Home Is East [Mass Market Paperback]

Many Ly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2007

Ever since she was a tiny child, Amy’s father’s friends have told her that her young, pretty mother is going to leave her. Of course Amy knows that could never happen—her parents love each other and her, so how could her mother ever leave? Then, one chilly afternoon, Amy’s mother never shows up to pick her up from school. In that moment, Amy confronts a world that she never wanted to know existed.

Amy and her father are Khmer, or Cambodian. In Florida’s tight-knit Cambodian community, word travels fast—and pity soon becomes suffocating. When Amy and her father escape to California, Amy faces new challenges, including a father that she barely recognizes. But with strength and courage, Amy builds a new network of friends, and comes to understand her father’s deep sadness—and his fierce love for her. Home Is East is a moving and hopeful story of how a father and daughter came apart, and how they found their way back to each other.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-8–Amy, a nine-year-old Cambodian American, lives in a Cambodian community in Florida when she begins to tell her story. Troubled by rumors that her mother is thinking of leaving her father, she is stunned when her mother is gone one day, but not as distraught as her father, who seems completely unable to cope or to take care of his daughter. Over three years, readers see this traumatized daughter and father struggle together and finally move across the country to San Diego. There they find a more Americanized community, make friends, learn to support and take care of one another, and deal with the truth about the woman who has left them both. Amy worries about everything from friends, clothing, and boys to her father's desperation, while she longs for her mother and integrates herself into the welcoming families in the neighborhood. Her love and respect for her heritage is always clear; to Amy, the Cambodian language …reminded me that a small piece of that ancient land…was in each ounce of my blood. While readers will gain insight into a foreign culture, they will also realize how similar people are regardless of background. This is a good coming-of-age story, a good father-daughter story, and an excellent story about how immigrants become part of a new country while retaining their own culture.–Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, FL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-7. Fifth-grader Amy and her father, a refugee from the Khmer Rouge, decide to make a fresh start after Amy's mother abandons them--evidently the pretty, young Cambodian had only married to get into the U.S. But even after moving from Florida to San Diego, Amy's new life with her father feels as if they were "standing side by side but not complete, like a stool with a missing leg." At first Dad terrifies Amy with his drunken outbursts, then he infuriates the moody middle-schooler when he connects with area Cambodians and contemplates a second marriage. An unexpected encounter with her real mother prompts Amy to discard naive hopes of a family reunion and embrace the changes in her life. Ultimately, this first novel feels rather unfocused, with more emphasis on Amy's dizzyingly shifting emotions than on development of a cohesive, compelling plot. Despite that, many readers will sympathize with Amy's alternating devotion and rage toward her father and will appreciate the window her story opens onto a closely bonded immigrant community. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Laurel Leaf (July 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440239001
• ISBN-13: 978-0440239000
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,791,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant story of cultural differences and change, March 13, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Is East (Hardcover)

Many Ly's Home Is East tells the compelling story of Amy Lim, who has known all her life that her Cambodian mother intends to return home some day. Her mother is younger than Amy's American father and her Cambodian friends are sure she's married just to get to America. At age nine Amy is sure they're wrong - until her mother vanishes, and her father is devastated. How can she help when her remaining parent begins to fall apart? A poignant story of cultural differences and change.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Honest, Heartfelt and Thoroughly Satisfying Read, August 23, 2005

By 

M. Hackler (Lafayette, LA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home Is East (Hardcover)

I try to expose myself to a wide variety of literature and have learned to appreciate a number of genres outside of my experience. I never expected, however, to become so taken with Amy, the protagonist of Ly's novel, a character with whom I seem to have so little in common. Amy's story is not only touching, it is achingly real. This is not a fairy tale of assimilation and the triumph of the American dream. It is instead a powerful portrait of a family who has suffered so much only to trade the intensity of its old suffering for a brand of suffering that is newer, more complicated, and in a way more insidious. More than anything else, however, it is a portrait of a girl depicted so sincerely that her confusion, pain, and ultimate clarity and sense of self stay with you long after you have put the book down.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Novel - - great identity issues in the Asian American Community, May 17, 2007

By 

B. Cheng "krolap" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home Is East (Hardcover)

After picking up this book to read for leisure I could not help but choose it over my lengthy required novels for class. "Home is East" is a compelling story that reveals common issues in a Cambodian-American home. Although this book focuses on a Cambodian family struggling to make it in the American dream, the story still carries universal themes such as love, compassion, forgiveness and belonging. I would recommend this book to all but especially the Cambodian community as it may reflect or can be related to the younger generations that are caught between two worlds.

The story begins with Amy Lim's character and follows her throughout a few years of her adolescent life. As you read through the book, there is a strong sense of guilt and resentment towards her parents as she does not know what is the "right" or "wrong" thing to do or act in public. She is too caught up in her mixed emotions about her family that often times gets bottled up as there is no outlet for her feelings.

This would be a great Summer read for teenage girls, although it is fiction it somewhat reflects the issues that arise Asian American families today.