Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Travel Narrative
Approximate word count: 8-9,000 words
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Author:
“Noah
Lederman writes the travel blog Somewhere
Or Bust. His travel writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, the Economist,
the Chicago Sun-Times, Islands Magazine, Draft Magazine, and elsewhere, including numerous blogs and
in-flight publications. He is completing a novel about an infant survivor of
the Cambodian Genocide and a memoir about his grandparents' lives in the
concentration camps and his journey to uncover those stories.”
Description:
“Traveling
the Cambodian Genocide is a collection of poignant travel essays and striking
photographs from travel writer Noah Lederman. Lederman takes readers to the
unexplored sites that the Khmer Rouge had once used to commit acts of genocide
in the 1970s. But these essays go beyond revealing a sense place; they are
moving profiles of survivors and the younger generation of Cambodians, who,
decades later, are still impacted by the atrocities. While these essays deftly
portray a people's search for justice, answers, normalcy, and opportunity in a
country still rife with corruption and covered with land mines, the author
reveals heartfelt moments of beautiful innocence and relentless optimism,
allowing readers to laugh and believe in the nation's hopeful future. One third
of all profits from this book are being donated to a charity that helps
Cambodian children and families.”
Appraisal:
For such a
small book, the length of a long short story, there are a lot of subjects
kicking around my head that I might discuss.
One is the
nature of travel and travel memoirs. I think when most of us think of travel
it’s the family summer vacation. (Yes, some of us travel for business, but
that’s an entirely different animal most of the time.) Personal travel is going
to have a goal, whether we’ve actually thought about it or not, of seeing new
things, visiting friends and relatives, or “getting away” from our normal
routines. A change of pace. For some, this list includes learning about
something, possibly art, history, or just what it’s like in another country or
a different area of our own. The travel narrative or memoir is a way to
vicariously experience travel we’d like to do some day or wouldn’t do on our
own due to financial or logistical reasons, or because doing so would take us
too far out of our comfort zone. Cambodia has never been on my list of must
visit places for all of those reasons, but I’m glad to have had a small glimpse
of what visiting there would be like by reading Traveling the Cambodian Genocide.
The other
things I keep thinking about are much more specific to this book. Many people
of a certain age are at least vaguely aware that during the 70s when the US was
involved in a war in Vietnam, the bordering countries of Laos and Cambodia were
also at war. In these instances they were civil wars with the fighting between
two groups within the country. We might also be aware of the issue of
unexploded mines scattering the countryside in the aftermath and the dangers
that implies.
Through
this book, Lederman explores the ongoing effects of that civil war in Cambodia
with a close-up look at the human costs, prompting and answering a couple
questions in the process. What is life like for Cambodians today? What might
the world do to help?
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues.
Rating: **** Four stars
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