| A Loung Speech at Ball State University |
| Written by John Rozewicki | |
| Wednesday, 20 September 2006 | |
Promoting DiscussionBall State University has a program called Freshman Connections that chooses a common reader for the incoming freshman. The books are usually of the type that promote significant discussion and critical thinking. Interestingly, part of this discussion is that Ball State books the author for a presentation at about the 4th week of the fall semester. One of those presentations is the subject of this article. This is the third, and I would say best, such function I have attended. Fast Food Nation was the common reader for my incoming class, and so we got to enjoy the fun excitement of a reactionary organization called BSYou.net believing Ball State was trying to indoctrinate us into some sort of godless leftist commie way of thinking. Less controversial was last year's Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink, who spoke academically about how social trends happen.A Loung SpeechThis year's speaker was Loung Ung; a 36 year old survivor of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime. She was 9 at the time her brother was forced to make a decision as to which sibling he would liberate from that hell and bring to the United States. He chose Loung, and since that time she has assimilated well into American culture. However, not well enough to shake off the traumatic past she detailed in her first memoir; First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Loung was an excellent speaker for incoming freshman. She's got attitude, sincerity, and compassion on her side. She seems to understand her audience and her purpose. She is there for her wisdom. To give perspective to students that for the most part have not known such devastating hardships as herself. She knows which important points they want her to hit, and she also knows what she wants to say. She balances both expertly.Her TruthYou get the feeling while listening that this is her territory, her life. She feels comfortable speaking about it. She sprinkles the tragedy with humor, but she doesn't sugar coat things. There is nothing anyone could ever say that would make her wrong. There is no debate. She has lived it. Any sentence she begins with, "And I saw..." cannot be questioned or judged. It is her experience. After having heard her speak, I feel I must defend her. Her detractors say that her memory is not credible, and that she's injecting excitement at the expense of truth. However, the most telling example of her honesty is that she chose to write her memoir in the voice of a child. I feel it would have been dishonest of her to write it in the voice of an analytical adult. The only experience of the events that she knows is the one from her childhood, and so she cannot help but convey exactly how she felt at those times; as a child. To say that she is lying outright is improbable. She was clear as to her motives for writing the book. She wanted attention for her cause; landmines. As a writer I appreciated her honesty. This is what I was speaking of before when I said she balanced what she wanted to say with the sorts of things the university wanted her to say. The university wanted her to elaborate on the things she wrote about in her memoir. She wanted to talk about landmines. And if she were to fabricate for the purposes of furthering her own motives, wouldn't she then make sure that she had written that her whole family was taken out by landmines while on an outing? I have trouble believing that a person that honest about her intentions would fabricate parts of her story; especially pieces of the story that don't further her cause as much.ConclusionI want to thank Loung Ung for her wisdom and candor. I felt empowered by the things she said as a writer and as a person. I do not know if others in the audience were touched in similar ways by her speech, but I know that what she said affected me deeply. She has lived through extreme hardship, and it would be foolish for people, especially young persons, to not pay attention to her. Life experience is what makes humans into people. To not better yourself by listening to the experience of others would be a mistake.Trackback(0)
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