USD Magazine Fall 2021

[ r e s i l i e n t ]

“My dad left for Vietnam to pre- pare for our escape, but war came faster than he planned,” she recalls. “The soldiers carried AK47s. They said we had 15 minutes to leave our homes. My mom was the only one left to take care of seven children.” Taing escaped from Cambodia to Vietnam. As the war in Vietnam escalated, she gained passage on a ship off the island. At sea, the ship was invaded by pirates. Passengers were left stranded on a tiny island that became a makeshift refugee camp, where Taing and two siblings were sponsored by an American couple who brought them to the U.S. to live near San Antonio, Texas. There, she attended Catholic school, sang in a church choir and took summer school courses to learn English. She was a

by Krystn Shrieve H Surviving the Khmer Rouge Communist rule B E C O M I N G A B U F F A L O oang K. Taing McWil- liams ’90 (BA) was a young girl when she

This was her life under the rule of the Communist regime known as Khmer Rouge. Taing shares an unfiltered look at that time in her life in a compelling memoir, Buffalo Girl , My Journey to Freedom. Once old enough, Taing was forced to contribute to the com- mune by living with a team of children who cared for a herd of water buffalos. She nearly drowned after being dragged through a swamp by a buffalo, and was later assigned to an al-

bino buffalo, whom she called the Pink Lady. “I told myself, if I ever had the chance to come to a free country, I would find a pencil and any scrap of paper I could get my hands on to write this story,” she says. “I wanted to give a voice to all the innocent people who were killed by the Khmer Rouge.” Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge claimed the lives of 2 million people, including many members of Taing’s family.

was forced from her home in Phnom Penh, when the capitol city of Cambodia was overtaken. She walked hundreds of miles in searing heat and torrential storms, foraged and bartered for food, was separated from her parents, thrown in jail, survived invasions by pirates, was marooned on an island after abandoning a ship and lived on the brink of starvation.

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