One woman's heart-breaking life-affirming memoir of loss survival bearing witness and a
legacy of love 'Landbridge has forever altered what I know how I love and what I hope'
Madeleine Thien author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing 'A masterpiece to console and guide
generations to come' Alice Pung author of Unpolished GemBorn 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.In
Landbridge 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.Written in fragmentary chapters each
with the vivid light of a single candle in a pitch-black room Landbridge 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.
