When Broken Glass Floats

Chanrithy Him’s memoir, When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge, was first published in 2000. This study guide refers to the 2001 Kindle edition. In the text Him details her experiences as a young child in Cambodia. Him was only five when the autocratic communist Khmer Rouge took over the country, and she recounts the trauma she endured during the five years the regime remained in power. Him’s father was beaten to death by the Khmer Rouge, and she lost her mother and five siblings to the starvation and illnesses that ran rampant through Cambodia because of the harsh living conditions.

Despite these traumas, however, Him records the triumph of the spirit and the power of human connection in this memoir, which she wrote as part of her “determination,” she noted in Frontline interview, “to overcome the evil forces, the destructive forces of the Khmer Rouge.” (Pike, Amanda. “Pot Pol’s Shadow: Chanrithy Him - The Storyteller.” Frontline/World. Public Broadcasting Service. 2002.) When Broken Glass Floats won the Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the Koriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the PEN USA West Literary Award. Him worked as a research associate on the Khmer Adolescent Project, studying the effects of trauma on Cambodian refugees.