Week 9_Melanie Manuel_ASA 150E

Melanie Manuel

ASA 150E 001

26 February 2020

In the chapter titled, “Lost Chapters and Invisible Wars” of Cathy Schlund-Vials’s War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work, Schlund-Vials examines Cambodian-American rapper, PraCh Ly’s Dalama trilogy. Ly cites this trilogy of music he self-created as means of justice as he recounts the tales of what it was like to be ruled under the Khmer Rouge and expose the truth about the Killing Fields through the stories and experiences of his friends and families, while also juxtaposing these experiences of war in Cambodia to the struggles faced in the United States. In a way, he seems to claim that the war in there (Cambodia) is no different to the war here (U.S.), which isn’t a far cry from the truth. The system oppression and state-sanctioned silencing made against Cambodian-Americans is tragic. The autogenocide in Cambodia came as a result of U.S. interference, and the only thing that the U.S. could offer as support is the permission for Cambodian refugees to enter the land of the so-called “free.” But what this chapter reified for me is the importance of understanding the histories happening in the homeland, and how the lack of discussion of what happened in Cambodia plays a role in how Cambodian-Americans are perceived in American society. Their silencing allows Cambodian-Americans to fall away from the American narrative, and so their oppression and misunderstanding of selves begins. 

I think music is a powerful way of helping an individual understand themselves—to have one’s own histories reflected in music is resonating, because generations to come can even understand their own histories when it is already untalked about. 

I’m sharing one of his songs: https://youtu.be/Kux5UR0UPYU

The uploader’s comment in the description was interesting, because he said he wanted to share this so it wouldn’t become lost… and that’s the beauty of music, it can be shared over and over again. 

Works Cited

Schlund-Vials, Cathy. “Chapter 4: Lost Chapters and Invisible Wars – Hip-Hop and Cambodian American Critique.” War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work, 2012.