Khmer American Research Articles

Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

Cambodian American Listening as Memory Work

What Is Social Justice Research for Asian Americans? Critical Reflections on Cross-Racial and Cross-Ethnic Coalition Building in Community-Based Educational Spaces

As anti-Black ideologies continue to prevail in Asian American communities, this autoethnography explores how two Southeast Asian American (SEAA) scholar-activists and community organizers contended with anti-Blackness, racism, and social justice research in their cross-racial and cross-ethnic solidarity community-organizing and educational curriculum. Utilizing an autoethnographic approach, the authors, both educational anthropologists, engage in critical analysis of their personal experiences as scholar-activists to examine the cultural experiences of being ethnic insiders and researchers. Pheng, a second-generation queer Khmer American scholar, examines the tensions in building cross-racial and cross-ethnic solidarity in Refugee Youth Organizing Training (RYOT), a multi-ethnic community-based SEAA youth leadership program in Philadelphia, PA. She argues that transformative dialogue in support of coalition building requires SEAA youth to first grapple with their historic and contemporary trauma as the descendants of SEAA refugees in the United States. Xiong, a first-generation HMoob American, details the successes and challenges of building cross-racial solidarity as a community-engaged researcher and activist within Solidarity Holds Our Unity Together (SHOUT), a Black and SEAA nonprofit organization in Dane County, WI. She points out that cross-racial and ethnic coalition building requires maintaining long-term relationships between all communities. Pheng and Xiong situate their experiences working with each organization within the context of the Minnesota Uprising and the COVID-19 global pandemic. Noting that both critical and polarizing conversations emerged within Asian American communities post-George Floyd’s death, the authors argue that their position as scholar-activists played a central role in facilitating educational workshops and dialogues to bridge SEAA organizations and the academic community. Specifically, this paper reveals how researchers can produce anti-racist scholarship alongside their community and cultivate reciprocal relationships that benefit minoritized communities. This autoethnography offers insights on the practices of socially-just and community-engaged scholarship in addressing anti-racism and coalition building in community-based educational spaces.

Reflective Praxis and Program-Building for Khmer American Women’s Leadership

Reflective Praxis and Program-Building for Khmer American Women’s Leadership

"A Good Citizen is What You'll Be": Educating Khmer Youth for Citizenship in a United States Migrant Education Program

Citizenship education is a complex and multidimensional construct. This article adds to the discussion of citizenship education by examining, ethnographically the ways the “vision” of a US Migrant Education Program is circulated through the program’s discourse practices to Khmer American children of migrant agricultural workers. The article does not discuss the formal legal status of citizenship, but the program coordinators’ beliefs about the skills and dispositions needed for the Khmer youth to become “good citizens.” Within the coordinators’ visions, the fixing of the youth’s perceived deficiencies drive the curriculum, and as such the full participation of the youth as active citizens is not achieved.

Khmer American Mothers' Knowledge about HPV and HBV Infection and Their Perceptions of Parenting: My English Speaking Daughter Knows More

The purpose of this study is to explore and describe Khmer mothers' understanding of HBV and HPV prevention as well as their perception of parenting on health and health education of their daughters in the US. The qualitative pilot study guided by the revised Network Episode Model and informed by ethnographic analysis and community-based purposive sampling method were used. Face-to-face audiotaped interviews with eight Khmer mothers were conducted by bilingual female middle-aged community health leaders who spoke Khmer. The findings revealed that Khmer mothers clearly lacked knowledge about HBV and HPV infection prevention and had difficulty understanding and educating their daughters about health behavior, especially on sex-related topics. The findings showed that histo-sociocultural factors are integrated with the individual factor, and these factors influenced the HBV and HPV knowledge and perspective of Khmer mothers' parenting. The study suggests that situation-specific conceptual and methodological approaches that take into account the uniqueness of the sociocultural context of CAs is a novel method for identifying factors that are significant in shaping the perception of Khmer mothers' health education related to HBV and HPV prevention among their daughters. The communication between mother and daughter about sex and the risk involved in contracting HBV and HPV has been limited, partly because it is seen as a "taboo subject" and partly because mothers think that schools educate their children regarding sexuality and health.

