Broken Glass: A Young Girl Named Ginger by Utara Norng: book review

Broken Glass: A Young Girl Named Ginger – sex, drugs and gambling on love in today’s Cambodia by Utara Norng (2010) is set in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, from 1975 to the 2000s.

It is based on the true story of a mother and daughter, narrated by each of them alternately. Both of them are known to the author Utara Norng, and remain anonymous.

Both women are survivors. Mother Malis is a survivor of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979: the three years, eight months and 20 days that changed the country. Sixteen-year-old daugther Ginger is a survivor of the late 1990s and 2000s when gangs and guns ruled Phnom Penh.

Of her children, Malis says Ginger is the smartest and strangest. They disagree, argue, and fight. In a world where Malis fought to survive, she chose life. It seems that her bar-working, modeling (or sex working) daughter is associating with the wrong crowd and choosing to spiral downwards to addiction, crime, abortions, and an early death.

Ginger says her mother doesn’t understand her, and Malis doesn’t understand how Ginger’s life got this way. Malis knows the barbaric history of her country, and Ginger doesn’t want to know – for she was born during the worst time in the country’s history. Ginger’s father is on the periphery.

At rock bottom, the two become stronger together.

I read this book while working in Cambodia. It is authentic and unembellished. The voices of Malis and Ginger are honest, insightful, and real.

This is an interesting focus on history, struggle, survival, and the actions that break and make mother-daughter bonds. It is well-written, and worthy of a read because it crosses the invisible boundaries of past and present, and moves towards hope and healing.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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