Chath Piersath

Who is Chath Piersath?

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 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" appears in Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs of Survivors, compiled by Dith Pran and edited by Kim DePaul. It was published by the Yale University Press in 1997. His other work also appear in Anthologies of the Merrimack Valley Press of Lowell, Massachusetts.