A valuable and inspiring, but sometimes scant, personal record of survival.
A Cambodian looks back upon his slavery in the killing fields of Cambodia, his escape and fight against the Khmer Rouge, and his immigration to the U.S.
In this memoir, first-time author Yom gives an eyewitness account of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge against fellow Cambodians. In 1975, at the age of 14, Yom was separated from his family after the Khmer Rouge assumed power and forced him to help build dams, plant rice, and help bury fellow prisoners whom the Khmer Rouge had killed. To supplement his starvation rations of rice gruel, Yom ate anything he could find: frogs, mice, rats, grasshoppers, and snakes. In 1978, he escaped and joined the Cambodian Freedom Army. Outnumbered and outgunned, the army nevertheless rescued Cambodians from the killing fields and engaged in guerrilla warfare with the Khmer Rouge. Yom, who claims to have helped save 10,000 lives, rose to lead a crew of 300 soldiers but deserted when he learned his family was in a refugee camp in Thailand. Rejoining his family, he eventually immigrated to Ellensburg, Washington, to join other family members. This book gives a grisly firsthand account of the appalling brutality that took place in Cambodia. It’s a grotesque catalog of the horrors of the killing fields—workers were murdered when they broke tools or were too weak to work; the living were tossed in mass graves with the dead; crudely built dams collapsed and killed thousands; corpses came apart in workers’ hands as they cleared rice paddies. Yom balances his despairing tale of human evil and misery with the more admirable human qualities of grit and courage, shown by resisters. Despite its horrific subject, the book’s an easy read: well-written, clear, and concise—too concise, in some ways, in that Yom could have given deeper descriptions of the prisoners, soldiers, and family members he lived with. Few personalities emerge in more than sketchy detail. Some geopolitical context would have been helpful too—for instance, Yom recounts firefights with Vietnamese soldiers without sufficiently explaining what Vietnam was doing in Cambodia.
A valuable and inspiring, but sometimes scant, personal record of survival.Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-5850-2
Page Count: 200
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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