Salvage

Krisna Uk spent a long period of fieldwork in a Cambodian village she names Leu, studying the Jorai, a minority people who also live in Vietnam. Their homeland lies in a remote corner of northeast Cambodia, where state authority has long been thin, and it was among the areas hit hardest by bombing. The book follows one Jorai community caught in the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge period, both of which were long, brutal, and at times senseless. Uk shows how these upheavals reshaped the community's moral life, its daily work, and the spiritual and physical world its people depend on. Her account shows how the villagers have held onto their communal life despite aerial bombardment and revolutionary violence. It also looks at the lasting injuries that leftover munitions cause to bodies and to relationships within the community. Yet the study also shows the Jorai reworking these dangerous imports of modern warfare into tools for living, along with crafted and ritual objects meant to guide the dead toward a better existence. Through this creative labor, Uk argues, the people of Leu revive the reputation of their warriors by turning deadly weapons into their own trophies.