Compassion

A Light of Hope
by Kuong Ly

“Bang! Bang!”

The sound echoed in my head the September night my mother broke the news. “Your cousin Gift was killed last night at Revere Beach,” she said. These words sunk into my heart and left me suspended in disbelief. At twenty-three, Gift was gunned down after a dispute with a rival gang member. The son of refugees who fled genocide, his death reveals a story largely unheard outside our community. It is a story of a youth facing violence, his streets mirroring the blood that flowed through the killing fields of Cambodia.

It’s been a quarter of a century since the Cambodian holocaust, yet the violence that slaughtered 2 million people continues to affect the 200,000 Cambodian-Americans living in the United States today. Many Cambodian-Americans were exposed to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime; some were even trained as young children to kill. Sadly, many still turn to violence to solve their conflicts here in the United States.

Most Cambodian families, like my own, barely escaped this horror and realize that they can never return home to Cambodia. Since I was young, my parents have told me to remember my roots and the pain my people have gone through. They instilled in me the cultural values they grew up with. The name “Kuong,” given to me at birth, is defined as “a light of hope.” As the most outspoken member of the family, I became their light of hope, pushing for change by making the public more aware of the problems facing the Cambodian community.

As a male, my involvement with community action is even more important because so many Cambodian-American males are facing the challenges of crime and violence in their neighborhoods. Concerned with these issues, I helped launch Builders of a Brighter Cambodian Community, an organization devoted to helping people like Gift. I volunteer my time tutoring inner- city Cambodian-American students, hoping to implant the seed of education. By staying in school, my students are staying off the streets and enriching their minds in the process.

Gift’s death had a profound effect on me. At first I blamed myself; I should have saved him from choosing the wrong path. In reality, Gift was taken from me long ago by the streets he walked through. Growing up in poor neighborhoods ridden with violence and drugs, he dropped out of high school at sixteen and took a turn for the worse. There is no point in blaming myself for what happened. I couldn’t stop the bullets from puncturing his body, but I can help those walking through the same streets.

I do not want Gift to die in vain. After his death, my devotion to helping my community has grown even stronger. My determination to succeed in education is fueled by my deep desire to use my knowledge to serve my community. I hope to one day set an example for the next generation of Cambodian-Americans - igniting a light of hope for our community.