When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge

These photocopied books are worthless. Thrift needs to stop selling them and THROW THEM AWAY!!

I read this book immediately after I finished "First They Killed My Father." Both are autobiographies by young women who were children at the time of the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia. Rather than being redundant, I found that this book complemented the other. Both girls were daughters of relatively privileged families who were part of the forced evacuation of Phnom Phen. The author of this one, Ms. Him, was a few... Read Full Review

This haunting yet awe inspiring account of life grabs you from the start puts you in the middle of her life and doesn't let you go. Her underling love and commitment to family leads to extaordinary acts of courage. The writting is vivid and entancing. You are drawn in by the childs voice and perception of how things are. You feel her pain as her inocense is lost to the enemy and her joys as she pulls her family together... Read Full Review

Told in an unusually vivid style, "When Broken Glass Floats" provides a striking new perspective even to those readers already hardened from study of events in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. The scenes of the evacuation of Phnom Penh, family separation, slow starvation, and the deaths of members of the author's immediate family materialize as if on film.

In a strange twist, I knew the author as a student, and later a collegue doing research on the Khmer Rouge era. I heard parts of the story from her, but was overwhelmed by the prose as she told it. I have heard the stories of many Cambodians, but because of this book I felt I could actually see what was happening. Her family and friends came alive for me on the pages of this remarkable narrative. It is a triumphant tribute... Read Full Review