In the Shadow of the Banyan. by Vaddey Ratner | 
So my categories for June's #bookspin and #doublespin are a selection involving a South Asian/AAPI author, character, or context, and to catch up on my BOTM backlog, so I was thinking of starting with my last order from April. But I also do have options which could cover both categories. A poll? My current library read is not by a diverse author but is set in Malaya and Singapore around the time of the Japanese invasion of British territory there.
pickSet in the time of the Khmer Revolution, this fictional piece draws from the author‘s life. It‘s slow, poetic, and deeply sad. And brutally violent. Coming-of-age in a horrific authoritarian regime.
Full review https://www.TheBibliophage.com #thebibliophage2022 #readingasia2021 #cambodia #belatedchallenge
pickAfter an extremely slow start, I began to connect to the story around 2/3s of the way through. Knowing this is about one girl‘s experience and survival of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the late 1970s, I knew it would be heartbreaking. Thankfully, because it‘s seen through a child‘s eyes, it isn‘t as graphic as I feared. The author‘s afterword is beautiful and I cried through the entire thing. Don‘t skip it. #readingasia2021 #cambodia
pickA heartbreaking story of a Cambodian family caught up the disastrous social engineering of the Khmer Rogue in the mid 70s.
Ratner uses lines of poetry/flowery prose to create a serene atmosphere that is completely counters the devastation within the story. I liked the narrator is not the typical precocious wise child, her account reads like a child forced to grow up by her conditions. This is a beautifully written and heartbreaking account.
pickThis is the last book of 2019, just under the wire to squeeze one more Asian country in there. This incredible and poetic novel is parallel to the author‘s lived experience of an idyllic early childhood descended from royalty in Cambodia cut short by being forced from her home and into work camps, and surviving the genocide that killed 1/4-1/3 of the population in the country. Definitely read the end matter in this book.
2nd time reading this. It‘s more beautiful and heart breaking the second time.
pickA heartbreaking autobiography fictional book that will make you cry and feel anger that we could treat each other as such. There is also happiness that others can come together even in the hardest of times. I learned a lot about the Cambodian revolution (something on which I didn't know much). Beautifully written from the eyes of a child - this read will get you right in the heart.
#HistoricalFiction #Autobiography #VaddeyRatner #JustFinished
There should be plenty of #shade Under the Shadow of the Banyan. #LetsTravelJuly @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @OriginalCyn620
This book will break your heart and open your eyes and totally engross you. #shadow #anewchapter @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @vkois88
A break in holiday meal prep for a chapter and some tea.... Happy & healthy Holidays to all beings. #BooksAndTea #tea #holidays #WomenWriters #ReadWide #metta
pickThis is an utterly gutting book, all the more so because it‘s basically the author‘s life you‘re reading about. But she manages to write so beautifully about something so painful and harrowing, and you definitely won‘t come away from it unaffected. I also appreciated that even though the narrator is 7 years old at the beginning, it‘s not written in that simplistic language people sometimes use for young narrators. A tough read but worth it. 4/5 ⭐️
Words, you see, allow us to make permanent what is essentially transient.
What else should you read after a book totally demolished your heart but another book that will probably totally demolish your heart?? #nowreading
#DecDays This an autobiographical novel about Raami, a 7-year-old with polio, torn from her extended royal family in the mid-1970s during the Khmer Rouge regime. Beautifully written, full of hope & despair as she longs to return #underneaththetree of her childhood home😞Happy Holidays to all who celebrate 🤶🏼🎅🏻🎄🕊may we all find peace, joy & tranquility this coming year❤️
pickBeautiful, evocative, heart-rending. Vaddey Ratner wrote a work of autobiographical fiction detailing one child's existence during the forced relocations, mass starvation, and reeducation programs of the Khmer Rouge.
I've visited the killing fields of Cambodia and they are terrible and tragic. This book brings it to life and bears witness to the horrors. At the same time, it is a beautiful homage to her family and Cambodian people.
"Memory is a sickness, they told me, and I was full of it. I needed to be cured."
Reminds me of Soviet Russia and how they erased the memory of people existing, as described in The Commissar Vanishes or Lenin's Tomb.
This book is beautiful and it's breaking my heart.
I told you stories to give you wings, Raami, so that you would never be trapped by anything - your name, your title, the limits of your body, this world's suffering.
Book Outlet 😱
I'm so excited about this #bookhaul!!
pickI still understand very little about the madness that was the Khmer Rouge. Maybe there is no understanding it. This book was hard to get into at first, and reading about atrocities at the hands of fellow humans is difficult, but I'm glad I read it. The author's personal story is brutal, but her strength of spirit is inspiring and the reflections toward the end are lovely, offering hope in the face of absurdity and atrocities.
Thanks for all the suggestions for vacation reading! I've already read most of the books you all recommended (maybe I need to stop reading so much?) I went browsing today and picked these three. Now, if I can keep from reading them before my trip . . .
It's not a beach read, but Cambodia is about as far away as you can get. #farawayplace #springflingreading I read this as part of my #diverse reads and learned a lot about the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia under their rule, told from the experience of a small girl.
#MarchIntoReading #MarchTBR 3 of these are already in progress. I'm going to participate in #MarchinMarch and knock out my "R" choice for #LitsyAtoZ. I'd also like to read Allegedly this month. Other than that, ??♀️.
I read this quite a while back, but it's the only "shadow" I could find. And a great #diverseread #ownvoices pick also. #FeistyFeb #shadows
#FeistyFeb I took the #Shadows prompt literally as I'm not quite awake enough to go look for a cover with actual shadows on it. Another one from the #TBR mountain.
"Milk Mother said that stories are like footpaths of the gods. They lead us back and forth across time and space and connect us to the entire universe, to people and beings we never see but who we feel exist." The beauty of this story, its language, the Khmer history and myth it shares, shines through the horrors it recounts. If stories have souls, this one's is a bright, shimmering wish for the best of our humanity. #readwomen #weneeddiversebooks
so-soIt's not entirely fair giving this so-so because it's an important and overlooked time period in recent history dealing with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This work of fiction is based on real events in the author's life. My reluctance to fully endorse this book is that I wanted more of an omniscient narrator so I could really know why these events were happening.
Novel based on real events from the author's life. Not an easy or fun book to read. Will discuss this week at Bookclub so need to finish.
#day7 #somethingforsept #mademecry loved these books. They were all amazing and so worth the read. Still find myself thinking of them.
My book club went on an #innocencebook streak earlier this year and I really liked these two. In The Shadow of the Banyan is about a young girl's experiences under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and When the Moon is Low is about a mother and her children fleeing Afghanistan and their time spent as refugees. They're both excellent. #augustofpages
