Raami's father, a well-known poet, copes by writing. Uncertainty, fear and hunger spread like wildfire among the displaced citizens. Vaddey Ratner survived four years of forced labor under the Khmer Rouge, and has since come to the United States, where she studied Southeast Asian history and literature at Cornell University.Īt gunpoint, the family is forced into a parade of refugees pushed out of the capital, Phnom Penh. It means the Cambodian civil war is over and augers, perhaps, a more egalitarian era for the poor of his country.
Despite his privileged position, Raami's father is cautiously optimistic when the revolutionary army seizes power. Her father, the so-called "Tiger Prince," dotes on his wife and two daughters. She wears a brace on her leg due to a bout with polio, but wants for nothing. Young Raami's world is one of poetry, lotus ponds and butterflies. The novel begins as many horror stories do, in an idyllic setting seemingly insulated from any danger. Vaddey Ratner was five when her world was destroyed, and her book, In the Shadow of the Banyan, while technically a work of fiction, borrows heavily and directly from her own experience. Families were torn apart, and most of those that didn't die of starvation or bullets became slaves. The Khmer Rouge, who ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, used this tactic to quick and devastating effect, killing millions in a nightmarish four-year span. When it's completely absent, any inconvenient or suspicious person can be labeled an enemy of the state and disappeared on the flimsiest of pretexts. Paranoid character-smearing is a time-honored tool of totalitarian regimes.įortunately, America is still a place where the rule of law, whatever its shortcomings, remains intact. Bachmann's claim was quickly dismissed, bringing a rare moment of sort-of agreement between the parties, but it serves as an important reminder. When Michele Bachmann, through the most circumstantial of evidence, recently linked Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, it wouldn't have been irrational to think immediately of Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title In the Shadow of the Banyan Author Vaddey Ratner
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