War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials (review)

Reviewed by: War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials Isabelle Thuy Pelaud (bio) War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work, by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. 244 pp. $22.50 paper. ISBN: 978-0-8166-7096-3. War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work advances a strong theoretical framework informed by the literature of trauma and memory, Asian American literary criticism, and cultural studies to interpret the cultural production of Cambodian Americans. This book argues that because of the enormity of the scope of the “killing fields,” Khmer Americans’ cultural production cannot be [End Page 345] read and interpreted solely from a domestic lens. Rather, it necessitates a transnational perspective. The fight against racism on U.S. soil comes simultaneously with how Cambodian history is presented in the United States. The book examines a period of time when artists and intellectuals were brutally targeted for assassination, resulting in the death of 1.7 million Cambodians. It is no coincidence, Cathy Schlund-Vials argues, that Cambodian American artists engage tirelessly with genocide, human rights, and civil rights and the cultural aphasia produced by this period. She urges readers to see, hear, and validate what is being expressed and to take action. Schlund-Vials’s introduction, theoretical framework, and close reading of Khmer American film, literature, hip-hop, and art is an ambitious project. Contrary to how this event is represented in the United States, the author insists that the U.S. role in the genocide in Cambodia be remembered. Schlund-Vials challenges the claim of U.S. exceptionalism and the rhetoric depicting itself a fighter of the free world. The author reminds the reader that these atrocities, where near 25 percent of an entire population died, were a direct consequence of American military and financial involvement in the region. Through a diverse means of national amnesia and selective representation, what Schlund-Vials calls “schemes of strategic remembering,” the United States effectively evaded both “culpability and accountability” at the expense of those who were victims of the atrocities in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. In order to restore these memories, Schlund-Vials introduces the historical context from which these pieces emerge. Her close reading of Cambodian American cultural production shows how Cambodian American experiences and the identities they produce have been and continue to be heavily impacted by Cold War politics. In order to understand Cambodian American art and literature, the author argues that one must consider the recent history of Cambodia in relation to geopolitics and racial dynamics in the United States. For instance, unlike how the movie The Killing Fields is often regarded as an authoritative account of what took place in Cambodia after the end of the Vietnam War, the author shows that it is actually filled with inaccuracies, gaps, and biases. The ahistorical representation of the genocide leads to a pathologizing interpretation of the Khmer Rouge. This movie elides the role played by the United States in helping the Khmer Rouge come into power in the first place, something she insists is absolutely necessary to understand Cambodian American identities articulated in literature, art, and film. In another example, Schlund-Vials examines how discourses about the genocide continue to focus on the perpetuators of violence. Through dark tourism, the author argues that the genocide has been commodified at the expense [End Page 346] of legal justice and collective healing. Her discussion of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where three hundred detainees were executed daily between 1977 and 1978, specifically serves foreigners’ incredulous and nonreflexive gaze. In contrast, Schlund-Vials examines Cambodian American cultural production as a site of resistance and an alternative to these dominant narratives by framing them from the survivors’ perspective. By focusing on survivor memory, her work engages in a renegotiation of history. According to the author, memory plays a central role in resisting national investments in forgetting, erasing, or truncating the past. Khmer American cultural production embodies what Schlund-Vials calls a “tripartite identity formed by way of catastrophic collisions with U.S. cold war foreign policy, traumatically shaped by Khmer Rouge totalitarianism, and problematically fixed to post-Vietnam humanitarianism” (25). These...

