Not Just Victims: Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States

by Sucheng Chan, Audrey U. Kim

Wars in Southeast Asia drove unprecedented numbers of Cambodian refugees to settle in the United States. From southern California to New England, Cambodian communities took root amidst struggles of assimilation and triumphs of adaptation.  In  Not Just Victims , Sucheng Chan offers oral histories based on conversations with Cambodian community leaders in eight American Long Beach, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, and the Massachusetts towns of Fall River and Lowell. Eschewing victimization narratives, these accounts provide vividly detailed descriptions of Cambodian refugees building new lives in the United States. Chan's introduction places their stories against the backdrop of recent Cambodian history, from the civil war through the bloody Khmer Rouge revolution to the Vietnamese occupation. In addition, Chan includes an essay on oral history.

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2003

About the author

Sucheng Chan is a Chinese-American historian, scholar, and author, recognized for her contributions to Asian American Studies. She was the first to establish a full-fledged autonomous Department of Asian American Studies at a major U.S. research university and became the first Asian American woman to hold the title of provost in the University of California system.
Born in Shanghai in 1941, Chan and her family moved to Hong Kong in 1949, Malaysia in 1950, and later to the United States in 1957. She earned a BA in Economics from Swarthmore College (1963), an MA in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi (1965), and a PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley (1973).
Chan taught at several UC campuses, including Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. She retired due to post-polio syndrome but continued to contribute to the field, donating her extensive collection of research materials to academic institutions. She has authored and edited numerous books on Asian American history, immigration, and race relations, including This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910 (1986) and Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943 (1991).
Throughout her career, Chan received numerous accolades, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (1988), multiple Outstanding Book Awards from the Association for Asian American Studies, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the same organization in 1997. She is married to Mark Juergensmeyer, a scholar of religion and global studies.