 Welcome to the San Francisco Public Library's virtual library. We are so excited that we're able to do this while we're in this completely unprecedented time. My name is Anisa. I'm a librarian at the San Francisco Public Library. I work in our community programs and partnerships department where I am fortunate to be able to meet amazing authors and educators and scholars and artists and book them for our library for programs. Cultural Heritage programs such as APIA, Viva, Her Story. I also get to work on larger literary campaigns such as our bi-monthly read called On the Same Page and our One City One Book campaign. So it's really, it's just my dream job and I'm so excited that I get to do this and I get to meet all these amazing people. Tonight we are celebrating APIA Heritage and it's a Celebrate Your Heritage from Home. I'll be here to monitor any tech issues, let people in, introduce our authors. I'll be taking notes as we go and I'll be sending those to you in an email later tomorrow. Another book club and author next week. I definitely encourage you to check out our page and see about that. It's called The Mountain Sing and we're fortunate that the author will be joining us from Berlin. So the side downfall of this all is we have people joining us from Berlin and just all over the place. So it's really amazing to be able to have an author speak to us from, you know, here in San Francisco and then all the way in Berlin. And that's happening on Saturday, May 21st at 10am. So we encourage you to come to that and again that will be in your notes. It's also in our website. And I would like to read a land acknowledgement. We want to acknowledge the many Romutush, Eloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards on the lands on which we reside. SFPL would like to encourage you to learn more about native culture and the land on which we reside and the land in which we work. The library is committed to hosting events and providing educational resources available on topics such as Bay Area land rights, Bay Area tribal groups, and first person cultures. We, in these notes that you'll get there's an extensive book list that will lead you back to topics that are on that and also several links that lead to information about land rights. There's a one site called native land that has an interactive map which allows you to enter in any destination and it pulls up what tribes were there, what tribes are there, and any treaties or anything like that that have been previously going unrecognized. So, as I mentioned tonight we are celebrating API and it's a heritage from home hashtag if you want to tweet or Instagram that hashtag heritage at home. We have partners this year including the Asian Art Museum, the APA Heritage Foundation, CAM, which is does a film fest, CAM Fest, it's amazing and all of these people are all doing online we've all pivoted to offer these amazing programs at home. So, I also want to acknowledge that tonight that it is also mental health awareness month. So, and tonight's program does discuss some heavy issues. There's going to be tough topics talked about such as violence and trauma of war and issues surrounding incarceration. So right now in our in our current state of affairs. It's a reminder of really how big our world is these stories and how easy it is still to be connected to each other from all parts of the world. So I really find this as an amazing side turn in this, you know, tragic time of living in. So, I also want to acknowledge that these are stories that really need to be heard, and that hearing stories and listening to stories are how healing can begin for people, and I think that's important too. And I think that you guys are all in for a treat with these authors. So I'm going to introduce the authors now. We are really fortunate to have three authors tonight and they are going to be discussing our title is called overcoming loss of identity and trauma authors Sean do though Katya single and join my will be discussing their books, which have a common thread that unites them, which is loss of identity and trauma and cultural violence. Sean's book. A cloak of good fortune, a Cambodian's boy, a Cambodian's voice journey from paradise to a kingdom of terror traces a child's coming of age from the idyllic peaceful years of childhood and rural Cambodia, through his family's forced exile and became our Rouge. Sean is a survivor became our Rouge genocide, and the war between Cambodia and Vietnam, which raged in Southeast Asia between 75 and 1978. He is one of my brothers in civil service duty. He helps California victims and consumer fraud victims. Since 2012 he's worked on and planned a two volume memoir to honor those who have died in the violence and the lives of those who survived in the country he loves. Sean holds a master's degree from the new College of California. He also speaks came here Vietnamese Mandarin Cantonese to chow French and English, and this experience has led him to be a physician's assistant in the international red cross and doctors without orders. In the notes that I will be sending you all this information will be there as well as links to our speakers tonight. Next we have Katya single Katya book, latest book is called exiled from the killing fields of Cambodia to California and back. And hers is the story of four families confronting deportation 40 years after being settled in California. Her story also has incarceration issues as well. Katya has written for the New York Times magazine Wall Street journals, what Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and more. She is the 2019 forward indies finalist for a book from Chernobyl with love, reporting from the ruins of the Soviet Union. She's been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, the International Women's Media Foundation, and the International Center for journalists. Her stories on the family of lost boys of Sudan received a second place feature, writing society professional journalist green eye shade award. And her 2017 article, my brother's killing is now my friend was named one of the BBC's best reads of 2017. All right, and joy, her book, the D Ali wall is the true story of the 1962 Chinese Indian internment. This book tells of the untold and silenced accounts of the incarceration of 3000 Chinese Indian men, women and children. After the 1962 to know Indian war. She grew up, and was educated in India, until she left for graduate school at the new school for social research in the US. She enjoys traveling, meeting people righty. She lives and works in San Francisco with her husband, two sons, her mother, and really the family dog. And she was one of a handful of children born in the only internment camps in Rajasthan. Working on her mother's biography. So those are who we have tonight it's going to be an exciting panel tonight and we're going to kick it off with Sean, who's going to be talking, each author will talk about their book and then we'll move forward from there. Sean, though, let's do it, give a hand to Sean everybody, virtual hand. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. And for having us tonight and to staff member of San Francisco Public Library for putting this event together for us. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you to my family, and to friends and family in Cambodia. And also, in the whole world, I believe there's a lot of friends out there are also zooming tonight to see us. Thank you for attending our event. Thank you, Sean, though. And I feel very honored to be part of this event with my colleagues, Cartier, Central, and Joy Ma. And I would like to dedicate this presentation to two persons. Dr. Holly Hammer, professor of clinical family and community medicine of University California of San Francisco. Dr. Hammer has been taking care of my elderly parents ever since they immigrated to this country. And to Christopher Rose, whom I regard as my older brother, who is always there to support me during the journey of my writing. I also hope both of them are here tonight. I'm going to introduce my book to you and share some of my story. The stories and events in the book are true. It is a historical memoir suitable for teenagers and adults. The country of my birth, Cambodia, is landlocked by Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. It is one of the smallest nations in Southeast Asia. Historically, the name Cambodia made people think of the magnificent Buddhist temple like Angkor Wat. However, since the 1970s, people now think of war, starvation, and the terror of the Khmer rules. I want to reshape the public's narrative about Cambodia by sharing unknown delightful aspects of our culture that I experienced growing up until the Khmer rules seized power. The title A Cloak of Good Fortune comes from the Cambodian folk believe that when a newborn baby emerges from the mother's womb and still in cage in the amniotic sac, it is a blessing and good luck for the family. My maternal grandma love reminding me that my mother's midwife declare he is born with a cloak of good fortune. For me, Cambodia was a life with ghosts and goblins, which is an August filled the stories my grandmother and my mother told me. They share in harsh tones as if one might suddenly appear