Description

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 Gem
Born 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.

Publisher Review

Y-Dang Troeung’s presence feels so alive in these pages, where wonder and sorrow, motherhood and history trace one another across time, and unspool the shape of our present. Landbridge has forever altered what I know, how I love, and what I hope — Madeleine Thien, author * Do Not Say We Have Nothing * Landbridge is the most courageous act of love from an academic who has pared back all the pretensions of academia, a writer who understands the true gift of voice and interrogates who gets to ‘gift’ it, a book that illuminates with laser-bright insight the duty of the ‘survivor.’ Y-Dang’s wisdom, stoicism and brilliance survive in this masterpiece to console and guide generations to come — Alice Pung, author * Unpolished Gem * Landbridge is the most unforgettable book I’ve read in years, a work of astounding humanity and honesty in the face of unimaginable grief. It is no small undertaking, to wrestle with the generational toll of genocide, migration, upended pasts and unreachable futures, yet this is what Y-Dang Troeung does. In their totality, the fragments that make up this memoir are a vital, visceral reminder that, across all manner of tragedy and violence and even time, we are bound to one another by love. For all the pain it charts and of which its author manages to make meaning, Landbridge is, above all else, a love story, one that will be remembered — Omar El Akkad, Giller-prize winning author * This Strange Paradise * Landbridge is among the most profound and heartbreaking accounts to emerge from the Cambodian diaspora. Y-Dang Troeung weaves a complex narrative that speaks to the unceasing traumas of war and dislocation. Each of the fragments rendered here shimmers like a small jewel, at once spare and prismatic. Equal parts memoir, history and love letter, the collection as a whole is nothing less than a tapestry of life itself, made more beautiful and precious because it is wrought from the salvaged pieces of all that is broken. A rare and stunning achievement that deserves its place in the literary canon — Vaddey Ratner, author * In the Shadow of the Banyan * Heartbreaking, courageous and exceptional – after finishing Landbridge you will want to call everyone you know to tell them to please start reading. You will tell them it is a matter of urgency. This rare book by Y-Dang Troeung is unforgettable — Linn Ullman, author * Unquiet * Y-Dang Troeung is a great ancestor to whom we owe our reverence. Her gift to us is the art of reclamation that renders infinite futures possible. Troeung’s legacy is a refugee lifeworld – powerful in its creation, fearless in its scholarship, and eternal in its love. Landbridge is a torch that we must pass on to every generation. The story of her life is an extraordinary fire in my heart — Monica Sok, author * A Nail the Evening Hangs On *