Koan Khmer: A Novel

by Bunkong Tuon

Overview

A powerful debut novel about war, immigration, and home

Celebrating the power of literature to rescue a life from despair, Koan Khmer is the story of Samnang Sok, an orphaned child survivor of the Cambodian genocide who sets out to make a new life in America alongside his extended family. Struggling to cope with the traumas of his past, Samnang feels alienated from his American peers at school and disconnected from his aunts, uncles, and cousins at home. Inspired by the books he discovers along the way, Samnang begins piecing together information about the past through stories told by elders, family photographs, and his own memories and dreams. Based loosely on Tuon’s life, the novel traces Samnang’s difficult journey toward an answer to the question, How does one rebuild a life after genocide and displacement and create a home?

Koan Khmer gives an unflinching voice to a distinctly Cambodian American sensibility. Tuon creates a refugee space that all Americans can visit in this bildungsroman that breathes life into cultural knowledge disrupted by loss and grief.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810147430
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2024
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

BUNKONG TUON is a Cambodian American writer and poet. He is the author of three full-length poetry collections. His writings have appeared in Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, New York Quarterly, The American Journal of Poetry, Diode Poetry Journal, among others. Tuon is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY.

Table of Contents

PART I: A Cambodian Family Portrait
Under the Tamarind Tree
Birth
Leaving Cambodia
Lok-Yeay and Her Children
Bopha
Yellow Bird
The Old Man and the Mermaid
 
PART II: Surviving in America
Dust from the Sky
Lucky
Dawn
We Were Refugees
Tom and Jerry
American Dream
Lok-Ta
Friends
Pu Vaesnar
Enclosed Paradise
The Old Woman and Her Dog
A Simple Misunderstanding
The Doyles
A February Evening
The Keys
Where is Samnang?
Exposed
The Letter
The Letter # 2
Rage
Rat Boy
Graduation
 
PART III: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cambodian American
What Are You Doing With Your Life?
Going West
“Ana-herm” Street
A Dream
Br_ndon Lieu
The Writer’s Club
Another Beginning
A Dream on Fire
A New Family
Why Write?
Dear Mr. Sok
 
PART IV: Koan Khmer
Letter from Koan Khmer
Epilogue
 
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

​“Koan Khmer is a remarkable novel.” —World Literature Today

“No matter how long Samnang spends in the United States, he can’t leave his Cambodian roots behind, and he deeply understands that he doesn’t want to do so . . . A quietly affecting novel of the refugee experience.” —Kirkus

“A sobering account of the tragic reality of the dehumanization of war, not only on its innocent victims caught in the crossfire, but on the psyches of those caught on opposite sides of conflicts . . . The toll of the war is vividly and powerfully unpacked in Tuon’s very personal and tender account of one family’s traumatic journey of escape to America . . . an impressive first novel.” —East Wind 

“Tuon’s work chooses to shed light not just on the direct and tangible effects of the Khmer Rouge, but also a continued and often internal conflict faced by Cambodian refugees following their escape. [​Koan Khmer] highlights the struggle of rebuilding a sense of self in the shadow of immense trauma and loss.” —Full Stop 

“Koan Khmer takes us to the edges of interbeing. We travel with an orphan child named Samnang Sok, who has survived genocide—as legions of children around the globe do, and do not—as he tries to piece together a story strong enough to hold his life. With the generosity of a poet of witness, Tuon carefully and lovingly opens the space of refugee long enough for us to bear witness to the full brutal and beautiful experiences of Cambodian Americans. I feel like I have a new heart tattoo. I am grateful.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust and The Chronology of Water

“Koan Khmer gives light to the Cambodian immigrant/refugee experience, which is unlike any other, and challenges the easy narratives we are fed by mainstream media about the immigrant experience. Transcending the survival narrative, Bunkong Tuon’s debut novel presents to readers a narrator who is not merely the keeper of stories but also the one who seeks, who endeavors, who is more than witness. This is not a book about survival. It is a book about striving.” —Ira Sukrungruang, author of Buddha’s Dog other Meditations

From the Publisher

2024-10-24
In Tuon’s novel, a boy escapes the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia with his family and comes of age in America, where he becomes a writer.

Samnang Sok is 5 when his family flees Cambodia’s Communist dictatorship in 1979, but he was only about 3 when his mother died, unable to receive treatment because “there were no doctors and nurses under Pol Pot.” This tragedy, along with the execution of two uncles and multiple episodes of starvation, causes his family—led by his grandmother, Lok-Yeay, and grandfather, Lok-Ta—to make the difficult decision to leave their home.They head first to a United Nations refugee camp in Thailand, which has its own horrors, including an attack by Khmer Rouge soldiers that forces the family to hide in a communal toilet; however, they’re eventually sponsored for entry into Massachusetts. Samnang’s childhood there is far from idyllic—his family is constantly working to get by, and his cousins are the only Cambodian children he knows. He faces nearly constant racism and never truly feels at ease in America until he moves to Long Beach, California’s diverse community. His desire to “take the language that is not given to [him] at birth [English], possess it, INFECT it with [his] presence, my history, [his] voice, and hurl it back” drives him to become a writer, which he uses to tell his own story. Tuon effectively uses this framework throughout the novel—no matter how long Samnang spends in the United States, he can’t leave his Cambodian roots behind, and he deeply understands that he doesn’t want to do so. Indeed, the novel opens with Samnang asking his maternal relatives to tell him about his mother; he’s eager to know more about his parents, whose “absence had always been a haunting presence in [his] life.” The overall tone of the novel is straightforwardly memoiristic; Samnang relates his experiences primarily chronologically and includes additional information only as he learns it from later interviews, giving the work—which closely mirrors events from the author’s own life—a sense of verisimilitude.

A quietly affecting novel of the refugee experience.

Kirkus Reviews