Hip-Hop Memoirs: An Interview with Khmer American Rapper praCh

beyond killing field, a quarter of a century after genocide. after 2 million people murdered, other 5 million survive. fabric of culture, beauty drips texture. i find myself in Long Beach, next Cambodian mecca. beside srox Khmer, whale shrie Angkor Wat, some people still struggling, on aftermath of Pol Pot. for some futures so bright, looks like high beams, for others are lost in American Dream. for me it seems i'm on road to no-where fast. hitting speed bumps, drive'n in circles, vehicle running out of gas. they're a gap in our generation, between adults and kids. but since i'm bilingual i'ma use communication as a bridge. (1) --praCh, Art of faCt In 2006, rapper Nas (Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones) declared--by way of album name and title track--that Hip Hop is Dead. Critical of commodification and corporatization, Nas's dire pronouncement reflects a dismal state of hip-hop affairs. Born out of late 1960s civil rights struggle, focused on communal activism, and invested in self-determinism, hip hop (which includes break dancing, deejaying, emceeing, and graffiti) was from outset a multidisciplinary vehicle for youth-driven, political resistance. In twenty-first century, however, progressive politics are hard to find in contemporary radio, television, and film. More focused on bling than social change, concentrated on platinum sales and apolitically marketed, mainstream hip hop is--with a few exceptions--mostly talk and no action. As Tricia Rose warns, Hip hop is in terrible crisis. Although its fortunes have risen sharply, most commercially promoted and financially successful hip hop--what has dominated mass media outlets such as television, film, radio, and recording industries for a dozen years or so--has increasingly become a playground for caricatures of black gangstas, pimps, and hoes (1). Through impending catastrophe and frames of crisis, Rose, like Nas, lays bare hip hop's present-day plight. Indeed, as its overall fortunes have risen, hip hop's function as an artistic outlet for oppressed has fallen by corporate wayside, eschewed in favor of profitable stereotype, sensational violence, and celebrated delinquency. In face of such crises, inclusive of problematical marketability and watered-down politics, hip hop still holds potential to engage and power to convey what Grandmaster Melle Mel of Furious Five famously declared was the message: concomitant revelation of and protests against social injustice. In fact, one only needs to turn radio off and tune into YouTube. There can be found certain Southeast Asian American rappers who are taking hip-hop underground by storm with lyrics, rhymes, and samples that challenge human rights abuses, large-scale disenfranchisement, and state-authorized violence. From Hmong American Tou Saiko Lee's songs about CIA dirty wars to emcee Nam's raps about Vietnamese American refugees, from rapper Geologic's lyrical treatment of US occupation in Philippines to Cambodian American group Seasia's cadenced negotiation of Southeast Asian poverty, hip hop remains a site of resistance and a space for socioeconomic and sociopolitical critique. (2) Equally important, such Southeast Asian American rappers--shaped by war and linked by region--are transnational cultural producers who fuse country of origin arts to country of settlement aesthetics, yoking over here concerns to over there problems. Correspondingly, Lee, Nam, Geologic, and Seasia reframe and revise domestic and global terrains of hip hop. Such Southeast Asian American rappers engender what rapper/cultural critic Mos Def repeatedly argues is ultimate point of hip hop: to politically engage, actively question, and produce knowledge. In so doing, Southeast Asian American rappers are droppin' transnational science, educating listeners and fellow emcees about war, US foreign policy, displacement, immigration, and discrimination. …

Seeing Possible Futures: Khmer Youth and the Discourse of the American Dream

In this article, I add to the critique of the myth of the American Dream by examining ethnographically the ways its dominant discourse is circulated to Khmer American middle school children of migratory agricultural workers. Drawing on social theories of discourse, I juxtapose the ideology embedded in the American Dream Discourse with the complexities of urban immigrant life. By looking at four Khmer students' worldviews and experiences, I provide a nuanced analysis of the complexities involved in the students' responses to the Discourse. The findings challenge the notion of meritocracy and suggest that educators need to investigate their role in supporting and promoting student agency. [Khmer American (Cambodian), Discourse, urban education, immigrant student populations]

