Writing POC 101

Cambodian American Characters

Hello everyone, I personally don't see a lot of Cambodian representation in stories so I would like to pitch in my few cents. I am not completely Cambodian (I'm only half) but my family embraces that side of us a lot. I may have Thai and Chinese influences here and there but I wouldn't know so this is based off of what I know of Cambodian culture within America.

A note is that I am a Cambodian American in Massachusetts so it may differ from those who live in California and other places.

First thing's first: a lot of Cambodian people moved to America as a result of a Khmer Rouge. Even though I had not even experienced it myself, it is still a rather sensitive topic as my parents had experienced it. When they were rather young, in fact. (You can watch First They Killed My Father on Netflix: It provides a more tame version of the experience) Due to their experience, you don't hear much of the earlier lives of parents and grandparents due to their PTSD. I know a lot of jobless grandparents whose main reason for not working is because they had to rid of their documents and burn them for the sake of their family during the time. As a result, you may never learn of your grandparent's career: I hadn't even learned that my grandfather was a doctor until a few weeks ago. It is also due to Thai event that a lot of parents who lived around that time don't recall their birthdays so they just make one based on what they can overall remember when moving to America.

Now onto another topic: Names. Now, I am not entirely sure if this applies to all Cambodians, but in the village my family was from, they take the name of the grandfather as the child's last name. For example, say you have a name Ashton Chen. That would mean Chen was the grandfather's first name.

Another thing is that, like I've seen for other cultures, some people have American names when moving to a country. Of course, they are still legally by their actual name.

Within the family, people have nicknames that you can never live down. As soon as you get a family nickname, you're always called it within the family even if you hate it.

As an example, my nickname is Mi Quah. This is largely due to the fact that I started wearing classes since young and "Quahck" (Pardon my poor romanization) means blind or poor sighted. The "Mi" indicates being of the female sex while "Ah" indicated being of the male sex. I'm saying sex since I'm a trans male so like even though I identify as male, they still refer to me as "Mi Quah".

Now in terms of childhood, I still am not sure if this applies to everyone.

I know a lot of people whose parents turn to alcohol, smoking, and drugs. This is highly due to them using it to try to use it to cope with their PTSD or stress. Within our culture, we don't speak to others of our problems. Doing so is seen as a sign of weakness.

The culture is not very welcoming of mental illness as a result which tends to worsen said mental illness due to lacking the help they need. An example is since I have depression, they just think I'm overreacting and am just too dramatic and say the standard absolutely-worst-response you can give to it which is "Stop being so depressed!!!"

My parents often showed me videos of Cambodians without limbs working hard on the farms as some dark way of encouragement and it just makes the recipient of it feel more like trash.

Another thing is that, as I see in other cultures, the children are shamed if they can't speak Khmer (The Cambodian Language).

Another thing about Cambodian culture is that hitting your child is not bad. Hitting family is not bad. In fact, Cambodia has a really bad history of abuse based off of research. It is not as bad here in America than it so for those living in Cambodia. A lot of children experience abuse when young and they don't even realize it not do they try to call out or address it due to the weakness thing mentioned earlier. They simply see it as discipline. As a result of the abuse, the children develop future relationship struggles and also form a cycle of abuse.

It is due to this weakness thing that Cambodian people just put on smiles and try to hide their pains.

Now not all Cambodian families are like this: there are in fact families who have fully healthy relationships it's just that I always see families with at least some sort of problem, whether they be on a large or small scale.

Now let's try a more positive topic: culture. A lot of Cambodian culture was erased during the rouge, as a result, Cambodian people try to embrace their culture a lot.

I'm sure many Cambodians have heard of the singer Preap Sovath as he is well known. I believe - I could be completely wrong so bear with me - that he is on par with Bird Thongchai, a Thai singer.

In terms of dance, many dancers had suffered an unfortunate fate during the Rouge and as a result, dance is something important. All the Cambodian dances tell little stories as far as I know based on my limited knowledge of the dances.

In terms of food, Cambodians eat rice with most things. Even our noodles are rice noodles and some of our desserts have rice. Cambodian food is similar to that of Vietnam, Thailand, China, and generally southern Asian countries.

For example, meekatang is a favorite which is similar to the Chinese's chow-foon and another classic is khuy teav (eat it winter, eat it summer, doesn't matter if it's a hot food, we still eat it because we love it) which is similar to the Vietnamese's pho. However, we have our own unique food like num pachok.

Cambodian parents tend to be the parents who never want to go out to eat since they know how to make it at home by themselves. The amount of times I wanted to eat meekatang and asked if we could go and at a restaurant only for my mom to cook a tray at home is something I can't count.

A lot of Cambodian families are Buddhist. They don't mind too much if you're agnostic or atheist or basically anything else.

Our funerals tend to not be too much. We usually do them at home or at a wat (a temple). After the prayers (well, some people skip out on it like me since I'm always lost since I can't understand Khmer, there are always people eating, and there tends to be kids always playing around) and such, people tend to just have fun after or rather the whole funeral is like a party. According to my mother, they do so to make you feel happy instead of sad.

Cambodian people are quite superstitious at times, depending on my families. For example, apparently in Cambodia (based on what my mom said) sleeping near a window is good luck. They also believe things such as moths are ancestors watching over you and they don't recommend killing them (which is why I am always suffering because I'm mottephobic and they won't kill the moths).

Please remember that this is purely based on my experience and some common things I have seen since I don't have very positive experiences. It may not be like this for all Khmer people. I hope other Cambodian people become more willing to contribute to this book after having read this to pitch in more of our culture and try to shed a more positive light on it than I could. These are things that I think you should take into account when writing Cambodians.