The Rent Collector

Camron Wright’s The Rent Collector, originally published in 1990, tells the story of Sang Ly, a 29-year-old Cambodian woman who lives at the edge of Cambodia’s infamous dump, Stung Meanchey, with her husband, Ki Lim, and her 16-month-old son, Nisay. The fiction novel addresses such themes as the power of story, the influence of the past, the importance of education, and the balance of good and evil.

Sang and Ki work as pickers in the dump and make their living looking for discarded items that they can sell or re-use. They use their meager profits to purchase food and other necessities as well as to pay the rent for their modest home, a hovel made of tin and cardboard. Every month the Rent Collector, a woman allegedly named Sopeap Sin, whom the residents also call “the Cow,” comes to collect the rent. If her tenants are short, Sopeap will summarily evict them. Sang and Ki usually earn enough to get by, but Sang dreams of having a more stable and fulfilling life. She wants a better life for her son, who suffers from an illness that neither Western medicine nor folk remedies seems to help. Life in a landfill, which is constantly smoldering and smoky, contributes to Nisay’s illness. Even when it rains, the toxic runoff from the dump is dangerous. Workers are often injured or killed while scavenging. Gangs also target the workers and roam the dump with impunity, as the police will not enter the dump to help.

Sang decides her family’s best chance is for her to learn to read, which requires the help of the formidable rent collector, Sopeap. Sang’s literary evolution parallels both Sang and Sopeap’s character development, and the two women form a friendship based on respect and a mutual appreciation of literature. Sopeap’s secret terminal cancer diagnosis becomes known and devastates Sang. When Sopeap quietly leaves the dump, Sang embarks on a journey to find her that results in the discovery of Sopeap’s true origin story: Sopeap’s name is Soriyan, and the real Sopeap Sin died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge to protect Soriyan.

Determined to find Sopeap, Sang locates the real Sopeap Sin’s family. Although she reveals that Soriyan has been sending them money under the guise of Sopeap Sin, the family members embrace Soriyan’s gesture and express their gratitude. Sang finally reaches Sopeap, and before the old woman dies, Sang imparts the kind words of the real Sopeap Sin’s family, thus redeeming Soriyan’s prior cowardice. When Sang returns to Stung Meanchey, she embraces the dump as her true home. She resolves to share her education with the other community residents and teach the children, like Nisay, how to read and write.

Wright’s novel is based on the true story of the Stung Meanchey scavengers, as depicted in River of Victory, a documentary Wright’s son, Trevor Wright, directed in 2010. A portion of the novel’s proceeds go to the former residents of Stung Meanchey and have already helped the real-life Sang Ly and her family.

More than just one woman’s story, however, Wright’s text also interrogates the consequences of the Cambodian genocide, which occurred after the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK)—known as the Khmer Rouge—took control of Cambodia in 1975 and lasted until the regime’s end in early 1979. Under the brutal leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge attempted to create an agricultural utopia and terminated anyone deemed a threat. Prominent targets included Cambodian ethnic and religious groups, such as the Vietnamese, the Chinese, and Cham Muslims. The Khmer Rouge executed 2 million people during the genocide and killed hundreds of thousands more through forced labor, physical abuse, starvation, torture, and medical experimentation.