From California to Cambodia, Fighting for Women

“When I hit San Francisco I knew that was my city. I began to shine. I let my hair grow. I looked like a hippie.” Mu Sochua (Photo: Justin Mott for The New York Times)

April 2, 2010
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
MAK PRAING, Cambodia

IT was at Berkeley in the 1970s that Mu Sochua, a shy teenager fleeing a war in Cambodia, learned the thrill of speaking her mind.

The daughter of a well-to-do merchant in Phnom Penh, she had been sent to the West at the age of 18 to study and to be safe from the fighting that later brought the brutal Khmer Rouge regime to power.

“When I hit San Francisco I knew that was my city,” said Ms. Mu Sochua, who is now 55. “I began to shine. I let my hair grow. I looked like a hippie.” She learned English, she said, by listening to the Beatles.

She earned a master’s degree in social work from Berkeley and transformed herself enthusiastically from a demure traditional Cambodian woman to one who knew her rights and was not shy about demanding them.

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