Memoir
440 Pages
ISBN: 1-59766-007-8
Paper: $21.95

In prerevolution Laos, when people addressed someone older or of higher status, they referred to themselves as “I little slave.” Raised in this tradition of feudal politeness, and having subsequently received a Ph.D. in political science in France, Bounsang Khamkeo returned home in October 1973, not long after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords brought the war in Vietnam to its official close. Between 1968 and 1973 Laos was the target of one of the most massive bombing campaigns in history—the CIA’s secret war in Laos against the North Vietnamese communists. Convinced that the future promised brighter days for his country, Khamkeo joined the newly constituted coalition government in the Laotian capital of Vientiane. In the months that followed, however, he found himself witness to the corruption and eventual disintegration of his world. Seized by the Pathet Lao in the wake of the Communist revolution of December 1975, he survived more than seven years in prison under sometimes impossibly harsh conditions before finally being released during Communist thaw in the 1980s. He moved to the United States in 1989. I Little Slave is the account of his ordeal.