Taking readers into the heart of Cambodian culture with this compelling litany of triumphs and terrors, poet Oeur (Sacred Vows
) recalls his life as an adroit survivor. Growing up with his farming family in the Cambodian countryside, he had a bucolic boyhood, herding water buffalo away from rice paddies, before a 1961 scholarship took him to California State University. He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop amid the 1960s unrest: "All the tumult that seemed to be tearing America apart, looked like real democracy in action to me." Back in Cambodia in 1968, he married, was elected to the Khmer Republic's National Assembly and became a delegate to the U.N. After Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge caused Cambodia to become a "synonym for insanity," in 1975, millions died from diseases, starvation and execution (the three titular wildernesses). Although Oeur evaded the "killing fields" by feigning illiteracy in six forced-labor camps, there were 23 deaths in his family during the Pol Pot regime. He returned to the U.S. in 1992 and now lives in Texas. This sensitive summary of his nomadic life resonates with passion, poignancy and self-insight. 8 b&w photos not seen by PW
. (Aug.)
