The Tiger’s Choice: Revisiting The Clay Marble
Eleven years ago I made my first visit to Cambodia and fell in love. I was in Phnom Penh, which in 1997 was a city of hope, and the mood of joyous optimism that pervaded its streets was irresistible. The man who was my motorcycle taxi driver during my visit was a man whose smile touched his eyes but did not erase the omnipresent sadness that lived in them. His parents had been killed during the years of Pol Pot when he was just entering his teens, and he refused to accompany me when I entered the grounds of Tuol Sleng, the school that had been turned into a torture chamber, because that is the place that had made him an orphan. He took care of his younger brother as best as he could and they both survived.
He took me to his house in the rural outskirts of the city so I could meet his wife, his two small sons, and his baby daughter. His children all gleamed with the love that he gave them, healthy and happy. At one point during my time with them, my host tapped the side of a large and bulging burlap bag. “Rice,” he said proudly, “We eat it every day.”
When I read and reread The Clay Marble, it brings this memory so strongly to mind that I often find that I am in tears. Minfong Ho evokes the hunger of that dreadful time–for food, for family, for community, for the ability to know that a harvest of rice will soon be reaped, for the safety to sleep in one’s own house with secure and happy children close by.
Obviously I have emotional baggage that I bring with me to this book – would it have the same impact if I had not fallen in love with Cambodia? What about you? Does this book move you or does it feel contrived? Is it an issue in search of a story or does it bring the refugee experience to life? Please let us all know what you think…
July 31st, 2008 at 4:57 pm
We are about 1/4 of the way through – the first clay marble has just been made! I am reading it as our bedtime story at the moment, though I suspect we may have to move it to daytime as the story progresses. They know what is coming because we read the synopsis first but we are so caught up in the story that when things start to go wrong it will be shocking for all of us. Dara’s voice is so convincing and Minfong Ho writes beautifully, bringing the camp alive while keeping the narrative flowing. Like Dara, we’ve had to do some imagining and comparisons with our own experiences to get an inkling of the sheer size of the camp…
So going back to your survey, here’s a book whose protagonist is a girl – but my two boys are riveted!
July 31st, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Thank you, Marjorie! The Clay Marble will continue as the Tiger’s Choice through August, so please let us all know what you and your sons think as you come to the end. I admire you for choosing to read it aloud to people who are under the age of ten–as a person who’s just under the age of sixty, I am moved to tears every time I come to the final chapters–and yet am left with a strong feeling of hope.
August 23rd, 2008 at 9:48 am
Hello again! Well, we finished reading the Clay Marble about 10 days ago. At the time we were all shocked and upset by the ending and I thought I would leave it a few days before asking the boys what they wanted to say about it. It does mean that their immediate reactions are lost but both of them highlighted Friendship as something that stood out for them. The setting in terms of the war has had more of an impact on Older Brother. Little Brother was much more caught up in the narrative in terms of what was happening to Dara and the other characters. Anyway, here, verbatim, is what they said about it:
Older Brother (nearly 10): “I thought the Clay Marble was very interesting because it was based on things that really happened; and quite horrible at the same time because some people had lost their legs and got infections – things like that. When Jantu died I felt very sad, especially because I thought it was disgusting that she was shot by one of the soldiers that was supposed to be protecting her. She’d been a very good friend in the story.
When Sarun was coming to the Border and for quite a while at the Border, he was always talking about planting crops and building a home for the family but then after a few weeks he was going to join the army at their camp. Then he didn’t want to go home; he didn’t want to plant crops – he wanted to stay there and be a soldier. He wanted to shoot. He thought it made him be a man. He felt like a man, not just a young lad. Why does a rifle, some bullets, some clothing, some fighting – what’s it got to do with being a man? You might die.
Everyone was scared and had to keep moving around. I felt scared for the children who lost their parents.
I thought it was quite funny that Dara believed that the clay marble was really magic, but the extraordinary thing is that when she closed her hand around it, it gave her courage.”
Little Brother (7 and a 1/2): “The Clay Marble makes me think about friendship. Some of the grown-ups were very mean because they were bombing the Border and the refugees and not just the enenmy’s soldiers. The fighting made Sarun stop thinking about growing his crops and they had to have more bombings.
It made me very sad when Jantu died. She was gifted and she helped Dara believe in herself. Dara was very brave.”
I think that although Little Brother especially was quite young to be taking in all of the inferences of the story, I don’t think they were too young and they were both completely caught up in it. They were horrified to hear about how close to reality it was. The small map at the beginning was brilliant and we referred back to it many times. We read the introduction afterwards and again, they were struck that there really had been a clay marble. We and they have read stories set in wartime before but I think this is the first time they have realised war is not just in the dim distant past as the Second World War, say, is to them. In fact, it became very real to them when my husband, who also sat in at many of the story-times, told us that as a photographer in 1980, he had actually witnessed a rocket attack at a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian Border…
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:42 am
I am so moved and amazed by your sons’ comments that I have to wait before making any comments of my own. This is the first time that I’ve ever heard the reactions of children to this book and I think you showed extraordinary courage in reading it aloud, which must have been an emotionally draining experience in and of itself–let alone working with your children’s reactions.
I’m so amazed by the maturity and eloquence of your sons’ comments. Would they mind if their thoughts were used in the final posting for The Clay Marble?
August 24th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Yes, I found it emotionally draining. Fortunately I had read ahead so was not having to deal with my own reactions at the same time as the boys’! We read the last few chapters in one sitting the morning after we’d read about Dara finding Jantu and the Baby in the hospital. The boys were both stunned when Jantu was shot. They were indignant and upset, and furious with the way Sarun behaved afterwards – as was I! I think the ending was managed beautifully becasue, after all, this is a story written with a young audience in mind. Sarun did not lose face but was able to take up his role as head of the family and the story ends with a message of hope – emphasised by the epilogue of Dara “now”, a few years later and a mother herself. A novel for an adult audience wouldn’t get away with being so tidy at the end – but Minfong Ho delivers a riveting story and instils in her young audience the idea of the futility and randomness of war at a level they can absorb, without ever having to state it explicitely: and that is why I think it’s a fine book.
The boys are happy for you to use their thoughts in your final round-up.