The Rent Collector

The first-person narrator, Sang Ly, tells her story in retrospect. She confesses that she once “believed that heroes existed only in old men’s fables, that evil in the world had triumphed over good, and that love—a true, unselfish, and abiding love—could only be found in a little girl’s imagination” (1). Due to the hardships her family must endure and the state of her country, Sang resigns to painful truths about her life and future: “[T]he gods were deaf […] Buddha was forgotten, and […] I would never again see the natural beauty of my home province” (1).

The story begins with Sang’s recounting of a dream she has about her grandfather, who tells her, “Life will not always be so hard or so cruel” (2). Sang’s husband, Ki Lim, awakens her from the dream to the reality of her life: She lives on the edges of “the largest municipal waste dump in Phnom Penh—indeed, in all of Cambodia” (5), called Stung Meanchey. The dump’s name ironically means “River of Victory,” and this is where she and her husband scavenge for things to sell or re-use. Despite the many dangers of the dump—toxic runoff when it rains, constant fire and smoke, medical waste, and violent, opportunistic gangs—Sang and Ki labor to provide for their terminally ill baby,