Module 5: Transnational and Intergenerational Legacies
Did Cambodian Americans attain justice for the harms of war and genocide?
There’s a moment I remember, when my sister and I first interviewed our grandmother over a decade ago. I had this list of open-ended questions, including one down at the very bottom regarding identity… If you could say something to the next generation about what it means to be Cambodian, what would you say?
I still remember my grandmother’s blank look in response, her stare….
At the time, I read this moment as one of miscommunication, as a moment “lost in translation.” That I didn’t question this… until much, much later reflected… a deep… attachment to… Western notions… not so easily translated into Khmer, my grandmother’s native tongue. In what I initially read as my grandmother’s “confusion” and subsequent refusal to answer in the way I thought I desired of her at the time, my grandmother articulated something I did not yet have the words for. Through her look of silence, she challenged me to imagine… a different path towards knowledge and knowing.
– Lina Chhun, Walking with the Ghost 1
This module opens with this reflection to highlight what it might mean to rethink the familiar and to question some of our own assumptions. When the chapter author first conducted an oral history interview with their grandmother, she wanted to end by asking them to give her thoughts on responsibility and justice for violence. The chapter author also wanted to know what their grandmother thought was most important to understanding “Cambodian identity.”
At the time, the chapter author did not question the meaning of any of these concepts, especially “justice” and “identity.” Having grown up in the United States as a Cambodian American, they had assumed that she and her grandmother shared the same understanding. Her grandmother’s refusal to provide an answer all those years ago marked a moment of reflection for the chapter author. It pushed her to think differently, to think more closely and expansively about the social and cultural contexts that inform our knowledge about ourselves and the world.
This module explores how violence connects to institutional, individual, and collective responses to harm, focusing on the transnational dimensions of memory and justice. Emphasizing the role of the past in shaping the present and future, the module highlights transnational relationships and intergenerational experiences. We examine how Cambodians and Cambodian Americans have responded to war, genocide, and injustice, and how their cultural production engages with experiences of violence in the context of larger global histories.
How have Cambodians and Cambodian Americans responded to the legacies of war and genocide?
What are the possibilities and limits of the law in movements for justice?
How does Cambodian American memory work reflect transnational histories and more expansive understandings of justice?