in front of us or at our table. I carry treasure memories of a different wonderful Cambodia and a way of life that was lost as a casualty of the conflict. I'm fortunate to be alive to tell these stories to preserve for future generations by beautiful childhood memories of our traditional cultures before it was so violently uprooted by the war and has gradually disappeared ever since. A particular benefit of reading the book is that people unfamiliar with Cambodia can understand not only what life was like before the Khmer rules, but also experience living through the war when everything we knew was abruptly turned upside down. The 1984 movie The Killing Fields document that dark period during which two millions of us were targeted, staff killed and buried. The Khmer rules executed almost every Cambodian suspected of connections with the elected government as well as professionals and intellectuals. Imagine a society suddenly without money or goods where people were reduced to eating lava from the soil and you were killed simply for being educated and knowing foreign languages. I watched my brother pull a large snake out of a tree and he bit it to death and peeled off its skins and he roasted it on a fire and he grilled himself on it. A Khmer soldier shot at me for scavenging leftover cassava scraps from an already harvested field. These things are so crazy and it's difficult to believe that they really happen. I hope my memoir will resonate with every survivor of mass violence and serve as a window for those who have never faced it. I also hope my perseverance and sense of humor will inspire readers to fire in the strength at life's darkest moments. The most fascinating aspect of the book for me are the questions it raises. Do moral rule change in difficult situations? Can anyone remain innocent in the face of overwhelming evil circumstances? The central problem my story exposes is not necessarily one of an external evil oppressing innocent people. It is that each innocent person has the capacity for evil within themselves. Because one thing I learned from my experiences during the Khmer rule is that our values can be turned upside down in no time. For instance, when I was a child, I always get angry at my grandfather. When he would buy me a chicken and a duck at the market, but then he killed them and eat them later. I thought animals were friends, not food. Later, during the escape across the border from Cambodia into Vietnam, I snatched a sleeping wire rooster out of a tree and I tried to strangle it to death. I thought I killed it, but it kept on living. So I twist its neck with all my strength until I heard a popping sound and the bird finally went limp, executed by my hands. My father cooked it for us and I was happy that everyone had a delicious meal. But as I started to think about it more clearly, I was disgusted with the brutality of my conduct. I felt sad and guilty and wonder how I could have committed such an ugly gruesome act. Another thing I explore in my book, perhaps most importantly, is how people in terrible circumstances actually display a profound depth of generosity and kindness. My story explores the complexity of what it means to be a human being and show through my experience, we are capable of great acts of cruelty, but more often great acts of charity. We have both within ourselves, within our families and within our societies. Our choices determine how history will remember each one of us. We always have a choice and I have made mine. My choice is to serve future generations by preserving my true of the past. And I hope my story will inspire all of you to do the same. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sean. Katya, tell us about your book. I need to come after Sean that was very powerful but in a way it's fitting that I come after Sean because my book is exiled from the killing fields of Cambodia to California and back. And it takes off where Sean leaves off in some ways it tells the story of for Cambodian American families from the killing fields of Cambodia to resettlement in the US and then unfortunately for some of the family members back to Cambodia. And it's something I approach as a journalist I had heard back in high school actually I grew up in the Bay Area and I had a friend who was a refugee from Cambodia. And she first told me a little bit after it was later it wasn't when we're in high school but later she started telling me about friends of hers who were being deported. And I didn't understand, because to me, Davery that was my friend was American. She was in my French class she was like me she and she came to this country as a refugee and I thought well she came here as a refugee. She's a citizen we we gave her citizenship and that's when I learned that for in the US it's not automatic if you come as a refugee to be a citizen. And I also started learning and there are a number of reasons why it's when it's complicated and expensive process but why people don't always get citizenship after they come as refugees, because you're a legal permanent resident. So sometimes you don't see the need there's the money some people don't know. And so, as Sean was explaining went through extreme trauma was resettled in the US right in the middle of our war on drugs 1980s, mostly in inner cities. If anyone remembers the 80s 90s timeframe, very violent inner cities and you had people who had already suffered trauma that being resettled and subjected further trauma. The agencies that helped with resettlement, there wasn't as much is developed as it is now. And so difficulties and then what you had is later laws that were put into place. More recently, I think it was after the Oklahoma Oklahoma city bombing a series of laws that made deportation of non citizens possible for a number of crimes that do not qualify as felonies for someone who is a citizen. So you have people who were deported for writing bad checks for joy writing for things murder all the whole realm, a lot of drug convictions these are people who did time serve their time in jail and then face deportation. And these four, I call them the third generation, many of them were around my generation, but they came here as young children. They were either born in refugee camps in some cases, or they were born even in Cambodia. But we're very, very young under the humor Rouge, but their families were survivors and so you have this legacy of trauma that continues and so in the book I follow from the generation that survived the genocide what that was like to those who were resettled some of those stories to then the family members are deported and the family they leave behind in the US and I think some of that trauma. There's one mother who's in her 70s son who I follow. And she talks about during the genocide how one of her daughters, T was the reason the family survives to T was able to function very well under the humor Rouge she figured out how to steal how to adapt. And that functioning didn't work so well in the US and she ends up breaking the law and in prison and then she is facing deportation and for son, the idea that she could lose her, have her daughter taken away from her again. Like the humor Rouge had taken her daughter from her because they were separated during that time reignited that trauma and so you're continuing this legacy of trauma. And I think that was the story I wanted to tell with Excel is I come out of a foreign policy article I've written originally just about some of the deportees who are living in Cambodia. Some women because most of the stories you hear about men but there were women there. And I realized when I was writing that story that it was incomplete. That if I didn't look at what had happened to the young woman's parents during the genocide, and what was going on with her teenage son back in Long Beach. I couldn't tell the story of this family and in order to do that I needed a book I couldn't do it in just an article. So that is how Excel came about. And I want to actually turn it over to join it well she'll get an introduction from Anissa but the another reason I wanted to write Excel was because I felt a lot of people people are a little more aware now about the deportation of legal permanent residents and refugees but when I started to write this book back in 2015 or 14 can't remember exactly. People weren't aware of it and to this day people still tell me really you couldn't be deported if you're a legal permanent resident. And when I first heard about Joy's book. In the internment of Chinese Indians and Indian. I never heard of this. And I think it's a story that still many people, even in her book you'll see many Indians aren't even aware of and so it's another one that I think all of us. Three authors here today wanted to share stories that we think are important for people to understand. And you did a great job of introducing joy for me that was great. And like Katya said Joy's story is really one that I don't think a lot of people have heard about it's very powerful. And just a quickie, all of these books can be purchased through Books Inc. We're working on how to get Joy's book to you. She wrote a book during the pandemic and I'm really sorry, but we're going to work on that and I'm going to turn it over