In her riveting, heartbreaking memoir, author Chantha Nguong tells how she fled Cambodia to Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1970 at the age of nine. Nguon was the daughter of a Vietnamese woman and a Khmer man. As discrimination against Vietnamese people living in Cambodia intensified, she and her family began to feel unsafe, and she became a refugee.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge under dictator Pol Pot claimed that the Cambodian people had no history or culture. Pol Pot invented the term “Year Zero” to describe the birth of a new revolutionary society, an “agricultural paradise.” Guon’s dry commentary, using metaphorical recipes, details the results. Pol Pot “mixed together several borrowed ideologies and added his own genocidal flavor. His cadres treated us to pate de foie and soup noodles, as well as education, medicine, movies, and books.” , freed them from the burdens of money, cars, and religion. In return, Cambodians won the right to dig canals, harvest rice, and be starved to death.
During the 14 years Nguon lived in Saigon, he never felt at home, facing hunger and hardship and enduring propaganda and restrictions placed on society by the communists who had taken over the country. fall out? “In political meetings they shouted into megaphones about past-life indulgences that must be disavowed. No old ballads, no old ballads. Roaring songs of blood and sacrifice rang out. Enjoy the pastry too. Served with cut watery rice. Everything tasted like a gray nothing.”
When Nguon fled Saigon, she and her partner Tran made several attempts to reach refugee camps in Thailand. When they finally succeeded, they were ecstatic, believing that their future would unfold smoothly. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Nguon survived for more than a decade in various refugee camps, working a variety of jobs, including a brothel cook, a suture nurse at a camp clinic, a tofu maker, and a silk weaver. Along the way, she witnessed brutality against women trapped in the sex industry, nearly starved, and even put her life in danger on several occasions.
Nguon and Tran were eventually repatriated to Cambodia, along with countless other Cambodian nationals. So the couple used their newfound skills and knowledge to establish the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center in rural Cambodia, helping women rise above poverty, sex trafficking and illiteracy.
In her work with women, Nguon showed them how she took her mother’s “slow noodle” kitchen philosophy and translated it into her approach to life. Then I realized that even if it were possible, the path from hunger and poverty to financial independence would be long and difficult. And we now know that rebuilding traumatized societies after genocide will require generations of investment, and there are no quick fixes. That’s what slow noodles mean to me. ”
In this memoir, which includes 20 family recipes, Guon shares memories of her happy childhood and how her mother was generous and prepared her delicious dishes, despite the trauma she experienced and all she lost. It shows that no one could take away the treasure trove of recipes used to create it. A beloved home. (Algonquin Books)
