In The Shadow Of The Banyan: A Novel

This reading group guide for In the Shadow of the Banyan includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Vaddey Ratner. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.


Introduction

“To keep you is no gain, to kill you is no loss.” For seven-year-old Raami, the collapse of her childhood world begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours, bringing details of the upheaval that has overwhelmed the streets of Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh. It is April 1975, and the civil war between the U.S.-backed government and the Khmer Rouge insurgency has reached its climax. As Raami plays in the magical world of her family’s estate, she is intrigued by the adults’ hushed exchanges that pit hopes for the long-awaited peace against fears that this might be the end of the life they know, a life protected and cushioned by their royal lineage. On the morning of the lunar New Year, a young soldier dressed in the black of the Revolution invades that world of carefully guarded privilege. Within hours, Raami and her family join a mass exodus as the new Khmer Rouge regime evacuates Cambodia’s cities.

Over the next four years, as she endures the tragic deaths and violent executions of friends and family members, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of her childhood—the magical tales and poems she learned from her father. Whenever Raami comes close to giving up hope, she looks up at the moon and recalls the intricate tales that her father created for her, stories of fortitude and love that instilled the values that will keep her alive.  

Topics & Questions for Discussion 

1. According to the prophecy that Grandmother Queen tells Raami at the beginning of the novel, “There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan tree.” What does the prophecy mean to Raami when she first hears it? How does her belief in the prophecy change by the end of the novel? After reading, what does the title of this novel mean to you?
 
2. Tata tells Raami, “The problem with being seven—I remember myself at that age—is that you’re aware of so much, and yet you understand so little. So you imagine the worst.” Discuss Raami’s impressions as a seven-year-old. How much is she aware of, and how much (or little) does she understand?
 
3. Review the scene in which Raami tells the Kamapibal her father’s real name. How does this serve as a turning point in the novel—what changes forever after this revelation? How does it affect Raami, and her relationship with both Papa and Mama?
 
4. Papa tells Raami, “I told you stories to give you wings, Raami, so that you would never be trapped by anything—your name, your title, the limits of your body, this world’s suffering.” How does the power of storytelling liberate Raami at different points in the novel?
 
5. Compare Mama’s and Papa’s styles of storytelling. When does each parent tell Raami stories, and what role do these stories serve? Which of Papa’s stories did you find most memorable? Which of Mama’s?
 
6. Consider Raami and her family’s Buddhist faith. How do their beliefs help them endure life under the Khmer Rouge?
 
7. Discuss Raami’s feelings of guilt over losing Papa and Radana. Why does she feel responsible for Papa’s decision to leave the family? For Radana’s death? How does she deal with her own guilt and grief?
 
8. What does Big Uncle have in common with Papa, and how do the two brothers differ? How does Big Uncle handle the responsibility of keeping his family together? What ultimately breaks his spirit?
 
9. Raami narrates, “my polio, time and again, had proven a blessing in disguise.” Discuss Raami’s disability, and its advantages and disadvantages during her experiences.
 
10. Although Raami endures so much hardship in the novel, in some ways she is a typical inquisitive child. What aspects of her character were you able to relate to?
 
11. Discuss how the Organization is portrayed in the novel. How does Raami picture the Organization to look, sound, and act? How do the Organization’s policies and strategies evolve over the course of the novel?
 
12. Names have a strong significance in the novel. Papa tells Raami he named her Vattaaraami, “Because you are my temple and my garden, my sacred ground, and in you I see all of my dreams.” What does Papa’s own name, Sisowath Ayuravann, mean? What traditions and stories are passed down through these names?
 
13. Consider Raami’s stay with Pok and Mae. Discuss what and how both Raami and Mama learn from them, albeit differently. Do you think their stay with Pok and Mae gave them hope?
 
14. “Remember who you are,” Mama tells Raami when they settle in Stung Khae. How does Raami struggle to maintain her identity as a daughter, a member of the royal family, and a Buddhist? Why does Mama later change her advice and encourage Raami to forget her identity?
 
15. Mama tells Raami after Radana’s death, “I live because of you—for you. I’ve chosen you over Radana.” Discuss Mama’s complicated feelings for her two daughters. Why did Raami assume that Radana was her mother’s favorite, and how does Mama’s story change Raami’s mind?
 