to Joy now who's going to tell you about her book, and about the story. Joy, you are unmuted. Thanks for joining us. Thanks Katya for the introduction, and you're right, unless you are my co author who's right there, the lip the suit up. Or my friends and my family, you've probably never heard that there was a mass incarceration of Chinese Indian citizens in 1962. So, part of my goal of writing this book was to make sure that it was heard the stories of the survivors are heard and that people understand that there was a whole community and a whole generation that were affected by this, by this internment. So, I was one of the five children who were born, who were born in Delhi, and I was four years old and my family was finally released. And since I was a very young child, people have always asked me to write this book. And there was several reasons that it was really hard to write about it. For some reason, for many survivors, there's an overwhelming sense of guilt and a sort of stigma to reveal this part of your, your history, even though it has, it's not your fault. But, you know, when my family was released to Calcutta. They were actually not from Calcutta, but when they were released a lot of Chinese. Interns were just left in Calcutta and my family had to struggle through how to find work, how to pick up from where they left off. And so when I was going to school, and I didn't talk about this, you know, I was just a normal school girl going and actually my friend did not know until 2012, which was the 50th anniversary of the war and the internment. The other reason for not being able to write it was, since people didn't know about it, there was no interest. There was literally no interest and it took me to find a community of people, you know, other interneeds to, to support that idea. And to, to pave the way for me to write this book. And so part of what came of it was, we have a documentary. It's on YouTube. It's made by filmmaker Rafiq Elias. And it was called Beyond Bobbed Wires. And so to launch the documentary we went to India, we went to New Delhi and we, we showed it in universities and cultural center. And that's where I met my co-author, Dilip. And Dilip comes from it, from knowing very little about the internment. He's a journalist, my friend, and he, he literally had never heard of it till 2012. And so I really needed someone to help me write the book from a perspective of someone who knew nothing about it. I have lived in the shadow of the camp forever. When we get together with other people from the camp, my mother talks about them as a camp wallah, you know, like the people from the camp, we talk about the camp, it's not a, you know, summer camp or anything, but that's how people know about it. And in, when people talk in Chinese, they refer to it as Japchungin, which is like the gathering to get a camp. And the reason, and we explore this topic in the book, we talk about why do we call it an internment camp, you know, was it a concentration camp, or what was it. And so this, there are some reasons to call it the concentration camp, but for our purposes, we refer to it as the internment camp. And in Chinese, there's actually no other, no other word for it, that's just the one word. And so that's how we refer to it. So the internment of the Chinese, I cover the stories of seven other survivors. And, and in the book, when you read it, you'll see that they were teenagers when they went in. So if you were recently a teenager or your children or you know teenagers you understand how, how devastating and how disruptive it is to have any change in your life and this was the biggest change of all. They carried the stigma of the internment for many years, some kept it quiet, some just surprised it. But more recently, they've been able to talk about it. And, and one of the things I think you'll see is the despair and hopelessness they felt. It was a group that was forgotten. It was a group that was ignored. And, and then finally nobody even wrote about it. So, part of, part of what you also see is how it affects the next generation. So I definitely did not remember anything from the camp but the mother talks to me about it my brother sometimes talks to me about it. When I meet other people, people talk to me about it. And they're pretty silent most of the time. But when you feel back the layers, you can really see how it affected them and they've carried it for many years. I'm glad there's more people willing to talk. But we have one, one participant who didn't want to reveal her name because she's still worried. So the long lasting effects of an event like that really affects people. I think I'll wait to review a couple of sections of the book later. Thank you, Joy. We are going to come back to Sean and Katia. And actually all of us, all of them are going to join back together and unify some things. Sean, did you want to go first? Katia, I'm going to open it up to you three and I'm going to mute myself about that. Sounds good. One of the themes we had talked about were actually identity, I think. And I think for Joy, that was a part of your book as well because are you Indian or Chinese? Because a lot of your, I think that struck me with your book was how many of the people you write about didn't even speak. The language they spoke was the local language in India where they were living and that was their familiar, that's how they identified. And I know with Excel, my book, a lot of the Cambodian Americans who were not actually citizens here but they were legal permanent residents, they identified as Americans and yet when they were deported to Cambodia and when they're deported, but America identifies them as Cambodian and then they get deported to Cambodian. And the Cambodians identify them as Americans because they speak American slang, they wear, remember when I went there, they wear San Diego Charger shirts and they have tattoos and they didn't grow up in Cambodia. They're not American, but America sees them in Cambodia so there's these identity things and maybe Joy you want to say something about identity and I know Sean would have more to add on that. Right. So, so when I go back and I talk to the survivors, sorry, trying to be a little louder. I mean, we speak a mix of languages, right? So we speak English, Chinese, you could be speaking Cantonese or Mandarin or Hakka, right? And then of course, Hindi. Hindi is spoken a lot. We're always eating Indian food. So, you know, the guy, you know, deliberates about this. One of the survivors Yingsheng Wong in the bus driving to Ottawa, he breaks into a song, like a really old Indian Hindi movie song. And I think what it really tells us about all the people who have ever lived in India is the deep love they have for the country, you know, we were born there, we grew up there. It's really a part of who we are. We will be with them for a long time. And, and it's true for all the survivors in Canada or the US or India or Hong Kong, wherever they have dispersed. So that identity lives with them. But the other part of the identity I also wanted to talk about is the Chinese are obviously very visible racially. And so one of the things that, you know, we write about in the book is how because you look Chinese, that was the reason for being turned incarcerated. It's kind of very, we have a parallel to the Japanese internment of the Japanese Americans. They were also interned because they were different. And where this brings us today is there's a lot of xenophobia going on. And we can talk a little bit more about that. But it's very clear who's Asian, you know, they can't tell if it's Chinese or Korean or Japanese, but there is a lot of xenophobia because of the pandemic. And so, so that touches a lot about, you know, your identity. Obviously your heritage is a part of who you are, but people have need to learn how to navigate that in changing times. You know, we see whenever there's a threat, whether it's war or pandemic or whatever we kind of, and with your case that story was war, we scapegoat the other. But it's interesting because Sean with your book. It wasn't the other that was being scapegoated it was Cambodians against Cambodians. But there's still your story also still is very much identity. I think with Sean's. It was I don't think I've ever, his story was such a story of love for his country that comes across clear the whole first third is before the Khmer Rouge and it's just his identifying as Cambodian the culture of the stories. So maybe you want to talk a little bit about identification and and how you identify as a survivor is a Cambodian is American. You know, when a lot of time I asked myself, am I really Cambodian and I really Vietnamese and I really Chinese, because my father, my, my, my grandmother from my father's size is originally Vietnamese and my, my, my mother's father is from China, but my, my, my, my maternal grandfather is my, sorry, my maternal grandmas is from Cambodia. So at home we speak many languages and I just like, it's hard for me to, to, to tell myself that which group I should belong to. So I just see myself like I can fit to any, any, any, any community. But the question is that are those community accepting me or not. That's another question. You know, so