This story was inspired by real people living in the Stung Meanchey garbage dump in Cambodia. The home of the primary character, Sangly, her husband, Ki Lim, and their son, Nisay, is a one-room shack. The door to the outside is a curtain. And they spend their lives picking through the dump for things that can be salvaged and sold so the family can eat and try their best to put a little aside for the medical care needed by their son. Their lives are dirty, from the environment in which they live, dangerous, due to fires at the dump or the risk of being run over by a bulldozer in the dump or from gangs stealing their meager findings, and Sangly is constantly worried about her son’s chronic diarrhea and failure to thrive.
Though neither of them can read, when Ki Lim brings home a picture book he found while picking through trash, it awakens a desire in Sangly to learn to read. She enlists the aid of the rent collector, Sopeap Sin, who reluctantly agrees to teach her. The story follows Sangly on her quest to learn to read, and to get her son to a traditional healer back in the province she’d come from. The story also reveals many more difficulties of Sangly’s life and hidden depths in Sopeap Sin, whom many had despised for her bad temper and chronic drinking. Sangly also learned the value of friendship, and how to find beauty and hope in her surroundings, no matter how bleak.
I listened to this book and while it certainly had moments of sadness, overall, I would have to say it was an inspiring and hopeful story.
