'KHMER SOUL' TELLS OF CAMBODIAN CHILDHOOD.

Byline: A.K. WHITNEY

>LA.COM 

Navy Phim is one of the lucky ones. Neither she nor her family, farmers in Northern Cambodia, directly witnessed the horrors perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in the "killing fields" of the late '70s.

"I did not live through the Killing Fields, per se," Phim, 32, writes in "Reflections of a Khmer Soul," her recently self-published published autobiography (Wheatmark), "but I am trying to understand the pain, loss, dehumanization and post-traumatic syndrome that lingered in the minds of many survivors. I was merely an infant."

The author was born eight days before Pol Pot took over Phnom Penh in 1975. The tyrant's four-year rule resulted in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century, leaving some 2 million dead and millions more displaced by the dictator's scheme to move urban dwellers to the countryside. As farmers, the Phims were not affected by Pol Pot's policy, but living in a country at war took its toll.

Phim's parents and family have told her the tales of living in fear of Khmer Rouge soldiers, who would kill anyone suspected of betraying the regime. Hiding food was another crime, and Phim tells a story of how, as a toddler, she demanded a piece of jack fruit.

"As I demanded to be fed, several Khmer Rouge soldiers were strolling behind our hut," Phim writes. "At that moment, my parents thought they would be killed for hiding food, a betrayal that caused many people to be killed during the regime. Fortunately, the Khmer Rouge were speaking too loud to hear me."

The Phims then decided to leave Cambodia, hoping eventually to get to America.

They spent time in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines, and Phim's clearest childhood memories come from those camps, where life was far from easy, and soldiers, this time Thai, were still looked at with fear.

In 1984, the Phim family (Navy's younger brother, Phavoeung, was born in 1978; three more children would be born in America) got sponsorship from a church group and emigrated to New Mexico. They then moved to California, settling in San Jose, which has a large Cambodian population (and many relatives), then to Long Beach in 1990. Phim graduated from Poly High School, then attended UCLA. Last year, she got her master's degree at Cal State Long Beach.

She always enjoyed writing, and the idea of writing a book about her childhood experiences, her Cambodian identity and heritage, and American misconceptions came to her in 2004.

She worked on the book on and off until writing began in earnest a year ago. She joined a writer's group in Long Beach to get feedback, and pieced together a manuscript. She decided to self-publish, hiring an editor and then getting 900 copies printed. The retail price on the book is $14.95, but Phim said she is charging $12 at her signings. The book is also available through wheatmark.com, amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders.

Today is her first signing, and Phim said she feels it is fitting to have it at Portfolio since she wrote much of it there.

As for going back to her homeland, in the 23 years since leaving, she has been back four times, most recently last year. Even though most of her life has been spent in America, Phim still speaks Khmer to her family. Since high school, she said, she thinks mostly in English.

"But I still count in Khmer," she said.

A.K. Whitney [phone],

[e-mail]

REFLECTIONS OF A KHMER SOUL

>What: Book signing by author Navy Phim.

>Where: Portfolio Coffee House, 2300 E. Fourth St., Long Beach.

>When: Noon today.

>Information: navyphim.com.

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no caption (book: "REFLECTIONS OF A KHMER SOUL")