The Gradual Extinction of Softness by Chantha Nguon with Kim Green

"A good Asian woman is supposed to shine dimly, like a moon, and reflect her husband’s sunlight. Her skirts must not rustle when she walks. She cannot show anger. Even her laugh should be quiet and demure.

When I first met my future husband Chan, I tried to be his silvery moonlight woman. In our first years together — running from Saigon, then waiting for years in the refugee camps — I strove to follow the Chbab Srey ["Rules for Women"]. But I discovered that obedience could not be exchanged for rice and was therefore of little use. “You are not an Asian woman at all,” Chan told me once, smiling his half-joke smile.

My parents must have wanted a moonlight life for me. Why else would they name me Chantha, “the light of the moon”?

My family left the world before I could disappoint them.

We have a saying in Cambodia: “Men are like gold; women are like cloth.” It means men are a treasure, and women can be thrown away very easily. But more than that, it means that when a man falls into the dirt, he can be polished clean, but a woman will be soiled forever."