"Putsata Reang's quiet narration of her beautiful, poignant memoir holds both deep compassion and raw pain. Reang's ability to capture both her own and her mother's histories, desires, and dreams—in her voice and her prose—is remarkable." -AudioFile on Ma and Me
This program is read by the author.
"A nuanced mediation on love, identity, and belonging. This story of survival radiates with resilience and hope." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"This openhearted memoir . . . opens the door to include queer descendants of war survivors into the growing American library of love." —Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show
When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain's orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. "I had hope, just a little, you were still alive," Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.
Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma's side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put's adoration and efforts are no match for Ma's expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it's just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it's because she's not trying hard enough. When, at the age of forty, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married—to a woman—it breaks their bond in two.
In her startling memoir, Reang explores the long legacy of inherited trauma and the crushing weight of cultural and filial duty. With rare clarity and lyric wisdom, Ma and Me is a stunning, deeply moving memoir about love, debt, and duty.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 17, 2022 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781250856234
- File size: 327082 KB
- Duration: 11:21:25
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Putsata Reang's quiet narration of her beautiful, poignant memoir holds both deep compassion and raw pain. In the 1970s, she fled Cambodia with her family. She was small and sick, and the captain urged her mother to throw her overboard; instead, her mother saved her. That debt haunted Reang as a child and a young adult as she strove to become the perfect Cambodian daughter. She explores the weight of familial and cultural trauma, her career in journalism, and her winding journey to living openly as a gay woman, despite her mother's disapproval. Her complicated relationship with her mother is at the center of the story. Reang's ability to capture both her own and her mother's histories, desires, and dreams--in her voice and her prose--is remarkable. L.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from March 21, 2022
Familial ties and the scars of war are exquisitely examined in this luminous debut from journalist Reang. The author, who emigrated from Cambodia to Corvallis, Wash., as an infant with her family during the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, recalls her’s father difficulty adapting to life in the U.S., a struggle that drove him to violence and a nervous breakdown. For Reang, it delivered a sobering truth that “those of us who come from war can never fully escape it.” This sentiment echoes throughout her lyrical narrative, as she traces how, after coming out in her 20s, her unwavering relationship with her “Ma” took a similar hit: “I was the single flaw in the beautiful fiction of a family Ma spun for the Khmer community.” Things came to a head, years later, when Reang’s mother refused to attend her wedding. Despite this, Reang resolved “to build a bridge of story that brings us back together” by investigating her mother’s “snarled and suppressed” history alongside her own life path—from navigating the fraught realities of displacement as a child to training reporters in Phnom Penh as a journalist. In wringing compassion from her complicated legacy, Reang offers a nuanced mediation on love, identity, and belonging. This story of survival radiates with resilience and hope.
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