BGSU Firelands Common Read

When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.

Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma’s side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put's adoration and efforts are no match for Ma's expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it's just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it's because she's not trying hard enough. When, at the age of forty, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married—to a woman—it breaks their bond in two. In her startling memoir Ma and Me (FSG/MCD May 2022), Reang explores the long legacy of inherited trauma and the crushing weight of cultural and filial duty. With rare clarity and lyric wisdom, Ma and Me is a stunning, deeply moving story about love, debt, and duty.

Putsata Reang is a foreign affairs journalist who has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries including Cambodia, Afghanistan and Thailand. She worked as a reporter for major metropolitan newspapers including the San Jose Mercury News and The Seattle-Times before moving abroad to train journalists in investigative and political reporting in conflict and post-conflict countries. Putsata is an alumna of writers residencies at Hedgebrook, Mineral School and Kimmel Harding Nelson, as well as the Jack Straw Writers Program. She has received grants from Washington State Artist Trust and the Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Politico, Ms., the Guardian among other publications and she has been anthologized in essay collections that highlight women’s and Khmer voices. Putsata lives with her wife in the Pacific Northwest.