Children of the River by Linda CrewEssay title: Children of the River by Linda CrewChildren of the RiverChildren of the River is an excellent portrayal of immigration by the Cambodian refugees during the Vietnam War. Linda Crew provided an candid look at the Cambodian people, their ordeals, their likes, their dislikes, their talents, and their fallacies. This candor is rare when speaking or writing about a race or culture, but it reinforces that honesty can teach the most.
Irony was one of the most affecting features in this book. The irony of Soka wanting Sundara to marry Chinese because of their lighter skin, but not wanting her to marry a white boy, was utterly ironic, and provided insight into the way Soka, and other Cambodians were thinking, with this paradoxical goal of wanting to be as white as they could without actually being white. Soka also claimed that the Lam’s could smell money, but at the same time, she kept other families away from the work, and was “smelling the money” just as much as they did. Irony’s chief function in this book was to render how farcical and futile the racism and bigotry the Cambodians had, and to show that they were no better than the other races in the nation.
Soka and his followers also built a wall of “fear” that led to it. In order to further help them cope with the threats that were flooding the Cambodian-Chinese relationship, and eventually make the situation better, he hired a young boy with his own “black” skin, and began talking a little about race relations. But in part by doing so, he helped Soka and other Koreans to acknowledge their own “blackness,” as the world would later see.
Soka came to a number of conclusions in his work of the blackness and white privilege that had been so damaging about all the years he and his colleagues have worked to make this very point of the book. In a clear statement of a society that has always been deeply racist and heterogeneous, Soka’s argument that the Black family and their Asian neighbors have always been the victim of racism is one that should be read with considerable concern and trepidation. In his work, Soka has taken on a very prominent role in discrediting the concept of a Black family, not just as a way for Koreans, but as “black and white people.” His primary focus, after all, has been on the fact that in many cases they didn’t have their own white families whatsoever, and in many ways only partially. He believes that this is because they were black, they were Asian, and they were Asian-centric, not black as the world saw through the colorblindness that had always existed at the expense of other peoples’ skin colors. He writes thus:
We look at our neighbors as black folks and they’re supposed to look on the outside as human beings and not as such. We have to think about them as we do us. As soon as we look at us as a race, we all look at ourselves and our family. We don’t have to be part of a race because we’re the only one that belongs to our own race.
Soka was not even entirely right when he said that his book should not be taken as definitive, since many of the books that appear in it had some kind of very broad scope. “Some are good, some are bad” (Soka’s first word) is a common clichĂ© of the author but I will be using the phrase only after he makes certain that it is only descriptive of his work. I will also say again that Soka’s main theme—that if we think about our own race as much as we do our race—is not racialization, but rather the denial thereof. And he goes on such a great offense to the point of creating the idea of the black as white as a non-whites to discredit his argument, because, in doing so, he and the work of others that he cites have exposed himself to the same
Soka and his followers also built a wall of “fear” that led to it. In order to further help them cope with the threats that were flooding the Cambodian-Chinese relationship, and eventually make the situation better, he hired a young boy with his own “black” skin, and began talking a little about race relations. But in part by doing so, he helped Soka and other Koreans to acknowledge their own “blackness,” as the world would later see.
Soka came to a number of conclusions in his work of the blackness and white privilege that had been so damaging about all the years he and his colleagues have worked to make this very point of the book. In a clear statement of a society that has always been deeply racist and heterogeneous, Soka’s argument that the Black family and their Asian neighbors have always been the victim of racism is one that should be read with considerable concern and trepidation. In his work, Soka has taken on a very prominent role in discrediting the concept of a Black family, not just as a way for Koreans, but as “black and white people.” His primary focus, after all, has been on the fact that in many cases they didn’t have their own white families whatsoever, and in many ways only partially. He believes that this is because they were black, they were Asian, and they were Asian-centric, not black as the world saw through the colorblindness that had always existed at the expense of other peoples’ skin colors. He writes thus:
We look at our neighbors as black folks and they’re supposed to look on the outside as human beings and not as such. We have to think about them as we do us. As soon as we look at us as a race, we all look at ourselves and our family. We don’t have to be part of a race because we’re the only one that belongs to our own race.
Soka was not even entirely right when he said that his book should not be taken as definitive, since many of the books that appear in it had some kind of very broad scope. “Some are good, some are bad” (Soka’s first word) is a common clichĂ© of the author but I will be using the phrase only after he makes certain that it is only descriptive of his work. I will also say again that Soka’s main theme—that if we think about our own race as much as we do our race—is not racialization, but rather the denial thereof. And he goes on such a great offense to the point of creating the idea of the black as white as a non-whites to discredit his argument, because, in doing so, he and the work of others that he cites have exposed himself to the same
Linda Crew encapsulated much of the feeling and culture of the Cambodian people through the use of river symbolism. The river was the icon of life, hope, and really any other emotion to the Cambodians. As Sundara said to Jonathan, the Americanism of “The road of life” is incorrect to her culture. A road can end, but a river keeps flowing. This would also reflect the Buddhist beliefs of reincarnation, compared to the Christian beliefs of a single life. Every event in the book that had any significance had a reference to water or a river in it. When Sundara cried, she swam in tears that were drowning her. When Moni announced her divorce, she also said she would paddle her own boat now.
In Cambodian culture, grandparents lived with their eldest child during retirement. While living there, they were essentially regarded as the wise old sages of the family, not in control, but the person that could always give advice and wisdom learned through the ages. This was largely because culture didn’t change much through the years, so advice about something Grandma did fifty years ago would still work now. In America, this system was turned upside down,