UKS 22nd Annual Culture Night (2018-2019)
This year’s UKS CN story plot revolves around the topic of Cambodian deportation. It focuses on Ponleak Sok’s life from the beginning of his family’s escaping of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, and Cambodian Genocide to his life assimilating into American society. Through all the twisting and turning along his journey to understand his identity as a Khmer teenager being raised by a single mother, he paves his own path in life without the role models he always wanted. Having paved his own path, Ponleak runs into trouble on the streets not from the support he attains from his brothers in the hood, but the system that criminalizes all gangsters. As a result, Ponleak becomes a product of the system that swallows him into the vicious cycle of poverty as well as the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline. As he reflects upon his life, he realizes the injustices he was dealt upon leading him to question his self-worth and the problems society has.
These problems continue to manifest Ponleak’s life as he faces the pressures of deportation after being released from prison. Through this generational timeline, Ponleak changes in multiple ways visible to his friends, family, and loved ones. However, life takes different trajectories based on the life we are pre-situated in.
This single narrative we cover is only one story that discusses the overview of deportation within the Cambodian community, but this issue is far more complex when the steps are taken to look deeper into the policies, social processes, and family dynamic. Although this story represents the Cambodian community, the broader Southeast Asian community continues to face tremendous pressures from the Trump administration as more and more Southeast Asian refugees face deportation threats.
Therefore, the relevancy of this story exceeds beyond surface level reflection because it discusses about the family dynamics we may or may not relate to. Depending on the level of relevancy, we can reflect on both similarities and differences to understand the privileges that separates our lives from Ponleak, which ultimately reveals the contrasting worlds we live. Although we live different worlds, our lives connect on various multitudes, prompting us to take action because we cannot always wait to take a stance until we are personally affected. We cannot wait to solve this problem once our best friend, family member or close acquaintances become victims of detention and/or deportation.
These problems continue to manifest Ponleak’s life as he faces the pressures of deportation after being released from prison. Through this generational timeline, Ponleak changes in multiple ways visible to his friends, family, and loved ones. However, life takes different trajectories based on the life we are pre-situated in.
This single narrative we cover is only one story that discusses the overview of deportation within the Cambodian community, but this issue is far more complex when the steps are taken to look deeper into the policies, social processes, and family dynamic. Although this story represents the Cambodian community, the broader Southeast Asian community continues to face tremendous pressures from the Trump administration as more and more Southeast Asian refugees face deportation threats.
Therefore, the relevancy of this story exceeds beyond surface level reflection because it discusses about the family dynamics we may or may not relate to. Depending on the level of relevancy, we can reflect on both similarities and differences to understand the privileges that separates our lives from Ponleak, which ultimately reveals the contrasting worlds we live. Although we live different worlds, our lives connect on various multitudes, prompting us to take action because we cannot always wait to take a stance until we are personally affected. We cannot wait to solve this problem once our best friend, family member or close acquaintances become victims of detention and/or deportation.