it's hard to just put yourself believe that you belong to certain community, but that community may not accept you the way you react or the way you act or the way you talk. And I did when I decided to write this book, I, it was 25 years ago. It was very difficult for me to, to, to, to, to just put the paper and sit down and write because I just don't want to relive again. You know, in this type of experiences that what I have gone through. I recall, I recall when I start serve as when I started to serve as a medical interpreters many years ago at San Francisco General Hospital. I saw a lot of patients who have gone through a psychological trauma. And during the medical interview, I remember I was sitting in the room with the refugee, the head nurse of the refugee clinic. The nurse practitioner shot see fast. She during the interview of suddenly the patient was having a panic attack. And she was instructed to use a brown paper to breathe slowly until she could calm down. At this time, I just like seeing her suddenly I felt myself like being chased by the Khmer rules and being shot by the Khmer rules and running for my life. And, but nobody can tell what I was thinking in my mind at that moment I just like everything is holding inside myself, you know, and how I'm going to deal with this internally and quietly. And, but also fortunately that I have met a psychiatrist, Dr. Nandu at San Francisco General Hospital. He in court, I share some time with him about my story. And he encouraged me to tell me that you have to write it, because it's going to help you to identify who you are, and to help you to heal yourself at the same time. And so after listening to him that was like many years ago, but then when I saw when I sit down and begin to write. I just couldn't do it. I was so scared because I was so afraid to go back to my past. Yeah. So until 2012. I have to make my decision that I have to do it otherwise this story will be gradually disappear. I think that was a big motivation for joy as well as is to get the story out before it's time passes. When I originally started with Excel. It was the older generation that remembers the genocide well like you do Sean is getting older, and to collect those stories before it's too late and I think the retraumatization is a really big factor with one of the family I followed when I was in the city, the daughter, she was one facing deportation and she had been a teenager under the Kimmer Rouge, and she had earlier tried to go back to visit Cambodia as an adult and after the country had changed. And she lasted I don't think she even made it out of the airport because it's like you were talking about she also had was the memories of the Kimmer Rouge and she couldn't get past that and so when you're deporting these people back to where they've been traumatized I think maybe that's another thing I wanted to write the book is so people understand we think of again in difficult times like right now with Corona we always think of the quick solution or or I was just a friend who's writes about who was a journalist in China was writing about how we've actually the laws we put in place. So Chinese journalists working here. Can't their visas are restricted but that restricts Chinese journalists also who are working for BBC and the point was because we're having a tiff with Chinese media being state control things but again, so we look for scapegoats and easy solutions, but then we continue the problem. There's no easy solution when you're deporting these people, you're continuing this trauma this legacy. And I think that's joy you were talking talking about with Corona and racism now and some of those things were seen in the short sided in the other. And you, that was exactly what happened with your story. Right. Unfortunately, that that was the case, especially with the war between India and China. It became really sort of a rallying cry to to take action, I think, and so a law was passed that allowed the make sure I have this right that allowed the the government to to be able to to conduct these so it was a defense of India bill that allowed extensive rulemaking powers from the district magistrate and above. And and the reason given was the the Indian citizens of Chinese origin were of hostile origin so you know I think what you bring up is do take take the path of making laws that enable them to to enact certain actions and that was also very similar to what happened here with the Japanese American internment. And so it really is important for people to understand like the public to understand that and I think we do but when you don't know the personal stories, you don't really understand how the action of governments you know how it just impacts so many lives so many last years and it continues over the generations. I think it's those lasting effects I remember with your book I was surprised that even after your family and other families were out of internment. There was still like you couldn't return to where you're from there were only certain cities you could go from to and you couldn't get your property back you couldn't have certain jobs you couldn't travel I mean it was still a very restricted life. And I guess if we look for parallels now actually with immigration will again out of fear. We're closing we've changed our immigration who were allowing in and restricted things I think I saw how many refugees we've resettled least to be one of the biggest places for refugees and it's gone extremely down but not just refugees were limiting all sorts of immigration and kind of turning in words. It's a turning in words. I remember seeing in my life done after September 11 similar turning in words but so it it's different from what happened there but again you're seeing this persecution of the other in this fear of people who are different or blaming and things so I think you can see that. It was interesting with Sean I forgot that you were you had the Vietnamese family and the Kimo Rouge well they kind of killed everybody. They did discriminate more against certain groups and Chinese Cambodians and Vietnamese Cambodians as well as just regular Cambodians. They also faced additional persecution right Sean. Yes, yes. So at the time when we were in the jungle. The Cameroos evacuated all the villagers to another new open land. But only our family were left behind in the village because we are mixed Vietnamese for some reason there's a rumor talking about our family. And my father was very scared because my mom and my parent my father was so knowing something was going on here. That's why we were left behind. The whole village was empty only our family was there. So the Cameroos told our family that you have to stay there for two weeks until they return. After they send all this new this group of people up to the mountain and they but they return. They will assign our family what are we going to do next. So that right the night after they left. Fortunately, my father's childhood friend in that village. He already at that time he already became Cameroos. So he came to, to tell my father that you have to escape because your family is going to be executed. I can draw the map, you know, for my father for my family so my father lead us to across the border to Vietnam, because of his guidance yeah. I could keep asking a question but I'm not sure maybe should we read some segments now or. We can each go into each of you reading your own books, or we could check in if anyone has any questions at this time, we can do a hand raise or a chat box, or you can wave us down in the hand wave section. Sorry, weird. If anybody calls me. Anybody. Oh, let's see, let's see I see a question in the chat box. Someone wants to hear from the books. All right. Thank you for sharing. Okay, let's go ahead and skip on to the reading we did. I know you guys are going to circle back to the hopeful part, right. That's a unifying theme will be the hope that comes from from all of this and So shall we start Sean, you're going to get off at the reading I'm going to mute you and I'm going to enjoy and cut in myself. Sean though everybody. Okay. So, at this moment let's pretend that I'm now taking all of you back to Cambodia in the 1960s. And what you could would see if you were looking through a window into my life at that time. I have sweet memories of my childhood in Kampung spoo town. The houses were built with break concrete wood and scraps of sheet metal. A giant oval shape ball set on a stone base in the center of town in circle by the main road. People stood on the base and look over the edge into a flourishing lily pond. Children watch small fish poly vox and water beetle swimming back and forth while other chase dragon flies around the pond. The pond was just across the road from our house. Our four and a half story home was made of concrete with an indoor spiral staircase running from the ground floor to the roof. Each level had a balcony filled with potted plants. Looking to the left of the giant pond from our balconies, we could see the black iron bridge sitting above the stone brick not river. Beyond the bridge, beautiful thick green vegetation spread across the land. Along the road, people grew fruit trees such as coconut, banana, papaya and mango. Cold breezes brought the rich scent of wild fresh adjustments. I fondly remember I was about six walking in the rain to school with my brother. We run along in our raincoats, splashing in puddles of rainwater. I laugh as the raindrops tickle my cheeks and drip down my nose. We love running under the deep terrocopter's trees along the red gravel road, where we try to catch the wind flying seeds that floated down spinning in the air like little helicopters. Sometimes we found giant beetles and took them to race as paths. Life was peaceful in those days. We play and run around freely. We went to school and returned home without our parents worrying about our safety. During Khmer New Year, street vendors sold delicious food, candies, snacks and beverages of all kinds. In the evening, the grown-ups and young kids set out on the sidewalks to play Clark Road, a traditional betting game. And Cha Apong is feeling dice game. By candlelight, I saw people laughing, loudly, cheering and patting each other on the back. To me, it seems we dwell in a kind of paradise. 