Donuts and Identity: Survival
Donut shops evoke a value particularly dear to early Cambodian refugees: sur- vival. As Sucheng Chan points out in Survivors: Cambodian Refugees in the
Cambodian Donut Shops
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United States, first-generation Cambodian immigrants self-identify as sur- vivors, and they value their survival and that of their families above almost everything else.72 The actual means of survival matters less than the survival itself. In fact, donut entrepreneurs often have disdain for their product. In Cambodian Doughnut Dreams, store owner Bunna Men expresses contempt for the entire business, saying, “I don’t like anything about donuts, but I have to do, for a living.”73 Men appears to be using the word “living” in two ways: while he indicates that he has to make donuts in order to earn money, he also is referring to living in the most literal sense. Donut shops offer a means of owning tangible property and reaping the benefits of one’s own labor, two things that had been taken away by the Khmer Rouge. They also give families that have undergone horrific experiences of separation and loss an opportu- nity to bond more closely. Chhu noted that one of the best things about run- ning a donut shop was that it helped keep her family close together.74 Again, donut shops have allowed families to survive independently with minimal out- side help and almost no institutional interference. Minimal interaction with a new and unknown government is another marker of survival for a population recently brutalized by its authorities. Lonh summed it up best: “Donut shops are the keystones of survival for the Cambodian community.”75