Customer Reviews

Home Is East

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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.

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.

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.

In Home is East, Many Ly introduces us to Amy Lin, a young girl trying to find her place in both American and Cambodian communities, coping as her family falls apart. But this is not only a story of cultural identity and a dysfunctional family. Amy reminds us of our ability to love unconditionally and to forgive. And she reminds us of the tension between wanting to know truth and, at the same time, be protected from it. Many Ly masterfully explores these complex emotions within a story that is engaging from beginning to end.

Home is East is a great new book. Amy and I,I have the feeling, could get along very well. We like a lot of the same things.
The story was really, really, painfully truthful. Everything, the gambling, the beating, and especially the leaving, was portraying a cruel fact of life.
The saddest scene, for me, was definitely when *spoiler* she saw her mother's new family.
Also, Sopiep's slow change from stand-up-for-herself tomboy sort of girl to a so-called 'girly girl' because of her growingly apparant crush on what's-his-face... sorry I forgot his name and couldn't be bothered to read the editorial, so if it says his name, you can all insult me, lalala

I had planned to give this book to my niece after reading it, but I think I'll donate it to the local abuse shelter instead. I didn't enjoy reading it, because it was too upsetting. But it might be good for a child who has had an unhealthy family life to read about others in similarly difficult situations, so see that s/he is not alone, and that things can turn out okay.

The messages about abuse and friendship were poignant, but I'm not sure what the author is trying to say about gambling - it's very bad, but you can drink/gamble all night and come out rich. The poker scene on the beach felt a bit like a lesson in how to play, and didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the story.

It's sad that the Cambodian people depicted in this story do not consider themselves American, even after many years here. America is a land of people from all over, so it is possible to become completely American without forgetting/losing the heritage/culture of your homeland.