Never Fall Down

Finished July 5
Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

This is a novel, but it is based on a real life story. Based on the real boy Arn Chorn, this story is set in Cambodia from 1975 through 1979, with some follow-up to Arn following his move to the United States. Arn is eleven as the story begins. He has four sisters (3 older, 1 younger) and a younger brother. His parents were singers and ran an opera house and company until the illness and death of his father. At that point, his mother left the children with their aunt as she went elsewhere in the country for work. Arn helps the family out by selling whatever he can find on the street, gambling, and dancing for tourists. His family can't afford school for him. When the Khmer Rouge revolution starts, everyone is forced to leave the city, leaving most of their belongings aside. Much of what they do take is lost during the many days march to labour camps. Arn is separated from his family at this point, but remembers his aunt's words to "Do whatever they say. Be like the grass. Bend low, bend low, then bend lower. The wind blow one way, you bow that way. It blow the other way, you do, too. That is the way to survive".
At first Arn works in the rice fields, but later he is made to become a musician and his skill here helps him to survive. As the country nears liberation, Arn is forced to become a soldier. His experiences of loss, violence and inhumanity are difficult to read about let alone experience, and Arn has a lot of mental anguish from his experience. Following his freedom and his adoption into an American family, he learns to deal with his past, and becomes a man of peace.
This book is based on many interviews with Arn and other survivors that he knew as well as historical research on the Cambodian tragedy.
I found it interesting to compare it with the novel In the Shadow of the Banyan, also based on a child's experiences surviving the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The children came from different classes, but had much similar experiences, both losing most of the their family members and being separated from those they loved as they struggled to survive.

In the Shadow of the Banyan

Finished July 20
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner

This novel takes us to Cambodia in the late '70s, in the time of the civil war. Raami is seven years old, the oldest daughter in a royal family. She wears a leg brace as a result of polio. She lives in Phnom Penh, with her father and mother and little sister Radana, her aunt Tata, and Grandmother Queen.
When the Khmer Rouge take over the city, Raami and her family are forced to flee their home. At first they go to their country home, near the Mekong river, but are soon forced out of that by the revolutionary soldiers as well.
As they join others, living in makeshift shelters, forced into further and further hardships, separated from those they love, Raami tries to keep her father's advice in mind. He told her that you can always find a tiny glimpse of beauty no matter what ugliness and destruction is around you. Raami's Papa is a poet and has told her stories ever since she was little, engaging her imagination and teaching her the myths of the Cambodian spiritual world. While witnessing the world changing around her, Raami keeps her imagination and the stories. She is a witness even while being a victim of the regime. Raami's voice is strong and individual and brings the novel to life before us. Raami is a child who is forced to mature under harsh conditions, forced labour and the loss of family members, but she hangs on to a bit of that childhood innocence throughout.
The author was also young, only five, when she too was forced out of her royal house with her family. Bringing portions of her own history into this story adds to the emotional integrity of the book, and the afterword, where she tells us briefly of her own story and her own return to Cambodia as an adult, is moving.
I also found the mention of the youth of many of the soldiers interesting, given the large number of child soldiers today in the Middle East and Africa. This seems to be a theme common to internal uprisings that warrants discussion.
This book is an amazing read, bringing a country in a difficult historical time to life for the reader. I highly recommend it.
My parents visited Cambodia earlier this year, and I look forward to talking to them about it after they read this book.