Summary

Section 1 contains the chapters “Phnom Penh,” “The Ung Family,” “Takeover,” and “Evacuation.”

In “Phnom Penh,” the narrator describes one morning in the city of Phnom Penh, where she lives with her family. She is with her father and mother, whom she calls Pa and Ma, at a noodle shop. During the mealtime conversation, Ma criticizes the narrator for being troublesome, demanding, “How will you ever grow up to be a proper young lady?” (2). The narrator explains that Ma is considered beautiful by everyone who knows her and that Ma says her beauty is due to her Chinese heritage.

Meanwhile, Pa defends the narrator, named Loung, and calls her “too smart and clever for people to understand” (5). Her father is as generous and kind as her mother is pretty, and she describes the way her parents...