Sparknotes The Children Of The River

The Children of the River Susan Harris
In the book “Children of the River” we meet our main character Sandara, who is a young girl who lives in Cambodia. During her life there is a war going on, and her parents fearing for her life and her mother fearing the life of her sister, sends her to live with her “Younger Aunt” as she calls her, or Soka, along with her two sons Pon and Ravy and Sokas husband Naro. In this book there are many different times they show technology. it is shown once when Naro, in the beginning of the book is said to drive up on a motorcycle and helped his family onto a boat to a new land or in this case America. When they get to America there are Cars, Airplanes, Phones, TV and other different types of technology all in the book, Showing this book probably took place in the
They also show many types of culture in the book as in “Touching someone’s head is said to make them lose their soul”, This is probably a culture along with “Don’t step over people for in my country it’s like shoveling dirt on them” this is all part of the Cambodian culture. They also bow, place their hands on their forehead together (this was shown when Soka scolded Sundara for liking the American boy, she places her hands on her head and asked for mercy.) Another culture for Cambodia is for the parents to arrange a marriage for the daughters, this gets Sundara in a lot of trouble because she likes an American boy named Jonathan. She goes through most of this book with this love for him but she knows she can’t like him, when finally they find out Soka explodes. After losing Sokas baby to sea sickness trying to evade the war Sundara never forgives