Landbridge

<p><b>One woman's heart-breaking, life-affirming memoir of loss, survival, bearing witness and a legacy of love</b></p><p><br><b>'<i>Landbridge</i> has forever altered what I know, how I love, and what I hope' Madeleine Thien, author of <i>Do Not Say We Have Nothing</i></b> <b><br> 'A masterpiece to console and guide generations to come' Alice Pung, author of <i>Unpolished Gem</i></b><br>Born in, and named after, Thailand's Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, Y-Dang Troeung was - aged one - the last of 60,000 Cambodian refugees admitted to Canada, fleeing her homeland in the aftermath of Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Rouge regime. In Canada, Y-Dang became a literal poster child for the benevolence of the Canadian refugee project - and, implicitly, the unknowable horrors of the place she had escaped.<br>In <i>Landbridge</i>, a family and personal memoir of astonishing power, Y-Dang grapples with a life lived in the shadow of pre-constructed narratives. She considers the transactional relationship between a host country and its refugees; she delves into the contradictions between ethnic, regional and national identities; and she writes to her young son Kai with the promise that this family legacy is passed down with love at its core.<br><br>Written in fragmentary chapters, each with the vivid light of a single candle in a pitch-black room, <i>Landbridge</i> is a courageous piece of life writing, the story of a family, and a bold, ground-breaking intervention in the way trauma and migration are told. <br></p> <p><b>One woman's heart-breaking, life-affirming memoir of loss, survival, bearing witness and a legacy of love</b></p><p><br><b>'<i>Landbridge</i> has forever altered what I know, how I love, and what I hope' Madeleine Thien, author of <i>Do Not Say We Have Nothing</i></b> <b><br> 'A masterpiece to console and guide generations to come' Alice Pung, author of <i>Unpolished Gem</i></b><br>Born in, and named after, Thailand's Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, Y-Dang Troeung was - aged one - the last of 60,000 Cambodian refugees admitted to Canada, fleeing her homeland in the aftermath of Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Rouge regime. In Canada, Y-Dang became a literal poster child for the benevolence of the Canadian refugee project - and, implicitly, the unknowable horrors of the place she had escaped.<br>In <i>Landbridge</i>, a family and personal memoir of astonishing power, Y-Dang grapples with a life lived in the shadow of pre-constructed narratives. She considers the transactional relationship between a host country and its refugees; she delves into the contradictions between ethnic, regional and national identities; and she writes to her young son Kai with the promise that this family legacy is passed down with love at its core.<br><br>Written in fragmentary chapters, each with the vivid light of a single candle in a pitch-black room, <i>Landbridge</i> is a courageous piece of life writing, the story of a family, and a bold, ground-breaking intervention in the way trauma and migration are told. <br></p>