Not Just Victims: Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States (Asian American Experience) - Softcover

Chan, Sucheng; Kim, Audrey U.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252071018 ISBN 13: 9780252071010

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2003

Synopsis

Wars in Southeast Asia drove unprecedented numbers of Cambodian refugees to settle in the United States. From southern California to New England, Cambodian communities took root amidst struggles of assimilation and triumphs of adaptation. 

In Not Just Victims, Sucheng Chan offers oral histories based on conversations with Cambodian community leaders in eight American cities: Long Beach, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, and the Massachusetts towns of Fall River and Lowell. Eschewing victimization narratives, these accounts provide vividly detailed descriptions of Cambodian refugees building new lives in the United States. Chan's introduction places their stories against the backdrop of recent Cambodian history, from the civil war through the bloody Khmer Rouge revolution to the Vietnamese occupation. In addition, Chan includes an essay on oral history.

About this title

About the Author

Sucheng Chan is professor emerita and former chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She is the author or editor of many books, including Asian Americans: An Interpretive History, Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era, and Survivors: Cambodian Refugees in the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252071018
• ISBN 13: 9780252071010
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336