Khmer Girls in Action

Khmer Girls in Action (KGA) began in 1997 as HOPE for Girls, a Cambodian young women's reproductive health and empowerment project. Since KGA's inception, the organization has been successful in developing the leadership of Southeast Asian, predominantly Khmer girls and young women to work on issues of immigrants and refugee rights, reproductive justice and building the Khmer American identity. To ensure the organization remains grounded in the community as it expands, KGA hired its first Khmer American Executive Director, Suely Ngouy in 2006. KGA connects the Khmer American experience to the Asian & Pacific Islander (API) community on social justice values and the struggle to end all forms of discrimination along lines of age, gender, class, race, and sexuality. The following pieces are from the Tongues Afire Workshop.

BooK Reviews

Books reviewed:Anthropology and historyHare, Tom, Remembering Osiris: number, gender, and the word in ancient Egyptian representational systemsHarlan, Jack R., The living fields: our agricultural heritageInomata, Takeshi & Stephen D. Houston (eds), Royal courts of the ancient Maya. Vol. 1: theory, comparison, synthesisLockwood, Matthew, Fertility and house– hold labour in Tanzania: demography, economy, and society in Rufiji district, c.1870–1986Pollock, Susan, Ancient Mesopotamia: the Eden that never was (Case Stud. early soc.)Quijada, Mónica, Carmen Bernand & Arnd Schneider, Homogeneidad y nación: con un estudio de caso: Argentina, siglos XIX y XX (Coll. tierra nueva e cielo nuovo 42)Anthropology of religionAssayag, Jackie & Gilles Tarabout (eds), La possession en asie du sud: parole, corps, territorie / Possession in South Asia: speech, body, territoryKlass, Morton & Maxine K. Weisgrau (eds), Across the boundaries of belief (Contemp. issues in anthr. relig.)Rakotomalala, Malanjaona, Sophie Blancy & Françoise Raison–Jourde, Madagascar: les ancêtres au quotidien: usages sociaux du religieux sur les Hautes–Terres MalgachesDevelopmentBierschenk, Thomas, J.–P. Chaveau & J.–P. Olivier de Sardan (eds), Courtiers en développement: les villages africains en quête de projets (Collection ‘Hommes et Sociétés’)Zerner, Charles (ed.), People, plants, and justice: the politics of nature conservationGeneralArmbrust, Walter (ed.), Mass mediations: new approaches to popular culture in the Middle East and beyondDupont, Veronique, Emma Tarlo & Denis Vidal (eds), Delhi: urban space and human destiniesKing, Victor T. (ed.), Rural development and social science research: case studies from Borneo (Borneo Res. Counc. Proc. 6)Privratsky, Bruce G., Muslim Turkistan: Kazak religion and collective memoryVan Beek, Martijn, Kristoffer Brix Bertelsen & Poul Pedersen (eds), Ladakh: culture, history, and development between Himalaya and Karakoram (Recent research on Ladakh 8)Winzeler, Robert L. (ed.), Indigenous architecture in Borneo: traditional patterns and new developments (Borneo Res. Counc. Proc. 5)Human evolutionAgustí, Jorge, Lorenzo Rook & Peter Andrews (eds), The evolution of Neogene terrestrial ecosystems in Europe (Hominoid Evol. clim. chge Eur 1)Curtiss, Garniss, Carl Swisher & Roger Lewin, Java man: how two geologists changed the history of human evolutionde Bonis, Louis, George Koufos & Peter Andrews (eds), Phylogeny of the Neogene hominoid primates of Eurasia (Hominoid Evol. clim. chge Eur. 2)Ghiglieri, Michael P., The dark side of man: tracing the origins of male violenceLegal anthropologyJust, Peter, Dou Donggo justice: conflict and morality in an Indonesian societyKahn, Paul W., The cultural study of law: reconstructing legal scholarshipNiezen, Ronald, Defending the land: sover– eignty and forest life in James Bay Cree society (Cult. Surv. Stud. Ethn. Chge)Peterson, Nicolas & Will Sanders (eds), Citizenship and indigenous Australians: changing conceptions and possibilities (Reshaping Australian Institutions ser.)MethodGuneratne, Katharine Bjork, In the circle of the dance: notes of an outsider in NepalMihesuh, Devon A. (ed.), Natives and academics: researching and writing about American IndiansMukherji, Partha Nath (ed.), Methodology in social research: dilemmas and perspectives: essays in honour of Ramkrishna MukherjeeNewman, Paul & Martha Ratliff (eds), Linguistic fieldworkSocial anthropologyFonseca, Isabel, Bury me standing: the Gypsies and their journeyForshee, Jill, Between the folds: stories of cloth, lives, and travels from SumbaHua, Cai (transl. Asti Hustvedt), A society without fathers or husbands: the Na of ChinaJackson, Peter, Michelle Lowe, Danielle Miller & Frank Mort (eds), Commercial cultures: economies, practices, spaces (Leisure, consumption and culture)McKnight, David, People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: systems of classification among the Lardil of Mornington Island (Oxford studs. in anthrop. ling. 12)Palerm Viqueira, Jacinta & Tomás Martínez Saldaña (eds), Antologia sobre pequeño riego, Vol. II (Organizaciones Autogestivas)Pottier, Johan, Anthropology of food: the social dynamics of food securitySchmidt, Bettina E. & Ingo W. Schröder (eds), Anthropology of violence and conflict (EASA)Schneider, Arnd, Futures lost: nostalgia and identity among Italian immigrants in ArgentinaSmith–Hefner, Nancy J., Khmer American: identity and moral education in a diasporic communityTheoryDube, Leela, Anthropological explorations in gender: intersecting fieldsKuper, Adam, Among the anthropologists: history and context in anthropologyLatta, Robert L., The basic humor process: a cognitive–shift theory and the case against incongruity (Humor Res. 5)Linke, Uli, Blood and nation: the European aesthetics of raceLittlewood, Roland, Religion, agency, restitution (Wilde Lectures in Natural Religion 1999)Martin, Calvin Luther, The way of the human beingMiller, Dean A, The epic heroStedman Jones, Susan, Durkheim reconsideredTilley, Christopher, Metaphor and material cultureTodorov, Tzvetan (transl. K. Golsan & L. Golsan), Life in common: an essay in general anthropology (European Horizons)Wolf, Eric R., Pathways of power: building an anthropology of the modern world

