Children Of The River Analysis

Children of the river
The book children of the river is about a girl named sundara who is forced to move from cambodia to america. this book takes place during the vietnam war and this is what caused sundara, soka, naro, sundaras grandma, ravy, and pon, to have to go to america. Their culture in cambodia is a lot different from our culture in america. They have the parents arrange marriages, but they don't get married until they are around sixteen instead of when they are very young like in some other countries. They believe that white skin is more beautiful than black because they have been taught to believe that, and they believe that touching a child's head will bring them bad luck and make them stupid. The problem with these cultures and

beliefs is that they never even loosened the grip a little bit on them and shunned all americans and tried to make them change their ways to adapt to them while they are the ones that needed to loosen their grips on their traditions and at least try a little to understand american traditions instead of shunning them. This book’s them is to talk to and understand your family and also not to dwell on the past and instead focus on the present and the future. In the book Sundara has a terrible relationship with her aunt soka because sundara wants to try and embrace being an american but Soka is clinging on to their old traditions. They are also separated because Sundara believes that Soka hates her for not keeping her baby alive, but this isn't true and she would know that if they would talk to each other. While at school sundara meets a boy named Jonathan that she loves but she is so scared of Soka that she attempts to shun him but can’t ever stop herself from going with him on “dates” and talking to him at school. Sundara ends up being very depressed because the boy she was promised to in cambodia had died. She is sad for a couple of days until Jonathan approaches her and cheers her up until a couple of days later she is taking out the trash and hallucinates and thinks that she sees Soka’s baby in the trash and starts freaking out and that is when she finds out that Soka doesn't blame her. I enjoyed this book it is not one of my favorites but it was ok but not as good as “my brother Sam is dead”