One of our recommended books is Ma and Me by Putsata Reang

MA AND ME


This program is read by the author.

The memoir of a refugee caught between her identity as a gay woman and the love and life debt she owes her mother.

When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors,

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This program is read by the author.

The memoir of a refugee caught between her identity as a gay woman and the love and life debt she owes her mother.

When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child’s life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.

Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma’s side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put’s adoration and efforts are no match for Ma’s expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it’s just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it’s because she’s not trying hard enough. When, at the age of forty, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married—to a woman—it breaks their bond in two. 

In her startling memoir, Reang explores the long legacy of inherited trauma and the crushing weight of cultural and filial duty. With rare clarity and lyric wisdom, Ma and Me is a stunning, deeply moving memoir about love, debt, and duty.

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  • Macmillan Audio
  • Audio
  • May 2022
  • 11 hours 20 minutes
  • 9781250856234

Buy the Book

$26.99

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About Putsata Reang

Putsata Reang is the author of Ma and MePutsata Reang is an author and journalist whose writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Ms, and The Seattle Times, among other publications. Born in Cambodia and raised in rural Oregon, Putsata has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries, including Cambodia, Afghanistan and Thailand. She is an alum of Hedgebrook, Mineral School and Kimmel Harding Nelson residencies and has received fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Jack Straw.

Praise

“Compelling, accomplished . . . Food, language, family, career, displacement, community, and love form a powerful web in this brave, deep think of a life-telling about expectations and the stories that bind us to, and divide us from, those we love.” —Emily Dziuban, Booklist (starred review)

“Luminous . . . In wringing compassion from her complicated legacy, Reang offers a nuanced mediation on love, identity, and belonging. This story of survival radiates with resilience and hope.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] piercing memoir . . . [Ma and Me features] well-wrought vignettes of a complicated mother-daughter bond.”—Kirkus Reviews

Ma and Me is an important new entry in the growing body of American refugee and immigrant literature, shining a fearless light on the experiences of queer people whose families have survived the trauma of war. It also stands apart as a work of lyrical beauty, exploring culture, duty, guilt and family with heartbreaking clarity.”—Christy Lynch, BookPage

 

Excerpt