the khmer rouge regime a personal nightmare enotes

#THE KHMER ROUGE REGIME A PERSONAL NIGHTMARE ENOTES HOW TO#

The regime was driven by visions of extreme nationalism and ethnic purity.

Why they do that? To wash the brain,” ta recalls. If your mom do something wrong, then you have to kill. “They say like, if your dad do something wrong, you have to kill. But soon after, the regime started evacuating cities, separating families, and corralling people into forced labor camps - often even killing them. Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge’s leader, marked his victory by declaring it “Year Zero” - a new beginning.Īt first, ta says people celebrated, believing that this was the beginning of a peaceful era. The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 after the violence of the Vietnam war led to a Cambodian civil war. “From 40 year I still have a nightmare until now. “I have a nightmare every day,” says Rama’s grandfather, whom he calls ta. They’re survivors of the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal dictatorship that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s. Yeay, whose given name is Mao Ong Rama, and her husband, Sivaram Rama, came to the U.S. “I remember ever since I came to live with them in third grade, I’d sit by the couch, and they would talk about all these stories of the war,” he says. They raised him, and always told him stories. But, here, I’m staying in the living room, I don’t have my own room, so that’s the only downside,” he says.īut living with his grandparents is nothing new for Rama. “It’s good to see my grandparents and stay with my grandparents.

We’re in the kitchen of his childhood home in Suisun City, where he now lives with his grandparents. Phillip Rama is a first-generation Cambodian American.

#THE KHMER ROUGE REGIME A PERSONAL NIGHTMARE ENOTES HOW TO#

In the Bay Area, younger generations of Cambodian refugees who survived the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s are beginning to talk openly about this trauma, and how to move past it. Sok’s essay touches on what researchers call “intergenerational trauma:” that is, when the effects of a significant negative experience are passed on to generations after. Her eyes are soft, then perplexed by my eagerness to bear witness to her story.” “‘Mom, what did you do? Did you have to work?’ She shrugs. “My mother doesn’t dwell in the past, so she smiles and shakes her head when I ask about her life during the Khmer Rouge regime,” writes Monica Sok, in her essay On Fear, Fearlessness and Intergenerational Trauma. after severe trauma is something that many Americans face. Growing up with family members who have migrated to the U.S.

The khmer rouge regime a personal nightmare enotes