Author Signing

Chaucer’s Books is honored to have author and freelance journalist, Katya Cengel, with us to share and sign her new book entitled Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back. Katya Cengel met San when San was seventy-five years old and living in California, having miraculously survived the Cambodian genocide with her three daughters, Sithy, Sithea, and Jennifer. But Sans familys troubles didnt end after their resettlement in California. As a teenager under the Khmer Rouge, Sans daughter Sithy had been the familys savior, the strong one who learned how to steal food to keep them alive. In the United States, Sithys survival skills were best suited for a life of crime, and she was eventually jailed for drug possession. U.S. immigration law enforces deportation of any immigrant or refugee who is found guilty of certain illegal activities, and San has hired a lawyer to fight Sithys deportation case. Only time will tell if they are successful. In Exiled, Cengel follows the stories of four Cambodian families, including Sans, as they confront criminal deportation forty years after their resettlement in the United States. Weaving together these stories into a single narrative, Cengel finds that violence comes in many forms and that trauma is passed down through generations. With no easy answers, Cengel reveals a cycle of violence, followed by safety, and then loss. Katya Cengel is a freelance writer based in San Luis Obispo, California, and lectures in the Journalism Department of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She was a features and news writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal from 2003 to 2011 and has reported from North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Her work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Marie Claire, and Newsweek. She is the author of Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life (Nebraska, 2012).