I feel it is impossible to read this book and not, by the end, to be holding your broken heart in your hands. For in this book, Y-Dang has unspooled all the emotions, travesties, and trappings of life as a refugee, as a woman of one country forced to adjust, comply, and confirm to the expectations of another. On one hand, battling to keep alive the world and culture of the country she has lost, yet in the other, compelled to be perpetually grateful in the country that she has been forced to adopt as home.

Y-Dang was only a child when her parents and her fled the aftermath of Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, eventually finding refuge in Canada. Inadvertently, Y-Dang became the literal poster child for refugees after she was photographed being welcomed by the Canadian Prime Minister as a photo opportunity for the politicians. But this moment – permanently captured as the grateful refugee – Y-Dang uses as the launch point for this vociferous, powerful, and hugely affecting part-memoir, part-non-fiction analysis, on the realities of life as a refugee, and the emotional and physical scars it leaves.

Y-Dang’s writing is profoundly brilliant. She reaches into the past as much as she considers the present – a world where migration and political refugees defines the political climate from Hong Kong to South America, from Syria to North Africa. She considers the political tectonics of such seismic movements as well as what is lost as the West demands refugees bend to their expectations of gratitude and westernisation.

But overriding this whole book is Y-Dang’s own mortality. She was diagnosed with cancer whilst writing this book a died a few months before publication. Framing the book through a series of letters to her young son, Y-Dang’s words are as much a powerful testament and warning to us all as much as a bridge between her and her young boy.

I am so happy I read this memoir, it was really good and emotional. It will stay with me for a long time.

I'm sure I will be in a minority in being disappointed by this book. Mistakenly I expected it to be similar to "Dust Child" (by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai) and "Wandering Souls" (by Cecile Pin), both of which I've recently read and enjoyed. However I found "Landbridge: life in fragments" quite different, and in keeping with the title somewhat fragmented and disjointed. The horrors unleashed in Cambodia by US bombing, Pol Pot's mad regime and Vietnamese invasion and the resultant waves of refugees somehow become background noise in Y-Dang Troeung's personal life-story. For me the author tries to do too many things in a slim volume with the result that the book is neither one thing nor the other. That said, I expect there will be a lot of people who love the beautifully-written courageous portrait of this young lady's life and travels from Cambodia to Canada and back to Asia (Hong Kong) and return to Cambodia. Special thank you to 'Penguin Press UK - Allen Lane' and NetGalley for a no obligation advance review copy.

I have just finished reading this powerful book and am now looking forward to its publication in October so that I can read it again in hardback format in order to more fully engage with the 'fragments' of Troeung's life. I am referring here to the fact that the subtitle of the book is (Life in Fragments), a phrase which can mean many things in relation to this superb book. It is a memoir of Troeung's life and is told in short fragments and different forms. Troeung's own life as she is writing is in fragments as she has terminal cancer. The book includes not only her writing but fragments of evidence (newspaper articles and archives) and supporting images, both photographs and artwork. The whole combines to give a very rich and readable memoir from which I learned a lot about Cambodia but also I reflected a great deal on life as a refugee, life as an academic, languages and cultures.
This is not an easy book to read due to the horrors described. However it was a quick book to read because of the fluidity of the writing. It makes me want to read more and to seek out some of the books and films mentioned in the text. Troeung has written a memoir but also a book which is of great significance for those wishing to understand more about the intersectional causes and impacts of war and to reflect on issues around refugee policy and also global tourism.
My thanks to the publisher Penguin, via Net Galley for a complimentary ARC of this title in return for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK for accepting me as a pre-publication reviewer of this book. I cannot wait till October for this to be in print!

Wow. This book was truly phenomenal and I feel privileged to have read Troeung’s story. From the preface to the final letter, every part is expertly curated, telling the reader so much about Cambodian history but also the author’s personal past, present and future. The subtitle ‘Life in Fragments’ perfectly encapsulates what the book is trying to do as it acts as part memoir, non-fiction, and personal conversations to her son for him to read in the future with many small ‘chapters’ that really are fragments. This term is the most apt as the narrative is somewhat linear telling the story of her parents and brothers in Cambodia during the war and Pol Pot genocide, escaping to Thailand where she was born, moving to Canada and trying to adapt to life in a new country facing these challenges, and then her more up to date life as an educator in universities, starting a family and dealing with a cancer diagnosis that led to her premature passing. Despite following this path in essence there are many times she backtracks and on the whole it’s very much a fragmented tale - this method of telling her (family’s) story I think was incredible because, like a prominent message Troeung shares throughout, the diluted culture and tormented history of Cambodians from this period has left many in the diaspora community feeling slightly fragmented too.

