The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia
Y-Dang TroeungCambodian history is Cold War history, asserts Y-Dang Troeung in Refugee Lifeworlds. Constructing a genealogy of the afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia, Troeung mines historical archives and family anecdotes to illuminate the refugee experience, and the enduring impact of war, genocide, and displacement in the lives of Cambodian people.
Troeung, a child of refugees herself, employs a method of autotheory that melds critical theory, autobiography, and textual analysis to examine the work of contemporary artists, filmmakers, and authors. She references a proverb about the Cambodian kapok tree that speaks to the silences, persecutions, and modes of resistance enacted during the Cambodian Genocide, and highlights various literary texts, artworks, and films that seek to document and preserve Cambodian histories nearly extinguished by the Khmer Rouge regime.
Addressing the various artistic responses to prisons and camps, issues of trauma, disability, and aphasia, as well as racism and decolonialism, Refugee Lifeworlds repositions Cambodia within the broader transpacific formation of the Cold War. In doing so, Troeung reframes questions of international complicity and responsibility in ways that implicate us all.
“Refugee Lifeworlds is a life-giving book, even as it dwells on war, genocide, and refugee experiences. Y-Dang Troeung has written a remarkable, moving, and courageous work that deserves a wide audience for its inspiring blend of criticism and memoir.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen, University Professor at the University of Southern California, and author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
“To read Refugee Lifeworlds is to have the synapses connect, lighting up the ways that refugee legacies, disability, and mental health have always been meant to speak to each other, but only now can. It is also to meet history anew, as Y-Dang Troeung moves across an astonishing archive of documents, moments, and texts with a close-reader’s care and a storyteller’s grace. This book is stunning—at once beautiful and devastating. It is the work of grieving, so that we may better regroup.”—erin Khue Ninh, author of Passing for Perfect: College Impostors and Other Model Minorities and Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature
“Refugee Lifeworlds is a brilliant weaving of epistemological intervention, autofiction as political grievance, and abolitionist knowledge production. Argued with care and beautifully written, this profound book is invaluable for understanding the intersections of war, imperialism, and disability.”—Jasbir K Puar, author of The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability
Asian American History and Culture
Founded by Sucheng Chan in 1991, the Asian American History and Culture series has sponsored innovative scholarship that has redefined, expanded, and advanced the field of Asian American studies while strengthening its links to related areas of scholarly inquiry and engaged critique. Like the field from which it emerged, the series remains rooted in the social sciences and humanities, encompassing multiple regions, formations, communities, and identities. Extending the vision of founding editor Sucheng Chan and emeriti editor Michael Omi, David Palumbo-Liu, K. Scott Wong and Linda Trinh Võ, series editors Cathy Schlund-Vials, Rick Bonus, and Shelley Sang-Hee Lee continue to develop a foundational collection that embodies a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to Asian American studies.
The Refugee Aesthetic
Timothy K. August
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