40 plus years later, I'm still haunted by the day when our world changed forever. The self-proclaimed revolutionary soldiers appeared throughout the city. I ran out to the streets with friends and neighbors, watching them march through the city and into our neighborhood. They were dressed in black pajamas like shirts, pants and rubber sandals made from tires. And had Khmer towers wrapped around their head or waist. It was the first time I saw soldiers who dressed like this. The whole scene was too strange. Most of them were teenagers, kids barely older than me and my brothers. Each one of them carried a large weapon. They appeared threatening with a distrustful look in their eyes as if they had been drugged. How could this be? I overheard some adults say. Their pubic hair can't have grown out yet. It was an odd thing to say, I thought, but I realized they were expressing their deep concern. As they marched down the street, I followed raising my hand, clapping and shouting cheerfully to welcome them. Surrey peered, freedom. Some of them cried out in French. La paix, la paix, peace, peace. I was moved by the crowd. As this was the first time I had ever seen people shouting together to welcome the freedom as they had been yearning for. But something was seriously wrong. A few hours later, they unexpectedly spread through our neighborhood. Going house to house, shouting, roaring from their loudspeakers. Camero's voices could be heard all over the neighborhood. Running amok, shouting repeatedly. Get out of your house. The Americans' airplane are going to drop bombs. No need to take anything with you. No need to lock the door. Leave now. You all can return in three days. Simultaneously, we heard gunfire throughout the neighborhood, accompanied by people screaming and begging for their lives. On that day, April 1975, we were forced to leave our home forever and send to a labor camp in the Cambodian jungle. From then on, I began to notice that the Cambodian world I had grown up was shrinking. People were slowly disappearing or vanishing around us. This is what the Camero's teach the young girls. So the meaning of it, we are the group of young girls who help transport food supplies and ammunition to the front lines. As American imperialism melts away and is completely destroyed. I vividly recall one evening when we were desperately wondering if we could survive another night in the jungle. My father entered our bamboo cottage and waved at me to join him outside. My mother and my siblings looked away. And although I was frightened and shaking, I stood up from where I was sitting on the bamboo floor and walked uncertainly to the door and step outside. I remember the sound of crickets and the stars whirling in the sky and the shadow of the moonlight flickering through the trees. Despite the beauty of Cambodia's natural world, I felt sick and hope it wasn't dysentery or one of the other diseases that were ravaging our camp. When I reached my father, he put his hand on me on my shoulder with his firmness. Boys, he whispered to me that he had a plan that would help us escape the camp. I was thrilled and terrified and yet as he spoke trying to ease my nervousness, I knew he had thought all of this through and it was worth the risk. Later, during the escape, as my family and I were racing through the dense jungle rushing toward the border of Vietnam, my father shouted again and again over his shoulder, urging us to keep up with him. I felt something odd beneath my torn sandals. When I looked down, I was mortified to see that I had been stomping on foul-smelling corpses that were swimming with flies. I had to hold back the urge to vomit and scream because I fear for my life. I kept moving as fast as I could, determined to keep up with my father. His shaky voice spurred us on. Hurry up, stay close this way. Seconds later, debris flew around like rain falling from the sky. I heard my mother screaming in terror at the sound of explosion blasting one after another all around us. Everyone trying to run through the forest as fast as they could. Why trying to avoid the land mines? The head of me passed my grandfather and older brother. I saw my father pull my younger brother's hand and my mother yanked my little sister. I was frightened and sweaty suddenly. We were terrified by the piercing voice of a family behind us yelling. The bandits are robbing the people behind us. Run, run! Exhausted and bewildered, we kept moving forward. And finally, reached a clearing that allowed us to see the border. A few hundred yards ahead, we caught a glimpse of the Vietnamese flag waving in the other side of the barbed wire fence. My father heaved a deep sigh of relief and drooped tiredly, planning the next move. We cautiously edged closer one by one to the border checkpoint. A small group of Vietnamese soldiers carrying rifles approached with friendly expressions and outstretched hands to welcome us. One of the soldiers ordered all families to line up. We grew nervous hearing they would detain and question us from confirm that we were Vietnamese. We all became that required waiting for our names to be called. Another flaring of my anxiety and with the relentless heat of the sun to make me sweat profusely. The moment her name was called, a woman in her late 40s fainted. Her face turned blue so people in the crowd splashed water to cool her down and prevent heat stroke. My mother suspected the woman had a heart condition. My father was extremely nervous and warned us not to speak because he was the only one who could speak a word of Vietnamese. He told us we would be sent back to Cambodia if we were found out. The air grew more and more accurate with the smell of gunpowder. Explosions echoed through the forest while we waited to be interrogated. When my father was taken away for questioning by the authorities, my mother, her face contorted with worry, instructed us to keep praying. To our great relief, he soon came back. He looked exhausted with a bitter smile. He told us he passed the language test. My mother beamed with happiness. One by one, each of our family were allowed to pass the border patrol into the land of Vietnam. My mother turned around and burst into tears, waving and saying goodbye to Cambodia, our beloved homeland. She hugged each of us and never looked back. I felt a rush of her courage pour into me. At that moment, I decided to reinvent myself in my own way. Life must go on. Which was one of the many beautiful lessons that my grandparents taught my siblings and me. This book is the chronicle of that story. Thank you, Sean. Thank you. Very moving. Katia. Shall we go to Katia? I'll take this story to the U.S., actually. I'll start with two short excerpts. One's from the second chapter. It's called It Was a Massacre. Cleveland Elementary School, Stockton, California, January 17, 1989. To talk needs to go to the bathroom. He opens the door to exit his portable fifth grade classroom. The teacher at the school will later describe hearing what she thought were firecrackers. Touch knows better. It's gunfire. His teacher calls to him, touch, come back here, get down, get down. Touch says he's screaming. Before he shuts the door, Touch says a gunman on the roof of the sixth grade classroom. The gunman, Patrick West, makes wide swoops with an AK-47 rifle, shooting dozens of children. It is midday, and hundreds of first, second, and third grade students are at research, including Touch's sister and several of his cousins. Touch sees teachers running and blood everywhere. In addition to the AK-47, West, who was outfitted in a flak jacket, military fatigues, has two handguns. Written on one of the guns is the word, victory. West is calm as he launches about 60 rounds at the students. The scene below is utter chaos. Children run in every direction. Teachers scramble to pull youngsters to safety. Helicopters and ambulances load the victims. Panicked parents, many of them residents of a nearby apartment complex, arrive on the scene. Touch's mother is crying. Terrified family and friends surround him, demanding answers. Where's my kid? Where's your cousin? Where's this? Where's that? Touch tells him he doesn't know. He is young, 11 years old. But isn't