{"id":18322,"date":"2014-02-10T09:10:29","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T14:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=18322"},"modified":"2014-04-18T00:25:16","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T00:25:16","slug":"in-the-shadow-of-the-banyan-by-vaddey-ratner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/in-the-shadow-of-the-banyan-by-vaddey-ratner\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/04\/In-the-Shadow-of-the-Banyan.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-25010\" alt=\"In the Shadow of the Banyan\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/04\/In-the-Shadow-of-the-Banyan.jpg\" width=\"940\" height=\"1417\" srcset=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/04\/In-the-Shadow-of-the-Banyan.jpg 1818w, https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/04\/In-the-Shadow-of-the-Banyan-530x800.jpg 530w, https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/04\/In-the-Shadow-of-the-Banyan-800x1205.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px\" \/><\/a>Confession first: I took almost two years to finish this debut novel. Not until an interview deadline loomed (stay tuned!) could I force myself to keep turning the pages until I reached the end. Because I just couldn&#8217;t let the book go. As wrenching and terrifying as the story is \u2013\u00a0the survival of a young child through the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia that took most of her family along with some two million others \u2013\u00a0<em>In the Shadow of the Banyan<\/em> is surely one of the most heart-stoppingly gorgeous titles I&#8217;ve read in years.<\/p>\n<p>Based on her own family tragedy, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vaddeyratner.com\/\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Vaddey Ratner<\/a>&#8216;s novel is a love letter in honor of the poet prince father she lost. Ratner&#8217;s fictionalized counterpart is Raami, the oldest daughter of a Cambodian prince who, with his privileged western education and reverence for his ancient culture, found his personal balance in beauty, knowledge, but most especially humanity. These are the unassailable traits that he imbues in his young daughter, but they are also the very elements of his royal background that take him too soon to an unknown grave. Under Khmer Rouge control, the family members disappear \u2013\u00a0murder, suicide, illness claim their shattered souls \u2013\u00a0until Raami is left only with her bewildered mother who somehow finds the steely strength to save them both.<\/p>\n<p>In the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vaddeyratner.com\/banyan\/\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">book trailer<\/a> available on her website, Ratner hauntingly bears witness: &#8220;[<em>Banyan<\/em>] isn\u2019t so much the story of the Khmer Rouge experience, of genocide, or even of loss and tragedy &#8230; I thought it was something much more universal, much more indicative of the human experience: our endeavor to stay alive, our very desire for life.\u201d The book\u00a0proves to be that remarkable, living gift, providing undeniable testimony that only humanity trumps deprivation, injustice, horror, and even the greatest tragedies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Confession first: I took almost two years to finish this debut novel. Not until an interview deadline loomed (stay tuned!) could I force myself to keep turning the pages until I reached the end. Because I just couldn&#8217;t let the book go. As wrenching and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,797,325,6,136,137],"tags":[6608,75,10,51,1001,39,41,1002,45],"class_list":["post-18322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-cambodian","category-cambodian-american","category-fiction","category-southeast-asian","category-southeast-asian-american","tag-bookdragon","tag-death","tag-family","tag-identity","tag-in-the-shadow-of-the-banyan","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-royalty","tag-vaddey-ratner","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/in-the-shadow-of-the-banyan-by-vaddey-ratner\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Confession first: I took almost two years to finish this debut novel. 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