration, PTSD, generational trauma, and survivor’s guilt.

Ultimately, the book is about finding a space, a home, for the author to live as her authentic and true self.

Sharon May, Christophe Macquet, Trent Walker, Phina So, Rinith Taing, Out of the Shadows of Angkor

Out of the Shadows of Angkor is a follow-up to In the Shadows of Angkor, a special issue of Mānoa on Cambodian writings, published by the University of Hawai’i Press in 2004. Like the previous collection, Out of the Shadows of Angkor is a labor of love, a collaborative effort on the part of the editors and guest editors, as well as an act of literary retrieval, restoring and translating Cambodian literature, including works that were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge.

For Khmers in the diaspora and English readers, this collection is a treasure trove of Cambodian literature, beginning with poetry carved in the stones on Angkor temples to epic poems and modern novels. The collection ranges between verse, prose, performance pieces, and a graphic novel by Khmer writers in the diaspora—which is why this collection is included here.

Loung Ung, Lulu in the Sky

This is an honorable mention because Lulu in the Sky came out in 2012, a rare case of a major press publishing a representation of Khmer American experience long before the literary boom. The autobiography completes Ung’s trilogy, with First They Killed My Father gaining such a success that it was made into a Netflix film directed by Angelina Jolie. Her second book, Lucky Child, details Ung’s return to Cambodia to be reunited with a sister who was left behind after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Lulu in the Sky exclusively focuses on Ung’s life in America, where she tries to fit in American high school and college while suffering from PTSD. Ung finds healing in love and her work as a human rights activist. Mark Priemer, who courts Ung, is patient and sympathetic as he supports Ung in her journey to recovery and healing.

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Koan Khmer by Bunkong Tuon is available via Curbstone Press.