it the first time he has seen a dead body? As with four of the five children killed, Touch is Cambodian. He's born during the bloody regime of the Cameroonge. When his older brother, Petit, was his age, he was carrying boulders in a children's work camp in Cambodia. Their parents brought them to Stockton in 1985 to start over. Four years later, Patrick West, 24-year-old loner, drifter and alcoholic with a criminal record for drugs, weapons and soliciting sex, came to Touch's school. West killed five children and injured 30 people, many of them critically. Then he shot himself in the head. Santa Ana, California, June 2015. It was a massacre, says Touch. His brother, Petit, adds that the shooting particular traumatized the older generation. They're sitting in the living room with Petit, said Santa Ana home. Touch is going bald now and shaves what is left of his hair. Petit wears loose black pants, gold chain around his neck. It is a warm Southern California morning, but Petit is wrapped in a blanket. If the school shooting had happened in Cambodia, Petit thinks the older generation would have been able to understand. They had seen many people die in Southeast Asia. But the random killing of children was not supposed to happen in California, in Stockton, in the yard of their children's elementary school, a few blocks from their homes. This such violence would find them here was almost unfathomable. They're thinking, we are safe place now, we are safe place now, says Petit. Was a bad luck. That is what Petit wonders. Touch thinks the opposite. His family was lucky, despite his sister and cousins being outside at recess during the shooting. None of them were killed. But they didn't come out on staff. Even now, more than a quarter of a century later, Touch can diagram the layout of the school, recalling exactly where everything was. The fifth and sixth grade buildings, the soccer field, the place where the dodgeball, where he played dodgeball. He had nightmares for weeks, months, years. I still have nightmares, he says. Same thing like me, that's Petit. After I see the movie, the killing fields, I couldn't sleep for a couple of days. That is why when Touch says the trouble started with his deportation, Petit corrects him. The trouble Petit says started in childhood. Do I have time for one more short little segment? One other, I wanted to do one other family. Again, it kind of shows one family member who survived the genocide facing deportation and what that puts all the family through. This is the murderer. Long Beach, California, August 2016. And I apologize, my pronunciation of Cambodian names is not very good. I apologize for that. The agent showed up at Chonbeth Ross's Long Beach home early in the morning. They had a picture of her eldest son, David Ross. Her son had coached her over and over again that she was never to let immigration and customs enforcement agents enter her home. Make them get a search warrant, David told her. You don't have to let them in. You don't even have to open the door. But she panicked when she saw the armed and uniformed ICE agents on her doorstep. And she did both things. She opened the door and she let them in. Chonbeth Ross's first son is a former felon. Her second son is a pastor. It was her second son, Nathan, whom she had tried to abort. It was the mid 1970s. The Khmer Rouge were in power. She had four children already and didn't want to bring another child into the world only to watch it be beaten starved and tortured. She drank stuff and did stuff. But for some reason she remained pregnant. The baby, Nathan, lived. Many others in her family did not. Eight of her 16 siblings died during the genocide. Chonbeth had stayed in Penang Pen. She lived, she believed she would have also died. But after getting married in 1967, she moved to Batam Bong with her husband. They had five children together. Nathan was six months old when her husband disappeared. David always thought the Khmer Rouge took his father because he was ethnically Chinese. Chonbeth left us at the suggestion. The Khmer Rouge didn't only target the Chinese. They didn't like anybody, even Cambodian, she says. She's sitting in a plastic chair in her backyard. She's 68 years old and has only one kidney and no breasts. She's spent much of her life in America on public assistance. She knows poverty. She doesn't even come from it. The daughter of a colonel in Cambodia, she grew up with short furs and maids. She was a rich girl who married a businessman. The Khmer Rouge, she says, didn't like rich people. They like poor people, poor people live in the jungle or something. Her husband knew he was a target of their hatred and went into hiding. Later she heard the Khmer Rouge had found him and killed him. She never saw him again after he fled. She saw someone who had been killed by the regime she was tainted, guilty by a social for whatever crime her husband had committed. After her husband left, she and the children were taken to a distant village. The former occupants of the village starved to death. The family and other undesirables were left in the village to starve. In her telling, the village never has a name. They survived by eating whatever they could find in nature. They didn't know much and they knew they couldn't last long. Many of them didn't. At night time I heard they take the people to kill. I heard the yelling and screaming one by one. She knew one night they would come for her and her children. She was lucky though. Before they came, the Vietnamese invaded and the Khmer Rouge fled. In 1979 she crossed into Thailand with her children. The next year she was in Indonesia. Two years later she was resettled in Oklahoma city with her mother and stepfather, her five children and her niece. But she had trouble settling down. She married a younger man, divorced him, moved to Boston, then got back together with him and moved to Chicago. Her children, she says, got lost in all the moving around. She didn't have time to take care of them. In some ways she feels they raised themselves. They had to. She had a question when her 14-year-old daughter was put in high school even though her daughter's English language skills were too limited to comprehend high school level classes. In almost two decades David was behind bars. Channelists saw him five times. For 20 years she says she lost him. During that time she survived cancer of the female reproductive organs and had one of her kidneys removed. She lost both her mother and stepfather, neither of whom David was able to see while he was in prison. In the early 2000s, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, so both of her breasts have been removed. She has high blood pressure and with a single kidney, she does not expect to be healthy enough to travel to Cambodia to visit her son when he is deported. If he go, he cannot see me again, she says. I'm going to die here and he cannot come back. Thank you. Thank you, Katya. Next up we have Joy. She's going to read a bit from her book. Are you ready, Joy? Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to read from this chapter number 12, Victim of Circumstances. I wrote an article for Outlook India for a special section dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the war and internment that followed. It contained my mother's testimony of the events leading up to her internment with my father and my brothers. It is reprinted here. I remember November 18, 1962 was the day all the Chinese workers in our factory were interned. It was in the morning. Since the carpenters did not speak English, your dad had to interpret their orders for them. They were to leave immediately and had time to pack a few belongings. Each man packed a little. They were gone by noon. Their wives and children wept as they watched their husbands and fathers taken away. Your grandfather promised the workers we would look after their families for as long as we were there. Soon after that day, we heard that Chinese passport holders in Darjeeling and Assam were being interned. Like our staff, only the Chinese men were taken, not their families. Your dad's sister, her husband and the rest of her husband's family were also interned in November. Your grandmother burst into tears when she heard the news. I read her report from Amrita Bazar Patrika about how well the internees were treated. I'm not sure it comforted her, but she seemed a little happier. A few days later, the army came to collect our vehicles to use in the war. Our driver went with the car too. We were told not to leave the compound. Without cars, there was nowhere we could go. Four guard posts were erected around the compound. Each had two men guarding and they were there 24 hours a day. Lal Bahudur, who had worked for us for years, went to shop for our groceries. When he came back, the vegetables and meat, the guards examined his bags. The army was billeted at the airport. Every day, the soldiers drilled and marched. Tanks and combat vehicles rolled past. Trucks and lorries drove on the main road, which was just a few yards from our gate. From the veranda, we watched nervously and told the children not to go near the gate. We lived in uncertainty and fear every day. It seemed we were going to have to go to Dioli, so we all