When Broken Glass Floats: Growing up under the Khmer Rouge by Chanrithy Him. Norton: 288 pages. $23.95.
In the summer of 1975, nine-year old Chanrithy Him and her middle-class family of eight hurriedly pack some belongings, write a message for relatives in chalk on the front of their house, and join the throng of two million other Cambodians forced from Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge. Under the stress of war, two of the family’s children have already died; a world of starvation, disease, and forced labor awaits the rest.
In “When Broken Glass Floats,” Him retraces this childhood—four years spent working in “muddy rice fields and irrigation canals” to avenge the dead and to acknowledge the “well-hidden scars” of survivors with whom Him works in the Khmer Rouge Adolescent Project.
As twelve-year-old Him and her older sister, Chea, struggle to survive in a labor camp, Him asks why good doesn’t triumph over evil. Chea answers with a Cambodian proverb: when good and evil are thrown together in the river of life, good is symbolized by a squash, and evil by shards of broken glass. Now, the squash sinks and the broken glass floats. But, soon enough, the shards of glass sink to the bottom of the river, and the squash rises.
In time, the squash does rise--but not in time to save the lives of twenty-eight members of Him’s extended family. They die, along with countless others, from a combination of starvation and disease or while toiling under unbearable conditions, or by execution, like Him’s father.
Him allows the voices of the dead to be heard—her sister’s in particular. At a labor camp, Chea shaves her head, in the hopes that if she “looks crazy and ugly enough,” the Khmer Rouge might not harm her. After being taunted by some young girls who take her for an old man, Chea whispers a poem to Him, in which she expresses her profound suffering as well as her unwavering identity: “Though a virgin, I am called an old man. . . .”
Knowing she carries the responsibility of speaking for many, Him writes with grateful acknowledgement, respect, and love for a family, a people, anyone who has survived trauma. Him’s poetic, almost lyrical voice, her unfailing memory, her unflinching eye, her engaging clarity, draw the reader to her. Surviving such events seems to be mainly about chance, but Him’s ingeniousness and resiliency are a marvel. She did, as she says, outrun “the wheel of history.” Witnessing this well-told story, however, comes with a price—Him does not shield her readers from the sights, sounds, or smells of the killing fields.
As epigraphs to many of the book’s chapters, Him includes clippings from U.S. newspapers. And, perhaps as intended, the sterile, distant, “objective” reports (“State Department officials said today they believed Cambodian Communists had forcibly evacuated virtually the entire population of Phnom Penh . . . .”) look dead next to her portrait of life at ground zero.
The emotional message of a memoir can speak louder than any newspaper report, academic treatment, or even photograph. The human voice—sometimes, the lone voice--of the affected is amplified by publication. Memoir validates the lived experience of those “run over by the wheel of history,” teaching readers empathy or anger.
As with other politically purposeful writers, Chanrithy Him wants her readers to be moved to action: “If thousands upon thousands of children will suffer and are suffering right now in the world, we must be prepared to help them.” The child speaks through the adult with such clarity and strength, that “When Broken Glass Floats” becomes a healing song for all children “whose trust has been exploited time and time again throughout history.”
Wendy L. Smith teaches English at San Diego Mesa College.