Life in the Wake of The Dead Eye and the Deep Blue Sea
Jenn Fauls assisted Vannak Anan Prum in setting up his Zazzle store, promoting his visit stateside, and establishing his social media presence. She studied Public Health at Columbia University, and is currently developing a global initiative for the mental health of adolescent girls through the organization Girls in Mind.
By Jenn Fauls
When I first saw Vannak Anan Prum’s manuscript The Dead Eye and the Deep Blue Sea, I was struck not only by the harrowing depiction of his private struggles, and the larger systemic tragedy of human trafficking, but also the ways in which the traumas of Vannak’s life wended through his story to illustrate something both profoundly universal and rarely shown so clearly.
From a very early age, Vannak undergoes one experience of trauma after another. While he is able to take solace in drawing, it is difficult for any child to cope with domestic violence, abject poverty, and an environment marred by armed conflict. Out of necessity he runs away, experiencing the deprivations of homelessness, and he is ultimately recruited as a child soldier.
As an adult, Vannak contends with the financial pressures of starting a family while living in extreme poverty by temporarily leaving home to find work; his economic insecurity renders him vulnerable to exploitation, and ultimately sets the stage for his grueling time as a modern-day slave. The injustices we witness double, and ultimately triple. Even as Vannak undergoes years of hellish obstacles, he recalls his wife, Sokun, with a great deal of love and care. When it becomes obvious to the reader that he’s unable to return to his wife, we worry for her and for the health and safety of their unborn child as well.
The next time the reader sees Sokun we see her using her own body as a shield to protect her frightened daughter from a now all-but-unrecognizable Vannak, finally returned home. Sokun is crying; the sight of her tears harkens back to an inconsolable mother watching Vannak, her child, depart their family home. We’re left with the sense that an ocean of trauma ebbs and flows through the generations, and that much of the overwhelming pain that Vannak has experienced has also been felt keenly by his family, friends, and ultimately the larger community as well.
The dread, shame, and lingering suffering felt by many survivors of horrific trauma are like deep currents that seem to forever threaten to pull them back into darkness. If, indeed, there is any way out, it is perhaps only through attempts to confront and process it, by putting it into words—or in this special case, words and pictures. In doing so, Vannak has given us an extraordinary gift.
The transformation of a private hell into an investigative report would alone be of extraordinary value. But to have it wrought into such a surprisingly beautiful artifact that encompasses the larger story of psychic trauma, intergenerational wounds, and a community’s working through of history makes Dead Eye and the Deep Blue Sea a truly singular, universal treasure.