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Summary: How much can a 5 year old remember?
Review: This is a good book. It portrays the Khmer Rouge horrors through the eyes of a five year old child. Having spent time in Cambodia, I find the book presents a clear and accurate snapshot of Khmer life; however, there's no way a five year old could recall the facts presented in such incredible detail. I recommend, therefore, that you read this as a cursory overview. Clearly, life in Cambodia was hell then (it isn't much better now). I suspect, however, that this author collected impressions from a wide variety of people and compiled them into a book for which she takes credit.
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Summary: The Gettysburg Address of The Killing Fields
Review: Loung Ung tells an absolutely horrible story. And she tells it wonderfully! I was affected by Angela's Ashes. First They Killed My Father has overwhelmed me. It's the story of the strength of a family's love through unimaginable circumstances. You must read this book. But you must know first that you will not be able ever again to utter the phrase "I'm starving," without thinking of Keav and Geak. You will not be able to remember the joy of your childhood on a playground without thinking of Loung. I have thought continually of Loung, her brothers, sisters, and parents since picking up the book. I have put down the book, but I cannot put away the story. You are tougher than I if you can read even the closing "Acknowledgments" page with dry eyes.
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Summary: A new perspective on abundance vs. want
Review: This book reached me at a level few books ever do. It caught my conscience, it made me see things in a new light. When I sit down at a restaurant with a heaping plate of food in front of me it think shamefully "this would feed a Cambodian village for a week".Was it seeing the terror and horror of war through the eyes of a child that did it? Was it the simple insoucience of the author that made every sentence ring with pain and with truth? I don't know. But I do know that I have acquired a new anger towards the senselessness of war, the brutality of rape as a weapon of war, the insensitivity of nations to others where these atrocities happen. Ung will reach you like that too. It isn't a pretty book, it isn't a happy book, but the honesty and strength that emerge from every page will hold you in a vice-like grip. You know from the beginning that she will survive; after all, shw wrote the book. You will wonder how. You will share the pathos of her sixth birthday which she celebrated by eating a piece of charcoal, the agony of the moment when she took a small handful of rice from a dying woman because she was so hungry herself, the anger of the moment when she thought she saw the soldier who had tried to rape her. A must read for anyone who cares about others.
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Summary: First They Killed My Father
Review: Oh please get everyone you know to read this book. When you put your problems into the perspective of the trials and struggles of this remarkable young woman you will feel as though you have no problems at all. I believe this book is a must read for all Americans. We have so much, they had so little and all was taken away from them. This book is powerful and life changing. After you read this book you will view life from a different perspective. You will be totally grateful for America, our system of government, who you are and how you live. I was stunned by the visual picture painted for me by this author, a picture both disturbing and enlightening. I will never take life in America for granted again. I think this book should be required reading in every high school in America.
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Summary: Greatest gift a survivor could ever give
Review: Few fantasies of horrow could match the Khmer Rouge reality. Unfortunately, approximately eigh millions people shared Ung's predicament and two millions of them did not live to tell their tale. Ung's chilling depiction of the cruelty of the genocidal regime, the Khmer Rouges, is,perhaps, the greatest gift a survivor could ever give to the current and future generations. For if we were wise we should cherish her gift so that hopefully no one had to experience hell on Earth just so to produce such 'precious' thing.
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Summary: A Nightmare that Really Was
Review: Ung's horrifyingly vivid account of Pol Pot's maniacal rule of Cambodia is a singularly grueling reading experience. And yet the book is difficult to put down. Ung's description of the evils inflicted by the Khymer Rouge is breathtaking. It's is beyond my ability to comprehend how human beings can either survive or inflict such mind-bending cruelty. Particularly numbing is Ung's description of what it is like to experience starvation. She describes in depressing detail the single-minded want for food where even a lone grain of rice becomes precious. This makes the reader feel both grateful and guilty for living in such abundance that we have kitchen garbage disposals to do away with unwanted food, and obesity is one of our nation's biggest health threats. But ultimately this book is a celebration of family and love triumphing over savagery. My only hope is that many of the American radicals of the 60s who pretended the animals of the Khymer Rouge were liberators will read this account of the crimes their heroes committed against Cambodia and all humanity.
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Summary: What if?
Review: I often imagine what would happen if society suffered a meltdown around me. Could I survive? What would happened to my loved ones? Could I protect them? Would I fight back? Loung endured and survived such a meltdown. She walks the reader through her voyage into and out of the abyss. I had no choice but to read the entire book in one night - it's that powerful. Both a human tragedy and a truimph of the spirit. I am grateful that Loung was strong enough to survive and tell her tale. I am better for it.
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Summary: An eye opener real life account
Review: Loung has done an awesome job in writing her real life account of the Angkat atrocities in Cambodia. I was unable to let go of the book once I started reading and lost sleep over a few days just thinking about and imagining what I had read. It brought back images to mind from the movie "The Killing Fields". I can understand the immense effort and courage it must have taken to recollect incidents from a time that probably still brings shivers to the author's mind.
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Summary: Survival in Campuchia
Review: This is an elegant work of prose that traces the harrowing exodus of a young child from her idyllic home in Phnom Penh to the remote villages in the Cambodian country-side to the Angkar death camps. As Loung Ung is exiled from her idyllic home, the reader is led down a terrifying path filled with betrayal, jealousy, and murder but also courage, heroism, and survival. Ung writes in a poignant yet succint style that shows how friends turned against one another in order to curry favor with the ruling regime. Families once on the margins of Cambodian society, both physically and economically, turned on their countrymen with a savage vengeance that defies a logical response. This led to unspeakable acts of violence by the ruling regime, either through starvation or slaughter, against countless people. Yet, amid this awful backdrop, Ung also introduces to the reader people who reclaim their humanity under oppression and, in this sense, redeems this sad story. Of the most memorable is the author's brother, who underwent severe beatings from the children of the camp leader in order to provide his family a handful of food to stave off hunger. Ultimately, this is a story of survival and how the personal saga of one person reveals the depths of the human psyche under such desparate conditions. It reminds this writer of Primo Levi's book, "Survival in Aschuwitz" and how one person's experience can represent the journey of 10,000 more. If there is one question that does arise from this book that was unanswered, it is this: given all that has happened to Cambodians in their civil war, how does the cycle of hatred and violence end and who is willing to make that change?
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Summary: Hell on earth through the eyes of a child
Review: "First they killed My father" is Loung Ung's Horror filled account of her childhood stolen from her by Pol Pot's regime which ranks behind only Hitlers for it's brutality and inhumanity. It is also a story of a family's love and sacrafice for one another. A father and mother's love for thier children a sister's love for each other but most of all a little girls love for her father. Think of Anne Frank Meets the "killing fields" and you only begin to get an idea of what this book is about. Loung's writing is at once so simple and yet so vivid you can almost feel the shock, disgust and horror of a little girl living in what can only be discribed as hell on earth. You can feel the confusion and fear in a little girls mind as her life of cars, TV's, phones and movies is ripped away from her and replaced with starvation, murder, bombs, gun fire and death. PA what are communist she asks, and why do they hate us? Her Father's answer is simple and direct they are destoyers. This book is truly a must read for everyone, least we forget and let history repeat it's self.
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