Stay Alive, My Son

Simply put, you must read this book: Stay Alive, My Son, by Pin Yathay. I've never had a book elicit such visceral anger and grief. At times I was literally vibrating with rage at the author's unbearable suffering, which he recounts with the detached demeanor of one who has lost everyone dear to him.

In a nutshell, the book is Yathay's account of the Khmer Rouge's rise to power in Cambodia in the 1970s and how nearly every member of his family was systematically destroyed in the regime's maniacal plot to rid the nation of any they perceived of as a threat to their establishment of a socialist utopia.

Although Cambodia is known for the "killing fields", where 20 percent of the nation's population was exterminated, what struck me even more than the overt violence of the Khmer Rouge is the dehumanizing strategy of their worldview. In an attempt to create loyalty and dependence on the regime, people were removed from their homes, family relationships were severed, children were taken away for brainwashing, books were destroyed, education was banned, personal possessions were stolen and redistributed and every aspect of daily life was controlled—all under the guise of ensuring equality. The result, of course, was not equality, but universal poverty, starvation and social disintegration.

Read "hard" books like this. They will motivate you to pray for, give to and advocate for those who have no access to the freedoms we take for granted.