Cambodia When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Chanrithy Him The title of this memoir comes from a Cambodian proverb offered by the author's sister to explain their circumstances: When good and evil are thrown together into the river of life, first the klok, or squash -- representing good -- will sink, and the armbaeg, or broken glass -- representing evil -- will float. But the broken glass, Chea assures her, never floats for long. Unfortunately, Chanrithy Him and her sister witness a time in their nation's history when the glass hovers at the water's surface for far too long. Over the course of four years in the 1970s, Him witnesses the death of her parents and three siblings among the nearly two million others lost in the killing fields as the Khmer Rouge attempts to create an agrarian utopia in Cambodia. Labor camps for adults and children are the norm and death a constant companion, as execution, starvation, and disease claim life after life. Him goes on to describe unbearable atrocities that another, less unflinching author might have omitted: her sick yet still breathing mother thrown with corpses into a well; a pregnant woman beaten to death as her baby struggles inside her; her sister's starving body leaking fluid from between her toes. Still she manages to fight off despair and look toward survival. Now living in Oregon, where she studies posttraumatic stress disorder among Cambodian survivors, Him has written a first-person account of the killing fields that relies on stark truth to speak eloquently of its importance.