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In early 1990s Chicago, in the Uptown neighborhood, young Cambodian men hang out in a back alley of an apartment building and an elderly Cambodian woman and young boy work with krama, a traditional Khmer textile.
Photography Book Captures Cambodian Refugees’ Struggle to Settle in 1990s Chicago
The images convey the experience of refugees and their children, as they struggled to put Cambodia’s conflicts behind them and raise their families in America’s poorest neighborhoods.
By Ten Soksreinith
CHICAGO – For Khemarey Khoeun, the images bring back memories of growing up as a child in the Cambodian community in Chicago: mothers caring for toddlers in front of an apartment block on a summer day, young men donning caps and sneakers who smoke cigarettes on a street corner, a wedding party with the couple in traditional Khmer clothes gathered in a cramped apartment.
Just trying to grow up. Cambodian refugee sees his Tacoma childhood in new photo book
News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. 3/3/2021 Matt Driscoll, The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
Mar. 3 The photos capture a time and a place specifically, the vibrant culture and life emanating from a single Chicago street corner in the early 1990s.
For Silong Chhun a Cambodian refugee who grew up 2,000 miles away on Tacoma s Eastside they could just as well tell the stories of his youth.
That s why Chhun, 42, is drawn to the photographs, he says. In black and white, they document the life he recalls during a time filled with both immense struggle and beauty. The photos don t show his friends or his family, but they might as well.