Not Just Victims

Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States

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Edited by Sucheng Chan Interviews conducted by Audrey U. Kim

University of Illinois Press

Due/Published March 2003, 256 pages, paper

ISBN 0252071018

Not Just Victims contains twelve oral histories based on conversations with Cambodian community leaders in eight American cities--Long Beach, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, and the Massachusetts towns of Fall River and Lowell. Unlike the dozens of autobiographies published by Cambodians that focus largely on their victimization, these narratives describe how Cambodian refugees have adapted to life in the United States.

Sucheng Chan's extensive introduction provides a historical framework; she discusses the civil war (1970-75), the bloody Khmer Rouge revolution (1975-79), the border war during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia (1979-89), and the additional travails faced by those who escaped to holding camps in Thailand. The book also includes an essay on oral history and a substantial bibliography.