The Clay Marble

Minfong Ho’s The Clay Marble is a 1991 young adult (YA) novel set in war-torn Cambodia around the year 1980, shortly after a Vietnamese invasion has freed most of the nation from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, bringing an end to the Cambodian Genocide. Ho’s novel does not deal explicitly with the horrors of the Genocide, centering instead on the chaotic (but hopeful) aftermath, as a young girl and her family brave the perils of civil war in a quest to reclaim their former lives in their old village.

Ho, a Thai-American who joined the multinational effort to feed and aid Cambodian refugees in the early 1980s, based her novel on some of the children she encountered during this time, some of whom she says molded her a “clay marble” like the one in the story. Her novel explores issues of grief, loyalty, friendship, and the courage to defy authority—including one’s own family—in pursuit of a dream.

This guide refers to the 1991 Square Fish edition of The Clay Marble.

Content Warning: The young protagonists of this story have lost parents and other relatives to genocide, though these deaths are not described in detail. The novel also features graphic descriptions of an injured baby and the fatal shooting of a thirteen-year-old girl.