Welcome to Fairfield University! Soon you will be arriving on our campus, meeting the faculty and staff, starting classes, and making lots of new friends. This crossroads in your life marked by leaving home and starting a new life at Fairfield overlaps in certain ways with that of Loung Ung and her sister Chou in Lucky Child. Their story, I felt, reflects powerfully on people’s shared experiences, whether we live in the United States or Cambodia, that involve migrations of many kinds.
A powerful moment, for me, in the book was the description of how Loung responded to the fireworks display that she attended with her host family on the Fourth of July. For Americans, the booming sounds and vibrant light displays symbolize the celebration of our country’s independence. For Loung, the same display evoked memories of gun fire and death. This moment speaks to how the same event can mean dramatically different things to people whose unique experiences can prompt extremely different responses.
The diversity of human experience captured in such examples and how we navigate these differences as individuals and citizens fascinates me. As the Director of Peace & Justice Studies, I invite you to take our courses that explore many of the issues of social justice and peace brought up in Loung and Chou’s story. Immigration, a hot topic in American politics today, is one such issue central to Lucky Child that raises many timely questions.
How do we think about the people who immigrate to the United States? How does the story of Loung and Chou challenge the media’s portrayal of immigrants? What does the American Dream mean to a nation of immigrants?
Jocelyn Boryczka, Assistant Professor, Politics
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Photo: Dr. Boryczka in front of the hotel where she stayed during a trip to Havana, Cuba.
My brother was in Iraq and contacted my family about a mission that he was on where he was sitting at the top of a tank which is where he normally sits while doing these missions. He said that he got this weird urge, as if someone, or something was telling him to get inside the tank and within seconds of getting in the tank it was bombed. He called my mother and thanked her for praying for him everyday while he was there and that was weird because he is the type of person who was never big on religion. That just brought me closer to my family and appreciating the moments and not taking them for granted, but it also brought me closer to God. 
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