How We Chea Our Scabbing Wounds: Cambodian American Healing Justice by Amira Noeuv

My dissertation considers how second-generation Cambodian Americans contend with experiences of transgenerational trauma by highlighting their agency, experiences, power, and aspirations by centering the concept of “chea”, the Khmer term for heal or healing. I assert that despite war, genocide, and displacement resulting in immense loss of life, culture, and ways of being, the essence of chea continues to exist within Cambodian American refugee families’ daily lives, even when they are not explicitly stated. I argue that some second-generation Cambodian Americans have had to creatively transform the principles and practices of chea to adapt to the unique historical legacies and current conditions of intersecting forms of structural trauma. I also argue how chea functions both as a healing justice concept and practice because chea emphasizes healing as an ongoing, relational, transformative process and that it is also a social responsibility. 

My research shifts away from the causes and consequences of individual and collective transgenerational trauma to focus on what happens after we have been wounded. Focusing on selected projects and narratives by some second-generation Cambodian Americans, I use the metaphor of scab and scabbing to trace how chea unfolds through kinship (re)building, critical consciousness, new place-making practices, and efforts to regenerate cultural vitality. I highlight how second-generation Cambodian Americans resist colonial, pathologizing, and deficit-based/damaged-centered frameworks about Cambodian American health and wellness by emphasizing transformative reflections, strategic storytelling, new forms of gathering, a commitment to relational care, and cultural vitality. In doing so, I center second-generation Cambodian Americans as the transformative “cycle-breaker” figure and situate my research within the visionary future space of Cambodian American refugee futurity.