started packing. Each family member had a suitcase. Your grandfather checked his luggage every day. He was diabetic and 70 years old. Some days, he found the suitcase too heavy and unpacked items. The next day, he would find them necessary and pack them back into the suitcase. We all did similar things, sometimes laughing at the choices we made. It was strange what we chose to pack. A photograph, our wedding certificate, socks. We didn't have much to do. The factory and sawmill were closed. Our staff minus the Chinese carpenters, who were already interned, were still living in the compound. Then we started culling the livestock. Every day, we took a few ducks and chickens and prepared them for meals. Nothing tasted good anymore. Everyone ate like machines, but preparing the food gave us something to do. This went on for a month. We followed the newspapers, often afraid of what we would read. The Chinese army had stopped all incursions in November and had pulled back to their lines. We knew this because our driver, Sundar, and the cars had come back from the border. The jeep had been used for transporting supplies and for medical evacuation. It looked like it had been in a war. A week before the New Year, our hopes lifted. Your grandmother got us started on making New Year's sweets and cookies. On New Year's Eve, your grandfather pointed to the packed suitcases, lining the living room and said, I don't want to see these unlucky bags. The war is over. I don't think anything is going to happen to us. So everyone unpacked the bags. We were all happy to do so. On New Year's Day, we had finished prayers and just settled to play cards. We played cards every year to see how lucky the New Year will be. I lost three games. Then I looked up and saw an army car approach the house driveway. Eight soldiers got out and walked to the house with rifles drawn. So we'll stop there and read you another small section. This is from chapter 11 going backwards. It's about my mom and my dad, this side or the other. One day in 2017, when I was talking to my mother, we started arguing. I was referring to former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri during one of our conversations about a book, and she corrected me saying that he was the Home Minister. We went back and forth arguing about his title until I realized that the change had happened when she was interned in Dioli. And she never knew that since his visit to Dioli Camp, Shastri had become Prime Minister, completely caught off guard. Tears welled up as I silently wept again for the hopeless years mom and my family had lost. And for finally understanding why Shastri's visit to Dioli was so unforgettable for mom and for many others in the camp. It was heartbreaking for me to see how she realized that there was even more she had missed during her long years in Dioli. She didn't speak for a while. Shastri's visit to the camp in 1963 was a story I had been told so many times by different people that I felt I knew it well. I felt connected to Shastri because when I was in high school, I won second place in the Lal Bahadur Shastri short story writing contest. I already knew of his visit to Dioli, and there seemed to be a reason that my story broke through the thousands of entries in the contest created in his honor. It was, by the way, a pretty bad science fiction story about haunted twins which is thankfully lost because our class teacher misplaced it. On June 9th, 1963, after a second batch of internees left for China, Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri visited the camp. Mom remembers him as a man of medium height who was soft spoken. A crowd of internees had gathered to listen to him, hopeful that a man of such high standing in the government finally visiting the camp would bode well for their situation. Mom and Dad stood at the back of the crowd. Over a loud speaker, Shastri spoke about the plan for the internees and that those who chose to stay would be returned to their homes. He asked those who wanted to stay in India to stand on one side and those who wished to go to China to stand on the other. The people who wanted to go to China would board the last ship, one that was yet to arrive. The effect of his words was electrifying. Everyone started talking at once, astonishment rippled through the crowd as they dared to home after being banished to a place that they themselves had never heard of until they arrived for what they had only imagined as an impossible, unattainable choice to go back to their homes. The internees eagerly sorted themselves, standing where they wanted to, establishing undrawn lines. My father's face lit up. There was only one thing he wanted from the few options presented to him and that was to pick up his life from where he had left it. He and my mother stood on the India side. After the internees had taken their sides, Shastri thanked them and promised that those who chose to remain in India would be sent back to their homes to go back to their lives and livelihood. The rest would board the last ship to be repatriated to China. So, that was the end of the book. Wow, Joy. I definitely need to get that book from my work and finish reading it. Joy's book came into my job. Well, she mailed it. Right before we closed down and my supervisor said, there's a book on your desk. So that was really riveting. I really cannot wait to read it. We're going to open it up. And the leap down there is holding the book cover. Yay. And then we're going to move on to the next slide. So thank you all for your patience too. While we work on these, how we present in an online setting. I appreciate it would be great. I had a screen share of each book. The next author talk is going to be amazing. Just wait. I want to let you know that in this link that I'm about to put in the bottom. It has all the links to the things that were spoken about tonight in the chat. So we're going to go back to book sync where you can purchase the books. We're supporting our friends and book shops here while we go through all of this together. And do not want to lose our San Francisco book shops. So. Hashtag we love book shops. And we will be working on a way to get you Joy's book as well. So we'd like to kind of open it up to questions now. If you have any questions, please leave them in the chat or you can wave me down. Or you can unmute yourself as long as you don't. Speak over each other. You know, I don't know you all will. So. Shall we go? Let's do the unmute method and I'll catch up that way. Unless you have raised your hands, which I don't see that. I'm just going to read this question and that's in the chat. Everyone can still hear me. Joy. Yeah. So they thank you. This is from plan. Thank you everyone for sharing Sean and joy in the process of writing your book. Are there experiences, people, scenes or details. You wanted to and tried to recall, but could not. Lost memories. Or, you know, memories that you cannot pull up. I can take a short one. So I didn't, I didn't not remember anything because I was so young when I came out, but in talking to my mother for research, I would ask her about certain things and then she would. She didn't tell me about this one event because she didn't think. And I don't remember ever having heard of it, but it was. It was after it was in the camp and the Red Cross had come. And she and the women, they created a little line to stop the Red Cross because there was no contact with the outside world. So they wanted to talk, tell the Red Cross that, you know, there were children and they were locked up and they received no supplies except what was given to them. And it took many passes of just talking about different things. And she finally told me about it. And I, my eyes just flew open and I said, my God, you did that. They made a human chain of women and children and they stood in front of the Red Cross Jeep and the commander came and told them to leave. And they told the men not to go because it might have become a different situation. So, so I think the people, the survivors themselves don't remember a lot of the important things or what I thought was important. They talked a lot about the, you know, common things and you'll see some things are repeated in the book. But Sean, what about your, your experience? You know, for my experience, I, I, I, sometimes I check in myself, how could I remember all these things? And I come to realize that when something really happened to you in a, in a very sad way, you will remember that forever. Or sometimes when you have, you have been a very good news, a happy news to your life, you will remember that forever. You know, that's how I, most of the time I remember all my past stories because it was so tragic. And it was so sad that it came to my life in a so brutal way. That's how I, I, I could jot down all those memories. And I started this book about 25 years ago, like I said earlier, I really believe that I want to share something with everyone because I feel the story I share with them very unique. For example, one of this chapter in my book, I stoned the witch. You know, I stoned, actually it's not a good, it's not a nice thing because I stoned a person, an elderly person, you know, she was at the, by the, she has a cottage. She