Chath Piersath

rdf:langString Chath Piersath

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rdf:langString June 2019

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rdf:langString Chath Piersath, born in Kop Nymit, Svay Sisophon District, in Battambang Province, is a noted Cambodian American poet, painter and humanitarian. He creates both large and small portraits of people from his memory, often representing the social and economic disparity among Cambodians. Chath pierSath crossed the Thai-Cambodian border in 1979 at the end of the Khmer Rouge period with members of his family to Aranyaprathet Refugee Camp. With the aid of his aunt, he, his older brother and sister emigrated to the United States in 1981 and lived first in Boulder, Colorado. He graduated from World College West/New College of California, majoring in international service and development. Much of his poetry deals with his macabre memories of the Khmer Rouge atrocities and the massacres of the Killing Fields; his poem "A Letter to My Mother" was published by the Yale University Press in 1997. His other works also appear in Anthologies of the Merrimack Valley Press of Lowell, Massachusetts. His recent works include "After" a book of poetry, published by on 15 October 2009 and a children's book, Sinat and the Instrument of the Heart, published by . He returned to Cambodia in 1994 for the first time after ten years of separation from family members and his homeland to do humanitarian work as a volunteer of the Cambodian American National Development Organization (CANDO). He was assigned to assist a local human rights organization, Human Rights Vigilance of Cambodia. He also helped an array of other local NGOs working on HIV/AIDS Prevention education and child rights issues. One of his exhibitions at the Java Cafe in Phnom Penh and also in Bangkok, Thailand and Kunming, China addressed those living with HIV and AIDS. He currently spends six months of the year working and living on a farm in his adopted country, the United States, and six months in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as a painter and writer.