ANGELA RADUK MILLER
THE BOOKS
Hornbill Among Eagles
This sequel to Hornbill's Daughter continues the saga of a young native girl from Borneo as she immigrates to the US as a young bride. Armed with courage, persistence, and spirit, she struggles to assimilate into new cultures and customs. Despite prejudice and discrimination, she triumphs against the odds in this inspirational journey.
Hornbill's Daughter
This is a memoir about Raduk Biru, a young native girl growing up in a village on the Island of Borneo where she witnesses poverty, injustice, and inequality in the treatment of women. She saw the lack of understanding between various cultures and witnessed first hand the saga of arranged marriages. The struggle of everyday life without having a formal education made her realize that schooling was important to her.
She overcame the old traditional ways of thinking that had kept women in bondage and labeled them as second class citizens. Her story tells how she fought to obtain an education and used it as a living example to overcome the taboos, fears, and superstitions. It details how she handled a prohibited romance and revolutionizes her ideas of marriage to her freedom of choice. Her choices made her accountable and responsible for whatever the outcome be.
Her vision and her faith seemed to have a bleak future at times, which assimilate a hornbill’s life. A hornbill is a tropical bird that plays a significant role in what it represents to the native people of Borneo. This bird is loyal, caring and protective of their own species. She used this emblematic bird as an example to dedicate her message to be courageous, tolerant and self-reliant.
Hornbill’s Daughter is a description of an indigenous young girl who lives a life with determination and perseverance. It is an intriguing story of a long hard journey with many obstacles and challenges. Raduk realizes that life is not all a paved road, but often a road with potholes and detours. With all the hardships she encountered, she saw hope and focused on the solution not on the problem. As she goes through the experiences of life, she handles them with sense of sensibility and a speck of humor to balance out life’s adversity. She painfully carried out her desire in silence to save face from her critics. This is an inspiring and heart warming book.
The title “Hornbill’s Daughter” associates her soul with this tropical bird as a respect to her old heritage. Her heritage of being a member of a native tribe on the island of Borneo brings a uniqueness of who she is. As you read this book of true life stories, a recollection of her childhood and adolescent life will speak to your heart with wonderment.