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A review by introvertsbookclub
Landbridge: life in fragments by Y-Dang Troeung
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
When writing about war it is so easy to get it wrong, and end up with something that feels overly sentimental in a cheap way, or as though experiences of war are being mined for story and used to draw out a reflection on the present day that somehow makes the past all worth it. But Y-Dang Troeung's writing is that rare example of someone who can investigate and reflect on war, trace its impact to the present and highlight the strength and resilience (but also luck) that was needed to survive, while still condemning the trauma that continues to reverberate from it.
Her writing is fractured into small pieces, moving between various points in the past and the present, and allows for the failure of memory and record-keeping to always provide dates and times and numbers of people, instead relying on lived experiences and the conflicting memories that do remain to tell a story that feels more human and more realistic. The Cambodian Genocide is not a part of history I was familiar with, but she was able to convey nuances of politics, contradict accepted retellings of the Genocide with more honest ones and share intimate stories from the time that were far more impactful and informative than a textbook ever could be. Her meditations on refugees and the performance of gratitude that is expected of them in host countries that are less than welcoming, was another strand of her writing that moved beyond the expected and the presumed to pose questions about the greatest crisis of our generation and ask why we still aren't treating immigrants and refugees as real people.
This was both a larger story of the Genocide, and the story of one family's survival of it. Her family carried a burden of pain that was still harming their lives decades later, both emotional and physical. Her love for her son and her imagining of his future was filled with the hope of freedom from historical and familial trauma, but when we as societies are so bad at reckoning with history and taking responsibility for it, is liberation for those who are considered collateral damage ever possible?
'Landbridge' is such as incredible piece of writing, born from a lifetime of questioning and thoughtfulness. It is another book that I think everyone should read, or at the very least anyone working in our governments.
Her writing is fractured into small pieces, moving between various points in the past and the present, and allows for the failure of memory and record-keeping to always provide dates and times and numbers of people, instead relying on lived experiences and the conflicting memories that do remain to tell a story that feels more human and more realistic. The Cambodian Genocide is not a part of history I was familiar with, but she was able to convey nuances of politics, contradict accepted retellings of the Genocide with more honest ones and share intimate stories from the time that were far more impactful and informative than a textbook ever could be. Her meditations on refugees and the performance of gratitude that is expected of them in host countries that are less than welcoming, was another strand of her writing that moved beyond the expected and the presumed to pose questions about the greatest crisis of our generation and ask why we still aren't treating immigrants and refugees as real people.
This was both a larger story of the Genocide, and the story of one family's survival of it. Her family carried a burden of pain that was still harming their lives decades later, both emotional and physical. Her love for her son and her imagining of his future was filled with the hope of freedom from historical and familial trauma, but when we as societies are so bad at reckoning with history and taking responsibility for it, is liberation for those who are considered collateral damage ever possible?
'Landbridge' is such as incredible piece of writing, born from a lifetime of questioning and thoughtfulness. It is another book that I think everyone should read, or at the very least anyone working in our governments.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence, Racism, and War