16. At the end of the novel, Raami realizes something new about her father’s decision to give himself up to the Kamapibal: “I’d mistaken his words and deeds, his letting go, for detachment, when in fact he was seeking rebirth, his own continuation in the possibility of my survival.” Discuss Papa’s “words and deeds” before he leaves the family. Why did Raami mistake his intentions, and how does she come to realize the truth about him?
 
17. How much did you know about the Khmer Rouge before reading In the Shadow of the Banyan? What did you learn?

Enhance Your Book Club

  1. Greet your book club members with traditional Cambodian food. A cooking school in Phnom Penh provides some classic recipes here: http://www.cambodia-cooking-class.com/recipes.htm
 
2. Imagine you’re planning a trip to Cambodia with your book club. What historical, religious, and natural sites would you want to visit? Start planning your virtual trip by visiting the Cambodia Ministry of Tourism website: http://www.tourismcambodia.org/
 
3. Study a map of Cambodia and chart some of the places depicted in the novel, including Phnom Penh, Kratie Province, and the border with Thailand. If you don’t own an atlas, you can view a map here: http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/lgcolor/khcolor.htm
 
  
 A Conversation with Vaddey Ratner  

In the Shadow of the Banyan is a novel, but it is closely based on your family’s experience in Cambodia during the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. Why did you decide to write it as a novel rather than a memoir?  

I was a small child when the Khmer Rouge took over the country. Revisiting that period of our life, I found that I couldn’t trust myself completely to recall the exact details of the events and places and the chronology of our forced exodus from the city to the countryside, the journey from one place to the next during the span of those four years. I did initially try to write it as a memoir. But sorting through my own memories and what my mother was able to share with me, as well as the historical record, I kept asking myself again and again, What is the story I want to tell? What is my purpose for telling it? It isn’t so much the story of the Khmer Rouge experience, of genocide, or even of loss and tragedy. What I wanted to articulate is something more universal, more indicative, I believe, of the human experience—our struggle to hang onto life, our desire to live, even in the most awful circumstances. In telling this story, it isn’t my own life I wished others to take note of. I have survived, and the gift of survival, I feel, is honor enough already. My purpose is to honor the lives lost, and I wanted to do so by endeavoring to transform suffering into art.

That’s not to say that a memoir doesn’t demand artistry and skill. I’ve read many beautifully crafted literary memoirs—Angela’s Ashes, Autobiography of a Face, Running in the Family, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Woman Warrior…In my case, because I was so young when the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia, and with hardly any surviving family records or pictures as source material, I had only my own mostly traumatic recollections and the understandably reluctant remembrances of my mother to rely on. What’s more, those whom I wished to write about, whose sufferings I felt deserve to be heard and remembered above my own story, are gone. I didn’t want them to be forgotten, and while, as Elie Wiesel has said, one cannot truly speak for the dead, I wished still to re-invoke the words and thoughts they’d shared with me. I felt compelled to speak of their lives, their hopes and dreams when they were still alive. And to do this well, I realized, required me not only to cull from memory and history but also to employ imagination, the art of empathy.

Speaking of art, what was your inspiration for writing?  

In writing, one often speaks of voice as if it belongs exclusively to each of us as a writer, as if it emerges from a source that’s all our own. More than twenty years ago, when I was a high school student, I came across Night by Elie Wiesel. I didn’t know what it was, whether a memoir or a novel. I don’t think it even said on the book. It was a slim volume, just over a hundred pages, and I read it in one sitting. And then again and again. It was the first piece of holocaust literature I read, even though I didn’t know what the word holocaust meant at the time. It was this writing that set me on a search to find the voice for my own story at a time when I could only communicate the mundane in a language new to me. Elie Wiesel’s journey through death and inhumanity so moved me that I aspired to one day write a book that would give voice to my own family’s struggle for survival, for life, in the face of a different atrocity in Cambodia.

You were five years old when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, and your protagonist, Raami, is seven. Why did you decide to make her two years older?  

In my own experience, I have the sense I began to perceive and understand much of what was happening about halfway through the Khmer Rouge regime, which was around when I turned seven, even though I wasn’t sure how old I was at any given time. Still, I was aware that I was growing up, maturing. I was forced to be an adult by what I endured and witnessed.