Personal Narrative: The Khmer Rouge

In my narrative, I wrote about the Khmer Rouge in the perspective of my grandma. I chose this topic because it has made a huge impact on my family. None of us would be the person we were today if this event had not taken place. My family was lucky to have survived, but it has also made our bond stronger as a whole.
Throughout this genealogy project, I did some research to gain more background knowledge for my narrative. I found some reliable websites that had a lot of information about what the Khmer Rouge was, and why it happened. I also had a conversation with my mom and grandma to have a more specific account of what happened since they experienced it firsthand. I learned that some of the information I obtained was hard to put together.

This was because the sources I found online were based on facts, and the story from my grandma was based on experience. I tried to make use of both in my narrative, but the pieces didn’t always fit together so well. Most of the information I found was quite relevant, but there were some parts that I couldn’t use in my narrative. For example, it was interesting to find out why the Khmer Rouge started in the first place, but I couldn’t exactly include that in my narrative. Since it was in the perspective of my grandma, she had no idea what the cause of the event was at that time. They only followed orders and could not ask any questions. I learned that the information I found while researching might not always be useful.
In the end, most of the information I discovered could be put into my narrative. I could have tried to find the accounts of other survivors because that would have been more useful for the purpose of my narrative; however, each one would have had a different perspective. It would have been hard to try and take out the bias. Overall, I thought that my research went pretty well, and it helped enhance the true feeling of the narrative.