Customer Reviews

The Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Childhood, 1975-1980 (Vietnam War Era Classics Series)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Actualy I would rate this 4 and 1/2 stars.

Having read "First they killed my father" by Loung Ung It would be difficult for me to review this book with out comparing it to Loung Ung's memoir.

Both are essentially the same story, a young upper middle class girl living in Phnom Phen in april of 1975 when thier life, family and happiness are torn from them by the khmer rouge.

Many of thier experinces are similar as you might expect (long hours in forced labor, family deaths, witnessing murder ect..) but each has a unique story of thier own.

The writing styles also vary greatly and this is where Loung's "First they killed my Father is the better" book. Molyda tells her story in a very straight foward manner. Her discriptions of murder, torture and rotting corpses are alomost clinical in tone as if she is afaid to visit or express her real feelings at the time (and who could realy blame her) we are giving only hints about her family and life before April 17th 1975 (to be fair this may be in part to spare distant family members still in Cambodia from retalation)

In Loung's book however we are treated to two light hearted chapters discribing her life in Phnom Pehn before April 17th 1975 this gives the reader a chance to feel they realy know her, her brother's, sisters and parents thier strengths and weakness'.

Loung's memoir is far more emotional in tone and feeling leaving the reader almost gasping for air at points.

For those overly squimish that makes "The Stones Cry Out" the better of the two books. It is also the better of the two books if your sole interest is the surrounding history of the killing fields.

But for those just wishing to read a great emotional book "first They killed My father" is the better choice but I would highly recomend both to all.

One of the earliest (1986) accounts from the survivors of the Pol Pot regime, "The Stones Cry Out" seems to have set the style and standard for another more recent child's-eye perspective on the same era, "When Broken Glass Floats". The minute details of everyday life, not abstract poltical assessments, form the basis for our childhood memories. The author's account carries an unvarnished realism which draws the reader into her film-like image of daily life under threat of starvation and execution. This is probably as close as a reader can come to the truth of events in Cambodia during 1975-79. Oral histories such as "The Stones Cry Out" are perhaps the best way for survivors of human rights abuses to indict the perpetrators. Sadly, tribunals driven by international politics are unlikely to have the same impact as the simple testimony of a victimized child. Highly recommended reading for all those with an interest in human rights, Cambodia, and Southeast Asian culture.

I am a 12 year old reader, and this book was heart-breaking. It is so sad that something like this hapenned, and so many peoples' lives were destroyed. Molyda Szymusiak's story makes me realize how lucky I am to enjoy my freedoms.

This is the autobiography of Molyda Szymusiak of Cambodia. This story is more intense and real than the movie the "killing Fields" which looked at life in Cambodia during the Kymer Rouge's rein of terror. Molyda allows her readers to enter into the immense sorrow and loss that she experienced as a young girl fighting to stay alive in a world of death. This is life struggle at its worst. The will to survive dies and Molyda's life goes on. A lifetime of death, dying and grieving will be revealed and experienced to every reader. It will open your eyes. Thanks Molyda for opening your heart and letting me experience your life. It has made all the difference in mine. If you're looking for a book from the heart, here it is if you can find it. Because it's no longer in print.

This is one of those books, once you start reading you can't stop. I can't even describe the horror and atrocity the Cambodian people had to endure under the Khmer Rouge, but Molyda's book is heart breaking because the story is told from the child's viewpoint. This is a wonderful book describing an event that should never have happened. Hopefully after reading this book, people will never let genocide and a holocaust exist ever again on this earth!

My heart sank lower and lower with each successive chapter. This is certainly not a book one can read while couching comfortably on a sofa. If you are familiar with Cambodian history of the Khmer Rouge regime, this book is indeed a chilling read. But at the same time, one can't help feeling admiration for the author's fortitide in the face of unimaginable hardship and horror.

There are no words adequate to convey the effect THE STONES CRY OUT had on me when I read it in 1986. It haunted me for years. I wanted everyone I knew to read it.

Just several years ago I met a woman whose entire family - her husband and all her children - died under the Khmer Rouge monsters.

Amazingly, after the stories Miss Szymusiak recounts: of the young girl who was killed for being too pretty, of those murdered for daring to exhibit signs of affection for one another, and of unspeakable tortures inflicted upon absolutely helpless and innocent people of all ages, the chapter which really drained my blood was the one detailing her witnessing the beginning of the purge. The author notes the young Communist cadres being themselves called in for interrogation and torture and disappearing one by one.

This is a chilling account of the darkest period in 20th Century history.

You need a strong stomach to read the grueling ordeal of a 12 year old girl in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime.

The latter and his cronies turned a whole country into a concentration camp guided by the iron fist of a centrally planned economy which was based on rice production quotas.

Starvation and killing of whole families including babies were part of normal daily life. The author herself lost nearly all her family.

The slogan was 'be deaf and dump if you want to survive'.

Exceptionally, this book also relates the disturbing facts which happened in a Red Khmer camp in Thailand until one year after Pol Pot's defeat by the Vietnamese.

Molyda Szymusiak tells only the facts. She doesn't explain the overall picture of Pol Pot's regime, politically, socially, economically or internationally.

Therefore I highly recommend the eminent works of David Chandler as well as Philip Short's magisterial biography of Pol Pot (Saloth Sar).

This book shows painfully the disastrous consequences of a power grasp by ideological fanatics who created a one party state bureaucracy which wielded total uncontrolled power over the population.

This regime was a terrible shame for the left.

A very disturbing read.

Cruel and horrifying, this story of near-death during the Pol Pot regime is excruciatingly painful. The author is the sole survivor of an entire family, and manages to escape with a cousin to the refugee camps in Thailand, but not before watching her siblings and parents die of starvation, a tragedy told in unflinching and agonizing detail. In fact, the day-by-day progression of this story is occasionally hard to accept--how could a girl on the verge of death remember every event of every day? When I discovered that her adoptive parents were psychiatrists, I suspected that possibly they were "helping" Molyda recall for therapeutic benefit.

One of the odd things about this book is the lack of introspection--Szymusiak describes one painful experience after another with clinical objectivity and only rarely lets us know her own feelings of anguish and hopelessness.

The book has some historical interest as it was one of the very first personal accounts published of survival under the Khmer Rouge.