Not Just Victims

Wars in Southeast Asia drove unprecedented numbers of Cambodian refugees to settle in the United States. From southern California to New England, Cambodian communities took root amidst struggles of assimilation and triumphs of adaptation. In Not Just Victims, Sucheng Chan offers 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. Eschewing victimization narratives, these accounts provide vividly detailed descriptions of Cambodian refugees building new lives in the United States. Chan's introduction places their stories against the backdrop of recent Cambodian history, from the civil war through the bloody Khmer Rouge revolution to the Vietnamese occupation. In addition, Chan includes an essay on oral history.