lived by the river. She was staying there because of her rehabilitation, trying to get fresh air. She suffered from tuberculosis. So when I, when a group of kids, we were playing by the river, we heard some voices, sounds very strange. And the people in the neighborhood spread rumor that there are witches at the, by the river. So I thought that this is a real witch. So we stoned the witch. This is one of the story in one of the chapter in the book. And, and one thing I want to share with you, one time when I was serving as a medical interpreter at San Francisco General Hospital, I assisted Dr. Judy Shefford to, to, to, to interpret for a woman support group meeting, Cambodian support group meeting. A lady, while I was talking to the group, a lady rushed up to me and grabbed my hands and near in front of me and cried. She said, young brother, do you remember me? And I said, I thought she went crazy because I kind of worried. She said, you are the one who saved my life. I was raped. I was a victim of rape in the refugee camp. And you saved my life. And you reported to the Red Cross. And I don't understand how could you live a life so normal now? And I couldn't. I hardly go back to sleep every night. And I looked at her in her eyes and I told her, listen, we all come a long way. If I can do it, you can do it. We are damaged, but we are not destroyed. The woman looked at me and gave me a smile. And I think before I write this book, I carry all this story inside me. Many of them were so painful and moving around, stirring around inside me. So now my book holds my stories. I feel much better. Sharing the story to help open your mind and to allow people to understand what you have gone through. And my thought to anyone who may be in need of healing, if you have a story to share, it doesn't have to be published. Just write it down. The process of writing proof therapeutic for me. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sean. That was really true. And I, this was working with another author coming up next month who said pretty much the same thing. I was wondering if you have everyone should be, he said everyone should be required to write their memoir. In the story. I was wondering if delete wanted to say a few words. Oh, I'm muted now. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. Hi. I like your bookshelf. Okay. Yeah. Actually, you know, it's, it's a privilege to be here. I should say with the joy out there and with these other two authors and why I would love to read the books. Can I just address this question to Katia be, because I feel a little bit of what's the word empathy with you being in a sense an outsider, which I was to the story. Now my problem was when I was writing about what is, how was I going to have access to. And so I want to know what you saw that problem. I mean, it was the reason I asked that is because a lot of the people I met before I met Joy, some of them were willing to talk, but there were a lot of them who very guarded about, about their stories. I want to know if you had the same experience. Did that, did that make sense? Yeah. You cut out here and there, but I think I got it. So if I am not answering the right question, correct me, please, but I think you were saying you had difficulty as an outsider. We were both outsiders with our respective books. And you had trouble getting some of the people to open up and tell their stories. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. It took me a long time to get the trust. And there was a lot of obviously as a journalist, I think it's really the more voices, the better, the more stories, the better. So I think first person accounts are great. And then I think also an outsider tells a different story too. They're different ways of sharing that story. And for some, when I finally did get some people to open up, it was too painful for them to write themselves, but they wanted to share their story and they wanted to have that outlet. And I was honored that they trusted me with the stories, but yeah, to get that trust. It took more than a year probably. The woman I originally wrote about for the article, I wanted to tell her story. And I had her trust, but she did not want her son or her mother to relive that trauma to be exposed to that. So then I went with other people and I went with groups and organizations. Basically I kept showing up. I'm not too, about four hours away from Long Beach, California, where there's a very big Cambodian American community. And I just kept showing up and I kept showing up. And I think eventually, you know, this is a journalist probably, people get so sick of you. They eventually, and I found some who were willing, but even then there were some who, there were four main families in the book, but there are other families I tell little pieces of. And some of those people disappeared on me. I'd meet them once and then I try and follow up and they disappeared and also because some of them, they're facing deportation and some choose to handle it in different ways. So it was definitely tricky. What did you use? What, what, how, well you, you met Joy, but then how else did you get people to trust you on this? Well, Joy solved my problems because she did, she did the writing of the stories that are in the book. And so that left me with the, to me, the easier task of doing the historical research and the political research, whatever you want to call it. And that's what, I mean, that was my problem before I met Joy. I mean, how do I get access to these people? And I suppose if I was writing the book on my own, I would have done what you did eventually, gone and met these people so many times that they got sick of me or maybe found me boring after a point. Then they will talk, but, but, you know, really Joy solved that problem. I didn't have to get into that. So in a sense, that's why I'm so glad we did this book this way because we were able to split this so evenly the, the task of writing it. So very, very, very, thank you Joy for that again. Well actually in reading it, I loved that the two of you and you kind of had, and because you wonder when reading Joy's book, what, what did Indian population think? And then you think that so it was, it was me. And I think some of the people I interviewed were like a joy to me and that they introduced me then to other people. And once I had the trust of one person in the community, it opened up my doors. Thank you. Thank you. I have allowed you to unmute yourselves now. I apologize. And they're supposed to be a hand wave thing, but you are, if you want to speak now, you can unmute yourself and speak. Otherwise, panelists, there are comments filtering in on the comment box. We are six minutes over. I don't want to take up too many people's times, but you know, we're here. If you want to continue to go through, but anyone want to speak, you may unmute yourself. If you want to speak, you may unmute yourself. Is it possible to email the list with the author links? Everyone that was listed today. I am definitely going to do that. And here is the link again. Whoops. I will send you an email follow up with. With all of that. Do you want to see a panelist? Do you see any questions? And now you'd want to take on. As we wind this down. I think there's one for you, Sean. Can you hear me? Yeah. That's my cousin from Cambodia. Okay. Actually, what motivated me to write a story? Because I think that each time when I tell my story to people, they, they, they were so excited to hear that they love the story. And I think that that's the way to tell people by writing it down to share. You know, that's how it motivated me to do so. Thank you. Okay. We're going to, I'm going to call it. And I want to thank everybody for being here. And in that thing, link, I sent you, there's links to our panelists websites. There's a link to my email address. So if you do have follow-ups, I can connect you. We can connect you to Joyce book. You can purchase our books from books, ink tonight. I put the link one more time. People have asked if there's a recording. We're working on what that would look like, but this has been recorded. So we'll figure that out. And we appreciate you figuring it out with us. This is all new for us too. And wow, thank you all handshakes. Give it to them. They can work. Your excitement. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And this is where it gets weird. I'm going to end the meeting and it's abrupt. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Check out SFPLs. Virtual library. Email me. Check us out on social media. Instagram. You can go back and see the shelfies that our authors did. Sean. Joy. Katya. Thank you so much. Thank you, Anissa. Thank you for all the work you do for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Check out SFPLs virtual library. Email me. Check us out on social media. Instagram. You can go back and see the shelfies that our authors did. Check us out on social media. Check out SFPLs. Check us out on social media. Thank you. I can't wait to really dig into your books. Thank you. Anissa. I think it turned out well. And I see you guys and email tomorrow. That was a how it went. Have a good night. Thank you. Good night. Bye Katia by choice. Bye, Sean. Bye Katia.