Shoulders To Freedom: A Cambodian Diaspora Memoir

By Mai Bunla

Mai Bunla was born into an ethnic Lao family in Cambodia. Her memoir, "Shoulders to Freedom," is about escaping the Khmer Rouge regime, beginning a new life in the United States, and finding herself along the way. Central to the events that befell Bunla's family is the tragic capture of her oldest brother, Ai Sang Thout, on whose shoulders she was carried to freedom across the border to Thailand during the escape from the Cambodian genocide. After the Khmer Rouge took her brother, Bunla's family cut their losses and moved forward. However, Bunla learned that moving forward was not an easy path. She recounts the hopelessness she felt living in the refugee camps of Thailand and the Philippines, and the shock of moving to the United States. She was treated as an outsider in each new place, taunted in foreign tongues by faces that didn't look like her own. While Bunla struggled to be a "normal" American teenager, a process that strained her family bonds, the fate of her brother stayed a constant nagging in her life. Twenty-one years after leaving Cambodia, Bunla finally returned to Asia. Only then did she begin searching for her lost brother, a journey that helped her find her true self.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 061576343X
• ISBN13: 9780615763439
• Release Date: May 2013
• Publisher: Mai Bunla
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.4" x 5.5"