Book Review: Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community

Book Review: Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community. By Nancy J. Smith-Hefner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 256 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community. By Nancy J. Smith-Hefner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 256 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community

Book Review| July 01 2000 Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community, Nancy J. Smith-Hefner. Jeremy Hein Jeremy Hein Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2000) 19 (4): 105–106. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502629 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jeremy Hein; Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 July 2000; 19 (4): 105–106. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/27502629 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2000 Immigration and Ethnic History Society2000 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in. Diasporic Community. Nancy J. Smith-Hefner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. xx. 237 pp., illustrations, notes, references, index.

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community (review)

Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community (review)

Khmer American: identity and moral education in a diasporic community

In the early 1980s, tens of thousands of Cambodian refugees fled their war-torn country to take up residence in the United States, where they quickly became one of the most troubled and least studied immigrant groups. This book is the story of that passage, and of the efforts of Khmer Americans to recreate the fabric of culture and identity in the aftermath of the Khmer holocaust. Based on long-term research among Cambodians residing in metropolitan Boston, this rich ethnography provides a vivid portrait of the challenges facing Khmer American culture as seen from the perspective of elders attempting to preserve Khmer Buddhism in a deeply unfamiliar world. The study highlights the tensions and ambivalences of Khmer socialization, with particular emphasis on Khmer conceptions of personhood, morality, and sexuality. Nancy J. Smith-Hefner considers how this cultural heritage influences the performance of Khmer children in American schools and, ultimately, determines Khmer engagement with American culture.