Memories and Dismemories

Alice Pung, Her Father’s Daughter (Black Inc, 2011), 238 pages, $29.95. 

This is a complex, darkly shining book, a memoir spanning thirty-five years, two generations, and three countries. With the immediacy of a novel and the intimacy of a conversation, it explores the relationship between Cambodian refugees and their Australian daughter—the bemused irritations of the cultural divide within a loving family, Alice Pung’s deepening understanding of why her parents “were not like other parents”, and their anxious acceptance of her need for independence. It is also the story of her father Kuan, who survived the Khmer Rouge regime, and of her mother Kien, who left her family to follow him to Australia. The day-to-day reality of the killing fields from Year Zero, April 25, 1975, is compellingly presented through the experiences of Kuan and his extended family. It seems unbelievable that only now, thirty-seven years later, are Pol Pot’s deputy and two other leaders being tried for their…