Cambodia was in a state of political and cultural upheaval from the late 1950s through the early 1990s. This was epitomized by the political reign of terror brought on by Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, as he seized power in 1975. His attempt to create a completely agrarian society left the country in chaos and an estimated three million Cambodians dead. With the inception of his brutal rule, Cambodians began to seek sanctuary in less hostile environments. With this, many left their native land and entered the United States as refugees. This movement to America has had one city as a focal point, Long Beach, California. By the late 1980s there were an estimated thirty-five thousand Cambodians living within this cities boundaries. This is a groundbreaking book on the subject, chronicling their plight. This book is unique in that it was the first text to study the lives and the lifestyles of the Cambodian Refugees living in Long Beach, California.

"This groundbreaking book peers deeply into the lives and lifestyle of an overlooked new-member of American society providing the reader with understandings compiled in no other document." Asia Week."Compelling. This new work by author Scott Shaw details the trials and the tribulations of newly arrived Cambodian immigrants and their quest to find assimilation in U.S. Society." Publishers Weekly.Cambodia was in a state of political and cultural upheaval from the late 1950s through the early 1990s. This was epitomized by the political reign of terror brought on by Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, as he seized power in 1975. His attempt to create a completely agrarian society left the country in chaos and an estimated three million Cambodians dead. With the inception of his brutal rule, Cambodians began to seek sanctuary in less hostile environments. With this, many left their native land and entered the United States as refugees. This movement to America has had one city as a focal point, Long Beach, California. By the late 1980s there were an estimated thirty-five thousand Cambodians living within this cities boundaries. This is a groundbreaking book on the subject, chronicling their plight.This book is unique in that it was the first text to study the lives and the lifestyles of the Cambodian Refugees living in Long Beach, California. In order to present insight into their struggles, their change of lifestyle, and their assimilation patterns, the author interviewed one-hundred Long Beach, California based Cambodians refugees in 1986. In 1989, the author interviewed an additional one-thousand refugees. From these interviews, the author was able to comprise statistics and detail a presentation of the Cambodia refugee experience, based upon their own definitions and understandings of living life in the United States.

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.

In this clear, comprehensive, and unflinching study, Sucheng Chan invites us to follow the saga of Cambodian refugees striving to distance themselves from a series of cataclysmic events in their homeland. Survivors tracks not only the Cambodians' fight for life lives but also their battle for self-definition in new American surroundings. Unparalleled in scope, Survivors begins with the Cambodians' experiences under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, following them through escape to refugee camps in Thailand and finally to the United States, where they try to build new lives in the wake of massive trauma. Their struggle becomes primarily economic as they continue to negotiate new cultures and deal with rapidly changing gender and intergenerational relations within their own families. Poverty, crime, and racial discrimination all have an impact on their experiences in America, and each is examined in depth. Although written as a history, this is a thoroughly multidisciplinary study, and Chan makes use of research from anthropology, sociology, psychology, medicine, social work, linguistics and education. She also captures the perspective of individual Cambodians. Drawing on interviews with more than fifty community leaders, a hundred government officials, and staff members in volunteer agencies, Survivors synthesizes the literature on Cambodian refugees, many of whom come from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. A major scholarly achievement, Survivors is unique in the Asian American canon for its memorable presentation of cutting-edge research and its interpretation of both sides of the immigration process.

Original, interdisciplinary essays highlight the pain, struggles, and victories of Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants in a mid-sized New England city