MA AND ME A Memoir

Putsata Reang's quiet narration of her beautiful, poignant memoir holds both deep compassion and raw pain. In the 1970s, she fled Cambodia with her family. She was small and sick, and the captain urged her mother to throw her overboard; instead, her mother saved her. That debt haunted Reang as a child and a young adult as she strove to become the perfect Cambodian daughter. She explores the weight of familial and cultural trauma, her career in journalism, and her winding journey to living openly as a gay woman, despite her mother's disapproval. Her complicated relationship with her mother is at the center of the story. Reang's ability to capture both her own and her mother's histories, desires, and dreams--in her voice and her prose--is remarkable. L.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2022]