Bunkong Tuon
Bunkong Tuon was born in Battambang, Cambodia, in the early '70s. Orphaned at an early age, he was adopted by his grandmother who lived with near-by relatives. After the collapse of Khmer Rouge regime, his uncle took him and his grandmother and fled to Thailand. There, they lived in a refugee camp for a few more years before being sponsored by a Christian family to Boston, Massachusetts in 1983.
Bunkong was placed in junior high school where he did not do well in his academic study. Three-fourth of his classes were geared toward the study of English as Second Language (ESL). However, most of what he learned was from watching television and listening to radio. In addition, he spent most of his times drawing and reading comic books. In 1990, he graduated from high school with a C average.
A year later, he moved to Long Beach, California and worked as a baker for his uncle. He spent his free time reading different books including those by Charles Bukowski and Fyodor Dostoyevsky whom he has ardently admired ever since. In Spring of 1992, he enrolled in Long Beach City College--where he found writing the most difficult obstacle he ever encountered. In spite of that, he found literature the most comforting and compassionate of all disciplines. After receiving an Associate Degree in Liberal Arts, he transferred to California State University at Long Beach, CA. He is now pursuing a degree in Comparative Literature.
Recently, he met Thavrith Bunkasem who is the founder of Khmer Voice In Poetry through one of his professors. After reading a few copies of Khmer Voice: The Cambodian Literary Connection, Bunkong Tuon was surprised and comforted by the fact that there are other Khmer writers and thinkers all across America. He expressed his enthusiasm toward Khmer Voice for which he became a freelance editor and a contributing author.
Works by Bunkong Tuon