It’s a hard book to say I loved or enjoyed given the contents but what I didn’t gain pleasure in reading about, I enjoyed being educated in a topic I knew extremely little about and I fell in love with Y-Dang and her family. The balance of memoir and non-fiction is absolutely perfect, I learned so much but also was able to get to grips with the person behind the storyteller, it was truly a reading experience not like anything I’ve come across before. Another thing I loved is that Troeung doesn’t shy away from telling things like it is, she recognises the nuances that come with hindsight and a contemporary lens but can still articulate her point well. Like how ‘many tourists have gaped at the horrors of Pol Pot's Killing Fields, have shaken their heads in astonishment at the sheer brutality of this regime, but few have cared to see the horrors committed before and after Pol Pot's time: the military aid that flowed from China to the Khmer Rouge, the bombs that the United States dropped on Cambodia, the refugees who were turned back at the borders.’ On the topic of refugees, she makes it clear at the start she doesn’t speak for all, for all Cambodians or even her family but she pleads the case for better treatment and acceptance of those fleeing conflict regions in contemporary society, like Syria for example. When refugees settle in a new country there is a lot of expectation they should instantly be thankfully and graceful which an argument can be made but there is a lot of nuance in such situations given the many people one might’ve lost or had to leave behind, not having a home anymore, being something new, not speaking the language and so on. This quote from the book I think perfectly articulates an argument Y-Dang is trying to make and in some essence what the book does achieve: ‘I long to write my story in a way that shows the cracks and fissures beneath the refugee's smile of gratitude. At the same time, I cannot deny that, for the kindness shown to my family, for the opportunities to research and learn and perhaps one day write, I am and continue to be grateful, genuinely grateful.
Struck between the smooth surfaces and the burrowed fissures, I am again stuck.’

Once again this year I did cry whilst reading this book but proudly so, there were many times where Troeung was telling us such heinous, harrowing stories that it’ll be hard to not be impacted. There are many but I’ll just mention three instances. The first was when her grandmother died (or killed as we don’t know) and her mother wasn’t allowed to see her body or perform any proper burial ceremony so her soul/ghost was left to remain alone just wandering around a ravaged country without the peace she deserved. Second was the picture and discussion around the Killing Tree where guards would beat and murder children, I was reading the sign in the photograph and just had to stop for a few minuets to let that sink in, just thinking of such an act is utterly repulsive. And lastly was the letters that Y-Dang began writing to her son Kai. They started so nice and I absolutely loved them with updates on how he was getting on, the struggles yes but things was okay. But then her cancer diagnosis came and she began writing letters for him to read in the future as she knew she’d not be there for him at that time. They chronicled the coming-of-age events like school and starting a family but what she really wanted to tell Kai was she would always be with him as a part of him, that her family will love him with everything and a hope for him to retain his cultural ties and goodness. They were bittersweet I’d say, beautiful but extremely heartbreaking and when I tell you I wept… floods came.

A final point to make was I admired the inclusion of cultural and linguistic aspects and how they held relevance. A key concept that I think I’ll take on board and hope to include in my own life when dealing with personal struggles is that of kamleang chet which her mother translates as ‘emotional survival, turning inward, mental willpower, not giving up.’ This is used as an example of how many learnt to keep quiet at the right time and basically survive, some scholarly work has undermined the genocide or force of Pol Pot’s regime given how some Cambodians ‘gave in’ but they didn’t really, they just internalised the fear and fight to try and get through. In a similar way, the metaphor of becoming ‘like the kapok tree’ is used to show how many kept silent or mute to get through the genocide and adapt to it. Throughout there are lots of references to Khmer words or phrases, many talked about in telling the story of her parents. Another importance is the power of names, Troeung says at the end how if you’re not even bothered to try and pronounce it that says a lot about someone when talking with her cousin. I liked how addressing this can spark conversations around how some people may edit/adapt their name to make it more easy to pronounce or go by a nickname and things but this is really not right given the pride we should take in our names, something our parents chose for a reason and usually holding value - Y-Dang was named for the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Thailand where she was born for example.

A powerful memoir describing the epigenetic intergenerational effects of war, trauma and genocide. The fragmented chapters cross time and mix the author's experiences and recollections of her family with letters to her son written to his future self when she knows she has a terminal illness. Critically examines what it is to be a refugee and who should tell their stories - academics or the people themselves.
The layout didn't quite work in an e-book and I didn't understand why 'f's were missing from some words. Nevertheless, a book that will stay with me for some time.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this e-book.

Y-Dang Troeung was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1980. Her parents and two older brothers had escaped from Cambodia and Pol Pot's regime when her mother was 8 months pregnant. When she was still a baby, the family was admitted to Canada in the last group to be allowed in from that. And so the family had to learn how to survive again in a new country and language. At the same time, they were subject to assumptions, expectations, and sometimes abuse from Canadians. In this powerful book, the author tries to both make sense of what came before, for herself and her family, as well as looking forward in the hopes of communicating her thoughts, feelings, and love to her very young son.

The book, as indicated by the subtitle, is a collection of fragments that span across time--past, present, future, each interacting with the others and informing Troeung's thoughts as she tries to make sense of what happened, why things happened, and how they led to this moment in time. Interspersed with these fragments are letters to Kai, her son, as she expresses her deep love for him and his father.

The fragmentary structure is perfect for what the author is trying to express. By fragments, I don't mean that she leaves readers hanging, but that each chapter is a small world in and of itself that illuminates some aspect of Troeung's life and/or that of her family. Indeed, it makes perfect sense to structure the book in this way that mirrors the life of an immigrant who is expected to somehow take pieces of a life and knit them together into a seamless whole. This is an important book about an important and timely reality faced by increasing numbers of people today. Highly recommend.