Jaed Muncharoen Coffin | The Sun Magazine

Jaed Muncharoen Coffin

Jaed Muncharoen Coffin is the author of A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants, which chronicles the time he spent as a Buddhist monk in his mother’s native village in Thailand. His forthcoming book, Roughhouse Friday, is about the year he fought as the middleweight champion of a barroom boxing show in Juneau, Alaska. Since becoming a father, he has stopped having dangerous adventures in remote places. He lives with his wife and daughter in Portland, Maine.

— From June 2011
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Mother’s Burning Body

“The thing I remember most about watching my mother’s body burn,” my mother tells me in English, a language that has never quite served her, “is when I can smell her skin and hair as they are catching fire and crackling in the flame.”

June 2011
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